Comments on: Battlefield 1943 – Discount War

By: Jorge Figueiredo

Jorge Figueiredo — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:37:48 +0000

Holy crap, Adam.

Air quotes much?

Fine. Next time I’ll use a bigger towel without a hole in it.

By: Shaun Hatton

Shaun Hatton — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:30:56 +0000

And seriously, Jorge. It’s like you were asking for that towel to fall off.

By: Shaun Hatton

Shaun Hatton — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:30:19 +0000

Yeah well fuck you guys.

By: Jamie Love

Jamie Love — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:25:55 +0000

My bigger concern is that you’ve been appointed to determine how much each feature in the original game is worth in order to come up with your fiscal rating. Maybe if I could see the pie chart that displays what a class costs and what each map is worth I could be swayed further.

Probably not though.

By: Adam Russell

Adam Russell — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:22:41 +0000

And to be fair, I think the advocate does have a fair point. While obviously developing this game was not free, it’s not up to the consumer to subsidize the employment of the games industry. Even a *shitty* game, that gets reviewed low, still had to pay a team of people to make it. Just because it had a cost to make, doesn’t mean that game is necessarily “worth” the $50 or so it sells for.

We as gamers (and most certainly as reviewers) generally encourage and often expect a game to bring something “new” to the table. Innovative or “novel” are often words we use to describe the things we want out of games. “Just another generic shooter” is a criticism that pops up all the time. If a game doesn’t bring enough new to the table, why bother playing it?

From the above perspective, largely the same game with virtually the same maps could be argued to be sufficiently “re-hashed”.

What determines the difference between rehash and re-make? In the case of Left 4 Dead 2, I think time plays a big factor. If that is the only case then the 7yrs since BF1942 should certainly be enough of a grace period.

I guess if we can get Shaun playing this game, then it should be considered a success regardless of the cost!

By: Adam Russell

Adam Russell — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:16:33 +0000

In my defense Jorge, you really should have affixed that towel a bit tighter around your waist. I didn’t *mean* to look, it all just happened so fast!

By: Jorge Figueiredo

Jorge Figueiredo — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:12:39 +0000

“Corral Sea is not so much of a map, as it is just a bunch of water.”

Classic Adam.

Give the man some nudity in there and the $15 will be well spent.

Note that I didn’t say female nudity. Just nudity.

By: Jamie Love

Jamie Love — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:50:31 +0000

I suppose if development costs have been frozen for 7 years you might have an argument there. Perhaps DLC will come to the rescue – but in the meantime I’d still maintain it’s $15 well spent given what other DLC and online games are costing – particularly successfully selling games from 20+ years ago with no significant changes whatsoever.

By: Adam Russell

Adam Russell — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:42:55 +0000

To play devil’s advocate for a moment. (Thankfully not the same devil whose advocate tried to suggest that Chinatown Wars got mixed reviews… ).

Is it a great value, or is it them charging you $15 for 3 maps (Corral Sea is not so much of a map, as it is just a bunch of water :p) that you already bought 7 years ago? At that price ($USD) the 16 original maps of 1942 would clock in at around $80.

So paying $80 to get a slightly “updated?” (there are actually less classes in this one then the original) version of the same game you’ve already bought, could viewed by some as pretty low bang for the buck.

Personally a new pretty engine, destructible buildings and at only $15 a chance to revisit an old friend (it is very hard to go back to a 7yr old game) seems worth it to me. But if it does become the success that early indications seem to suggest, so that they end up selling us all of the original game back piecemeal. Well, then maybe that “devil’s advocate” might not be so far off afterall.

Biggest Question: Can I wait till September for the PC version? Or will I have to cave and get the 360 one (Shooter controls on PC > Console – personally) to play during the summer, and then also PC in the fall. !!