After almost a year of building up hype and anticipation for Battlefield Heroes, EA released the game last week to little or no fanfare — even the press release was bleak, at best. Not always a good sign to what used to be a highly hyped title.
In case you don’t already know, Battlefield Heroes takes the Battlefield franchise in a new direction, with a new art style, and more importantly, in a free direction. The game is available for download and play for everyone, and is supported by advertising and micro transactions. There are two teams: the Nationals (read: Nazis) and Royal Forces (Brits). The three classes, The Soldier, The Gunner and The Commando (a sort of spy/sniper), can be highly customized, although on a purely cosmetic level. Special gear is sold via micro transactions, and isn’t really worth the money unless you want to show off (and many do). However, the micro transactions, the items users can buy, do not give any clear advantage over those who don’t purchase these items (besides the “quicker leveling up” items, and general stuff that you can get simply by playing the game), which is always a good way of keeping things balanced.
The game features only three classes and a few maps, not a lot by any standards, but when it’s free it’s acceptable, as long as the gameplay is good. Speaking of the gameplay, the game has some serious balance issues, both class wise and weapon wise. For one, it’s easy to camp and spawn kill players, either as a sniper, or even soldier, as simple weapons such as pistols are usually just as accurate as sniper rifles. As for the maps, they tend to quickly get boring and repetitive, and one can hope that EA will keep expanding the amount of maps available for the game, and hopefully, expand with some better maps the the original ones. Having said that, the maps are fairly balanced, true to the Battlefield nature.
One of the features that is bound to be subject to criticism, and rightfully so, is that when you create a character, you have to stick with that character. You cannot respawn as another class, like in all previous Battlefield games. It’s very annoying, especially for Battlefield veterans who are used to mixing things up during a match, however…
This game is not for Battlefield veterans or other hard core action/FPS titles. Battlefield Heroes is a game for the youngsters, above all. It seems like a game EA created in order to broaden the Battlefield brand, instead of making a game that’s fun and enjoyable. Granted, Heroes does have its strong points, the strongest one that it’s free — but even then it quickly gets boring and repetitive. Despite the detailed statistics and rankings (another classic Battlefield feature) and the customization features, the gameplay is simply lacking the great fundamentals that have made the Battlefield franchise.
