Battlefield Heroes (Beta)

Ok, let's see if we can get through this review without mentioning Team Fortress 2...

After you've sorted your chappie out, you press the big "Play Now" button... Wait a minute, didn't I just press the "Play Now" button on the web site?

Well apparently the one on the website is more of a "Start the process required to play soonish" button. Not quite as quick and simple as they'd have you believe. You need to be logged into two different types of accounts for the website (though I'd imagine one is for the beta and will be unnecessary with the final game). The firefox addon and separate updater program are a very messy implementation. It would be much more convenient to have everything as a separate .exe file, considering most people couldn't give half a wombat's bum cheek about the forum or the other website features.

So we're finally ready to actually jump onto the battlefield and play. So we press the real "Play Now!" button, and the matchmaking service comes up. Fortunately, this doesn't open another window. Unfortunately this is the ONLY way to find servers.
Want to play on a particular map? Don't feel like joining a game with three players in it? Want to play against some high level players for a challenge? UP YOURS!

You play where we bloody tell you to play with who we tell you to play with. Of course, you can bookmark servers that you're currently playing in, but I've never been able to use this to connect to a server because they're always "unsuitable". This means that you're given a choice between:

A) A server that is chosen for you.
B) A server which is the same as the one above.

>:C

It's clear that EA isn't trying to make your traditional First Person Shooter. (well it's technically third person, but you know what I mean) Other than the cartooney graphics, and light-hearted approach to gameplay, they've also made the customisation and development of the player's "Hero" a large part of the game. Take just about any RPG, replace armour with WW2-esque fatigues, swords of +3 atk with machine guns, health potions with bandages and you've got the general idea. The interface for the shop and equipment screens is very easy to use, and it's a nice touch being able to see what your character looks like with a helmet on without actually buying it. But after than the interface, the character customisation really breaks down.

The first thing you do when creating a hero is choose Alliance or Hord- I mean, National Army or Royal Army. The Royals are the "good guys" with bright colours and an apparent extreme hate of alcohol, as there's a banner on nearly every screen stating that "Drunkenness is Prohibited' and "Royals stay Sober!". (I'd assume this is a placeholder for banner ads for the final game). The Nationals are the skull-wearing, glowering "We-love-black-and-sharp-edges-on-things" crowd.

It's only a cosmetic thing really, as the game subscribes to the Warcraft 2 method of giving essentially the same thing to both sides with extremely minor alterations so it doesn't look like they just copy+pasted everything. It's a shame they didn't decide to give the factions different strengths an abilities that balance out. It would give some incentive to create more than just the three characters to test each class.

Whoops....

After you pick a team, you pick a class (Now where have I seen this before?) You're given the option of a soldier, a gunner or a commando. Soldiers are medics, pyros and demomen. Gunners are heavy weapons guys, soldiers (you know what I mean) and engineers. Commandos are spies, scouts and snipers. Well, I made it eight paragraphs without drawing parallels to Team Fortress 2, and that's a pretty good effort. Battlefield heroes will always be in the shadow of TF2. It would have helped if they'd come up with a few more distinct roles, but then again it would be hard to name a job on the battlefield that doesn't resemble a TF2 class.

And last and most certainly least, you pick a skin tone and a you hair style and colour, which is as far as customisation goes. (in the creation process anyway) It doesn't really matter because your head will most likely be covered by a helmet and you don't see the front of your character. Now you can spend valour points (the game's currency) on a wide variety of garments and accessories. But it doesn't have any affect on gameplay (as far as I can tell) and worst of all, they run out. You can buy an item (or perhaps rent?) for either a week or a month, the month obviously being more expensive, and then poof! It's gone! No more item!

So if you go on holiday, then you're back to the default equipment. And this doesn't only affect the superficial items, but weapons and emotes (hand gestures) too! It's crazy! I honestly can't understand why they would implement such a system. To apply this only to "battlefund" items which are bought with real-life currency is understandable. Keep 'em coming back, keep the money flowing. But this affects literally everything about your character other than abilities and the widget items which are limited use already.

WHO TOUCHED MY...