After a rather extended beta and much delay, the free cartoon FPS from Electronic Arts/DICE has finally arrived. You can play it here, for no pennies. Impressions below.
Move! Move faster! Oh god.
Within seconds of logging into BFH I thought: gosh, this is slow. Man, I laughed to myself, it must be easy for snipers! And so it is. Fucking snipers. Not that they do a huge amount of damage, admittedly, but the wide open maps with excellent vantage points, populated by slow-paced people, mean that snipers are immediately annoying. Which kind of surprises me: sure, it’s super fun to go find them and kill them, but if you’re aiming for a lowest-common denominator shooter, why not go for all medium to short range combat? Concentrate on what is best: arsing about with machineguns and tanks. Why include sniping at all? Oh, because there are multiple character classes, and they have to all be able to do something different. Right, I get it: Battlefield Heroes is an attempt to be all things, to all casual beginners.
Clearly Battlefield Heroes is rather more like World Of Free MMO With Guns than it is like any of the Battlefield games. Nor is it much like the classically paced and splendidly polished partner-in-cartoonishness, Team Fortress 2. This is very much a silly, accessible, my-first-shooter. And that’s okay: the vehicles are loads of fun to play with, everything is solid, and makes sense. There’s no need to play the tutorial if you’ve even raised an eyebrow in the direction of multiplayer shooters in the past ten years. The planes and tanks make the painfully slow infantry movement a bit less excruciating, especially after you’ve spent some time riding on the wing of a plane, strafing enemies capturing flags, before jumping off for shotgun mayhem at close range. It’s a fun time. I can imagine the comedy sound cues getting a bit tired after a few days of play, mind.
I only spotted a couple of people who’d bothered to spend money upgrading the ultra-bland insta-soldier that you spawn with. I’m not quite sure how looking ridiculous helps you have more fun on the field of battle, but it’s never hurt the hobo clown denizens of a hundred MMOs, so I guess it’s going to work out here too. I can’t knock it too hard: if it pays to keep the landscape of gaming a little broader, that’s fine. But there’s not a chance in the multiverse that my sad, crumpled cashmoney is heading anywhere near those particular micropayments, and I doubt I’ll sink much more than an afternoon into this.
Anyway, I suspect this is a game that will suit plenty of people just fine, and they’re probably, in part, going to be the people who aren’t ever going to download the ArmA II demo. Speaking of which… I’ve got complex, multi-tiered orders to be issued, insurgents to bomb, etc.
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“First off, there is no comparing this game to TF2. In anyway. Except for somewhat cartoony graphics. Let’s compare Sly Cooper to Heroes!!”
The team explicitly stated in past interviews they wanted that specific comparison to Valve’s game to be made. It’s only fair, even, considering the obvious similarities between both (which actually go beyond aesthetics, by the way).
I was also in the beta, and as most people found it to be utterly boring after 2 days. I mean there is nothing wrong with making a casual game out of it, but it didnt make any sense for me on more then one level. I like the looks of it though.
I was in the beta, and I’ve enjoyed it so far, I only play commando (found the rest really rather dull), but proximity mines, dynamite, stealth and backstabbing make for a fun game.
Also, I had just over 1000 free Battle funds, so I perma-brought some items, just need about £2 pounds worth for a scarf and it’ll be finished.
“You probably shouldn’t expect to much from a beta of a free game that is suposed to be a casual version of an arcade shoot’em up that was pretty dang casual to begin with. Just my thoughts ;)”
Also its free tf2 is not.
“I think everyone is being a bit harsh on the game itself (although I’ve only played for about 10 mins.) This is a free game and it doesn’t real seem fair to be comparing it to the likes of TF2. In reality it should be compared to other browser based games, where it comes off much more favourably.”
I would compare the game to whatever other games are going to be competing for gamers’ attention in the same market. For hardcore gamers, or at least people who spend money on games regularly, it sounds like BFH is a poorly designed team shooter. Free or not, if people are already saying they don’t want to keep playing this the design has failed, and more monumentally than for a retail game since it needs a playerbase (as opposed to first-day sales) to stay afloat.
For casual gamers, maybe the game is going to be a success. When I didn’t have much money as a kid I used to buy magazines and play all the demos on the disc for my kicks. In this respect maybe BFH could prove fun. But now we’re in the age of the internet and if every website I go to has real people who have played the game saying it’s crap, and with plenty of other free online browser games to play that aren’t crap, I don’t know how well this game is going to fare.
I got an invite from someone to play this today and I noticed I had to log in with an EA password. I thought to myself; before I give EA any of my details, no matter how free the game is, I want to be sure it’s worth it. So far I’ve seen 3 people sticking up for the game, one of whom admits it’s broken. Pass.
