EA Studio Showcase: Battlefield Heroes

Fri, Aug 15, 2008

With all the fun we've been having with our team-oriented FPS titles lately, we were glad to be able to try a new title which will soon be competing for our assault attentions. Thus, at yesterday's EA Studio Showcase, we sat down to blast some cartoonish soldiers in Battlefield Heroes, the new "casual" incarnation of the Battlefield squad-based FPS combat franchise from EA and DICE. More than simply a new, friendlier edition of the tried-and-true Battlefield games, BF Heroes will be bringing a heap of community features and social possibilities to the table. As described by Ben Cousins, the game's executive producer, the game has been as much a "web project" like Facebook as it has been a game project.

We had the chance to explore a great deal of the new social network that will become available with BF Heroes when it launches. There's plenty of great content coming out, including player profiles, group/clan options, rankings, friends lists, and an item store full of creative costume ideas. Now, if only all this stuff was going to accompany a halfway decent game, we'd be all set. Sadly, as of right now, that isn't the case.

Battlefield, for the uninitiated, is a team-based combat game, typically played by a large group of players, based on the overtaking and holding of key locations on large-scale maps, and typically including features such as vehicles, gun emplacements, and other tools of war. None of this has changed -- the core mechanic of each team losing their "tickets" as the enemy kills their soldiers or captures the various control points is still firmly in place, and there are still "classes" of soldiers available to play as, with different weapon loadouts.

The main change in Heroes is the aesthetic: The game world and its characters are all very bright, colorful, and friendly. A number of gamers have drawn a comparison to the look of Valve's Team Fortress 2, and it's not totally unfounded; the cartoonish, nearly-cel-shaded graphics and the square-jawed, humorously proportioned character designs have quite a bit in common. Heroes, though, still maintains a look that is distinctly its own, utilizing a great deal more green in the quasi-provincial European village landscape, and the almost goofy-looking tanks are of a uniquely amusing design. Also, there's no blood. Characters who are killed simply keel over in canned death animations, which looks quite awkward when they are also thrown into the air by explosives (though one assumes this is still being worked on).

Those soldiers, however, can have any look that you want, based on a vast selection of costume pieces, from standard military attire to fedoras, football uniforms, pirate costumes, old West banditos, ballerina tutus, and beyond. DICE is hoping that players will create a "persistent" character for Heroes, defined both by their unique appearance, and by their statistics and weaponry. Heroes will allow players to gain experience and level up with new weapons, in-game feats and skills, and other bonuses, similar to Call of Duty 4. The weapons, of course, also maintain Heroes' silly, approachable theme, including machine guns named the "Chicago Typewriter" and so on. Heroes will offer a great deal of new clothing through a microtransaction-based item store. Not the weapons, though -- we asked about those, and Heroes will not charge for any weapons, so there'll be no need for a Bad Company brouhaha. Between customizing one's weapons, appearance, abilities, and even in-game emotes, players can expect the ability to truly define their Heroes character and forge a new persona for use in and out of the game, thanks to the aforementioned web profiles, forums, and group features.

Assuming you're not the type of gamer who demands every game be drenched in blood and contain only the colors grey and brown, Battlefield Heroes looks quite fine, and I'm of the opinion that DICE has really nailed the approachable, "casual-friendly" look that they're going for. Yes, it's still a game about solving your problems by shooting people, but the whole thing has sort of a "My First FPS" feel to it, from the cartoony graphics to the large-print ammo counters and event warnings to the almost Disney-esque "neener-neener" music that plays when you lose. Even the most vigilant parents and game-hating politicians will be hard-pressed to get up in arms about BF Heroes. Actual game players, on the other hand, may well pick up the slack for them.

As interesting a concept as Heroes is, and as great as a social network could be when centered around an inherently large-team-based game like Battlefield, there's really no way around the main problem: The game I tried at the EA Studio Showcase wasn't very fun to play. I'm willing to grant some leeway here; I know the game is still in production, and any number of things could be tweaked or improved by the time the game hits general release. They'd better be, mind you, because as it is, there are some elements of the game which are unplayably bad.

DICE has dumbed down a number of Battlefield's standard features to keep the game more casual-accessible, and that's not what I take issue with. For instance, players can no longer choose their spawn points; the game now handles that automatically in order to drop players right back into the action. Ammo and resupplying is a thing of the past; all players need only worry about reloading their current clips, and health/vehicle repair can be done at any time, in the field, with a command that needs only to cool down before being available again an unlimited number of times. Again, for a more casual-flavored "My First FPS," these aren't bad choices. It's the actual gameplay and core design which need work.

The hit detection and movement were extremely flighty. I might not be the best FPS player in the world, by a long shot, but I can tell when a 1:25 kill-per-death ratio is not my fault. I also happened to spot some chatter from the beta players we were playing online with, who were lamenting the fact that Heroes' promised matchmaking system is not yet in place. I can assure you, one does not get "casual" players to become repeat customers by dropping them into their first match against experts who will steamroll them.

Again, all of this can be fixed between now and launch, so I'm not holding it against the developers. What I take primary issue with is the most basic character mechanic of all: The weapon loadout. Let me run you through my experience: The enemy forces had taken the central control point early, blasting our front lines to pieces with a convoy of tanks. Our assault team in ruins, they proceeded to surround the area with said tanks, forming an impassable barrier which continued to pick off our riflemen. The solution was obvious to any Battlefield veteran, and in fact, any squad combat player at all; when the enemy is using tanks, it's time to break out the RPGs. I turned to the gentleman hosting the demo, and asked how I could go about changing classes or swapping in a different weapon between lives: His reply was that I couldn't. Not because it hadn't been implemented, but because it was designed that way.

Let me reiterate that: Battlefield Heroes is designed so that you cannot adapt to new game situations. For the life of me, I cannot begin to fathom why this was done. Ask any gamer -- hell, read any book on military history ever written -- and they will tell you, the team that doesn't know how to change their tactics as the situation requires is the team that loses. Which, needless to say, is what happened to our team: None of us had access to a bazooka, so we got to ride out the match, helpless as the enemy cut off our access to our own tanks, and destroyed us over and over again until the game mercifully ended. Heroes is a game which allows you to lose a match before you have begun playing, simply by having the misfortune to pick the wrong classes for your team. This is frustrating, and inexplicable -- I'm hard pressed to think of another game which commits this basic design error. Nobody wants to keep playing a game once it's become evident that your cause is lost, yet that's precisely what Heroes does by imposing this unnecessary restriction. I sincerely hope DICE changes this between now and launch, because as it is, that's a big fat dealbreaker.

Battlefield Heroes is scheduled to go into public beta before long. We'll keep our fingers crossed.