Game: Battlefield Play4Free

Platform: PC

Publisher: EA

Developer: DICE

ESRB: N/A

Genre: Team-based Shooter

Players: 64 Max (no solo)

What's Hot: Fast-paced combat, it's Battlefield condensed in many of the right places

What's Not: Hard to be competitive without spending some money, some features are missing

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Review by:Tony Mitera

As a game that you can grab for literally nothing Battlefield Play4Free is a pretty cheap way to get your series fix now that fans are in between releases. The game takes much of the combat and features from Battlefield 2, but pairs it with the weapons and gadgets able to be wielded from Bad Company 2. The game is reliant upon micro-transactions for you to be truly competitive, though how much that price tag amounts to is largely going to be dependent upon how actively you play and how long you plan on sticking around. There may be no cost to get in the action, but it certainly isn't a free ride.

Starting off your career is done via first selecting which of the four classes you wish to play. These classes are no different than the series current norms; Assault, Medic, Engineer, and Support. The Assault class is the bread and butter combatant capable of replenishing a teammate’s ammo, whereas the Medic class is armed with a machine gun and can heal nearby friendlies. Engineers can take down tanks with their rockets, and finally the Recon class both snipes enemies from afar and locates them with special grenades when up close. Regardless of your class you gain experience and rank as you play, and with almost every rank you gain a talent point to spend. These points are spent like in many MMOs, unlocking new traits and abilities or enhancing old ones.

To get into the thick of combat you must first get through the thickness of the interface, which makes any time spent not actually in the game an absolute chore. To play the game you must first click the “Play Now” button on the website as the game cannot be launched via more conventional means. This brings up an interface that's not quite web-based but is very sluggish to load its elements, such as what items you have equipped or how you can spend your points. Once it gets loaded it works well enough, but since you have to use it for everything it is a recurring source of frustration.

There are only three maps in the current release, though that is not the only thing that is missing or severely limited. Commanders and squad support is missing entirely, making playing with friends difficult. Though you can make multiple soldiers which gain rank independently from each other you cannot switch soldiers mid-game, which means once you pick a role you are stuck with it for the duration. Finally, with no server browser you can only join a server at random or one that a friend is already in.

What is left though is a decent core game despite its stripped down status. You gain experience for virtually any positive contribution you make rather than just kills, and there is a surprisingly decent balance among the classes. All of the maps are based on the capture the point game mode, and the battling back and forth as your team tries to claw the points back from the enemy and vice-versa is usually a fairly competitive contest. Only two maps feature vehicles, one of which lacking any aircraft at all, which makes most of the game play based on infantry combat. Though the vehicles are powerful they aren't quite as decisive as they were as in BF2, which is a blessing.

As you play you also gain credits, which can be used to rent out new guns for one or three days. It takes quite a few rounds to save up enough to do so, but if you find a gun you like you can support it indefinitely if you play quite a bit. To purchase it outright you can only use battlefunds, which are the paid-for only currency. Either way you go the guns available are all pure upgrades from the stock weapons of the class, so if you don't have one you are at a marked disadvantage. Battlefunds are also used for cosmetic purchases such as new hats or clothing to change your soldier's look.

Calling the game free is a bit of a misnomer, as realistically speaking unless you play a ton and stick to only one or two guns you are going to have to spend some cash on the game eventually. However, given that Battlefield 3 is already on the horizon and the game doesn't have much content available right now it can be hard to justify spending much. For a handful of dollars you can set yourself up pretty well though, and the gameplay is certainly solid enough to warrant doing so ...at least for a little while.

Tony Mitera is a regular contributor to GameShark.com.

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