I also notice that their webmaster sucks (battlefield-heroes.com has not been updated and leads to dead links while battlefieldheroes.com is working correctly – not good for a game that’s just released, especially to a casual audience.
I am thoroughly enjoying this game. I don’t think I need to justify that sentiment, but I will.
I love shooters in general, and I own TF2 and L4D. However, while both those games are great, I just don’t find I have the time to give them the attention they deserve (growing up sucks). TF2 in particular can take ages to finish a round, plus you are heavily dependant on your team mates (who may or may not have ADHD) and you really have to spend a lot of time honing your strategy if you wanna do well.
BFH on the other hand is truly casual. A round can last about 10 minutes and yet still feels satisfying. It also doesn’t require any real strategy, which I realise is a bad point, but it also means I get to enjoy pure frenetic twitch based gameplay.
I think if you try to compare it with TF2 you will be disappointed. If however, you look at it as a silly, free to play cartoon shooter then you can have some fun with it.
Passing it up when its free is daft. The commando class is like a 8/10 game everyone else is a turd, no matter how powerful they fail at information warfare by being visible. But commando play should not be missed. Be aware that skills which put icons over your head or flashy lights do so globally, even if you are cloaked. Essentially pointing you out.
Also buy a cheap pack of bandages with the points you earn by fighting, mainly just to put out fire so you can cloak and get away if ignited.
Umm, the tnt is sticky so slap in on the side of enemy tanks rather than at the floor, them run and try and cloak.
Really it all revolves around the informational warfare of being able to hide. Hell, take the spotter ability and sit on a hill cloaked, the spotted enemies will show up through walls and take extra damage. You don’t even need to fire a shot.
Do you even points for that Heliocentric? I’m going to try this when I get home today aYUP.
For those of you decrying this game and wishing for a more realistic or exciting WW2 shooter I’m honestly confused. Ever since Jamason W Wright II invented WW II (named after him btw) there have been countless games made about it. Go play one of those if Heros doesn’t fit your bill.
WW2 online is sill played often and gives you the other extreme and you can play for free for a while too you just don’t gain any experience. On that game you can drive realistic tanks, planes, and get killed a WHOLE lot while you’re on foot.
I had a couple of plays after getting on the beta, but the core mechanics never quite clicked and I never really had any fun with it. Which is a shame as I was quite looking forward to it.
Still, I might give it another crack as I’ve got a stack of free Battlefunds from PCG and for beta participation.
@everyone who says BF HEROES is simple/stupid/lacking strategy
YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG!
Get with a friend on voip go commando, syncronise your builds and have one sniper suppress the enemies main sniper while you flank and then take him out from the side from extreme range with the “extra range sniper”, or maybe a knife.
Get the ied skill and spam pinch points then when people get blown from one mine to the other finish them off with the auto fire pistol and your tnt.
Don’t equip a gun, and get together with 3 or more people and go on stealthed stabbing sessions with poisoned dagger.
Your friends don’t have to be commando’s get a friend or two skilled in planes them use the marking ability to call in strafing runs. While you focus on loading the enemy runway with explosives and blow up their planes.
No strategy my arse.
Also, if you are royals get the berret like commando hat, its dapper.
The more you talk about it the more I want to play it Helio ;)
I should start a blog for stuff like this. Wide open games which don’t tell you where to go or what to do, and then make it multiplayer are inherent platforms for strategy, if you find a heroes clan with a teamspeak server, they’ll probably have massive gameplans and fire teams and othersuch. 2 squads of 4 commandos, the 2 leaders sharing a ts channel operating on opposed sides of a town with a fire support squad of 4 or so bazooka soldiers in a well covered position. A whole side of the server filled with a well organised force… Probably just end up dominating nubs but eh.
I played a couple rounds of the beta some time ago. I couldn’t find a single iota of depth to the experience. The entire thing seemed to boil down to finding capture points, sitting on them, and shooting anyone on the other team who went near said capture points. (Or were camped there to start with.)
I don’t pretend this to be a definitive summary of the game experience – there were other maps and classes, and perks, but I couldn’t muster any further interest.
“Anyway, I suspect this is a game that will suit plenty of people just fine, and they’re probably, in part, going to be the people who aren’t ever going to download the ArmA II demo.”
I’m not sure about that. I mean, I’m interested in both, for different reasons. I like the browser games because the theory is that you can jump into them right away, and have fun. If you have fifteen minutes on your PC, you’re hardly going to be starting up any campaigns in Armed Assault. The latter is of course much more preferable if you have the time and mood to play it, but that doesn’t completely divorce you from digging a much simpler, more accessible game.
funny that you should mention the ArmA 2 demo, I downloaded it today not expecting much from it since I could barely get the first game running above 20FPS on any setting on my machine (even though i have a GTX285… whatever)… but I am blown away… it looks and runs really good, apart from the crashes that seem to be happening a little too frequently for my liking. Finished the mission in the demo and enjoyed every minute, I really like all the field medic stuff, how you gotta drag your guys to cover and stuff… something about saving your buddy’s ass in the middle of a tense firefight just shouts “WIN!” to me.
