09.18
style
day the developer starts charging its customers. For free-to-play games, like Battlefield Play4Free, it's different again for several reasons.
For starters, when reviewing something that can be played for free, what's being reviewed? For a retail game, reviewers are generally answering the question "is it worth the price of purchase?" For free-to-play games there is no up-front price, so instead I have asked myself whether the things available for purchase in Battlefield Play4Free (guns, cosmetic accessories, gadgets to use in battle) are worth their price, whether the impact they make in the game is still balanced for non-paying players, and whether the game itself is worth buying into.
It's different again because while a beta for a subscription-based MMO typically wipes your character before the game releases, most free-to-play open betas, like Battlefield Play4Free's, lead straight into release, keeping all of your character data and progress intact. In fact, they often begin charging players in the beta phase for the microtransaction items as Play4Free has begun to do. In essence, a free-to-play game's open beta is its soft release. Like all MMOs, there will probably be on-going development for Battlefield Play4Free so this review is naturally based on content that is currently available.
As an entirely free game, Battlefield Play4Free looks great on paper. It takes three classic Battlefield 2 maps, each with a very different dynamic, and applies some of the Bad Company structure. There are 4 "loadouts" which essentially function as classes -- Medic can revive and heal teammates, Engineer specializes in blowing up and repairing vehicles, Recon can detect enemies in the area or snipe them from afar, and the Assault unit is an all-rounder.
Each map feels more suited to one particular loadout. Karkand, with its emphasis on vehicular combat, is well suited to the Engineer. It's a map full of sidestreets and climbable buildings, with wide avenues for tanks and APCs to storm in and lay claim to the land. The dust makes sniping across long distances difficult.
Oman's open spaces and clear skies make sniping very advantageous, though. They also make piloting helicopters and fighter jets a lot of fun. Anyone who has tried flying a plane in a Battlefield game before might already know this, but controlling a jet has a very steep learning curve and if you're not paying attention in a chopper you might find yourself spinning upside-down and sending half a dozen allies to their doom.
Sharqi's confined streets play well to the Medic and Assault's strengths and is the most "standard" shooter map of the bunch. There are very few locations which don't leave you vulnerable from some angle, making camping pretty ineffective.
Unfortunately, you can't switch your character during a match, and you can't choose which map you want to play from the menu screen, which means you will often find yourself on a map where you feel out of place. It's also not unusual to find teams highly skewed to one class, which makes being unable to switch to fill a gap all the more frustrating.
In true Battlefield style, each different aspect of gameplay -- flying planes, driving tanks and jeeps, running and gunning -- feels completely different but perfectly natural for what it is. Sniping and on-foot combat naturally favors headshots, while your bullets will do little to most vehicles. In a tank you can fight just about anything but are susceptible to rocket-propelled grenades and other explosives, while in the air you need to steer clear of (or tackle head-on) AA gunners. There are lag issues from time to time, and they can range from the occasional jitter up to freezing for multiple seconds, which in my experience is exactly as long as it takes for a tank to shoot you in the face with its cannon.
Pretty much every constructive and destructive action
you perform will reward you with experience and credits. Lots of experience will push your rank up, unlocking points to spend on perks, while credits can be used in the item store to rent weapons and consumables temporarily. Each weapon has its own stats for damage, range, rate of fire, accuracy, and the amount of ammunition it can hold. The "best" weapons can't be rented using credits and can only be obtained by buying "Battlefunds." At the moment, 700 Battlefunds costs you US $4.99, though you can get bonus credits by spending more (US $49.89 gets you 8750, for example). To outright buy the best main weapon for most classes permanently, it'll cost you about 980 Battlefunds which equates to about $7 US.
Some weapons can be used by multiple classes, but even if you buy it on one character it won't unlock for the others. This means that if you wanted to buy the best handgun for each of your -- let's say -- 4 soldiers, you would have to spend about US $28. Unlocking the extra 2 soldier slots costs another 140 Battlefunds each. If you didn't want to own the gun permanently, you can rent it for one day for 140 Battlefunds, or a month for 490. If you wanted to change your "main soldier," which is basically the face of your account, it will cost you 300 Battlefunds. These all seem a great deal overpriced for what you're actually getting. I'd be much more inclined to rent multiple weapons if I weren't essentially paying a large fraction of the price of a full game. And having to pay a few bucks just to change my main soldier (which functionally does nothing) is excessive.
The less-powerful guns can be rented for the earnable credits for up to three days, and quite frankly, the difference between the best Battlefunds-only guns and the rentable-with-credits guns are pretty negligible.
Cosmetic changes like new uniforms, hats and accessories can only be bought with Battlefunds and range from 420 to 900 to own forever, and are sold in five separate slots, which means buying an entire outfit permanently will cost you a minimum of about US $15. There are currently no social hubs (although you can make your character dance), so there aren't many opportunities to show off your pimped-out self even if you decide to drop that kind of dough.
Closing Comments
For Battlefield Play4Free to be worth buying into it will need much stronger social options, more flexibility for switching characters, and a lower cost structure. It also needs a reason for me to want to buy into it in the first place. At the moment there isn't a ranking system, so progress and prowess can only be admired for as long as a match lasts. It all leaves me wondering why, at this point, anyone would choose to spend money on Play4Free when they could essentially get a larger, more complete game for just a few bucks more than the minimum Battlefunds purchase price.
by: Nick Kolan
Posted in: Shooter
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