But back to the main topic, I had played BF Heroes a while back having been in the beta and felt pretty similar to the article, its too… childish? (for lack of a better word) for me… and sniping is way too easy, and tanks do way too little damage ((unless they have tweaked them since back then)… but hey, its free so who cares right?
TF2 can keep me connected for more than a second. TF2 wins.
Well I went to play BF heros and It won’t even start. Maybe I’ll try it in IE instead of fire fox.
Nope doesn’t worry there. Just says “error, could not find build” Fantastic piece of work guys -two thumbs up, your ass-
I actually thought it was pretty cool. The commando class is pretty awesome. It’s great when you’re standing RIGHT there, and some semi-inexperienced player doesn’t notice you. It’s better when it’s two, you cahse them in a jeep, wait for them to get out, and knife the both of them after they hit your troop trap bombs. It made me feel like a REAL commando.
Oh, and also, you can “wingclip” infantry in a plane….and that means swooping down, skimming the ground, and splattering people all over your wings. Planes are such fun.
Apparently I’m the only one who is genuinely impressed with this game. I love it!
Sniper rifles are totally ridiculous. They’re far more dangerous with a knife, that really sucks if you haven’t got Sprint ready.
@Serondal
I think the “error, could not find build” message comes up when you try to install/play the game, but you aren’t logged in.
I’m having a lot of fun playing –
ok, I admit, I’m having a lot of griefing in this game. :P
Yeah, I think I’m the… fifth one who has enjoyed this game. Sure, it’s fast-paced, shallow, and repetitive, but I don’t know, all of that seems fun occasionally. And yes, I have TF2, and TF2 is better usually, but when it’s in the wee hours and you’re tired and can no longer play TF2 without failing/raging, this game is the perfect thing for an FPS fix.
Whiners.
Battlefield Heroes and Battlefield 1943. Both dumbed down versions of Battlefield 1942. What is the point?
Anyone who played BF42, especially in a clan will see these games as insulting twaddle, maybe they changed their target audience to our kids and have forgotten about the bigger boys. Guess we’ll see when BF3 comes out.
Maybe BF42 wasn’t the most realistic game ever, but it treated the player as an adult. Loads of kits to choose from, well modelled vehicles. As for the tanks, yer you had to fire up in the air to land a hit, but it was so much more skillful than the point and click tanking in BF2.
@Jim: Even if you’re right and they have changed the target audience – why is this automatically worthy of scorn? It sounds very much like “They didn’t make this game for *me*, so it sucks.” Would a more realistic response be, “This game isn’t for me. No problem – there are enough games out there that are.”
I played Heroes for about 10 minutes, and that was enough to really kill my interest in it. DICE seems to be spread very thin and doing too many spinoffs (Heroes, 1943, Modern Combat, other sequels … ?). I played more than 400 hours of BF 2142. What the hell happened? Maybe they will blame EA.
I had a good amount of fun with this game… for 5 days. After that, it kind of died off, and i uninstalled it from my pc.
Before the game even begins, I am not really fond of the idea of delivering gigabytes of data via a browser plugin download. At least I couldn’t find a way to pass it to a proper download manager. For people on slower connections this could be a showstopper, without download pause, restart etc.
The game looks too simple, though, so I will not even try starting the hassle of getting it…
For those that say its a free game and therefore shouldnt be commented on:
Look at the dev time and what they reached? not a lot. And it just isnt fun, no matter from what angle i look at it. Although i reckon i should let my mum play it. She normally only plays dinner dash games, so she must be the intended audience
Prepare for PunkBuster…
I seem to be among the few here who really enjoy this game.
The argument that this is a dumbed down game in comparison to the other battlefields is just ridiculous. Back when Bf 1942 was released I preferred OFP:R by far and thought Bf was dumbed down. Still Bf was/is a good game, it just has different focus. If I could muster time or a beast of a PC I would be enjoying ArmA II right now and still love Bf:H.
If the fact that the game doesn’t target the “hardcore”, “serious” or whatever FPS-fans is worth complaining about for someone, I get the impression that this person’s mental horizon ends at the tip of their nose. For an instance: what’s wrong if your mom would like the game? Don’t you have ArmA II or a “serious” Battlefield to occupy you?
Dice did a great job with this one and I hope they really manage to draw in a broad audience AND get profit out of it. It’s not ike they haven’t a gazillion other (samish) Battlefields to satisfy the “hardcore”.
How do you express contempt in a way that doesn’t make you sound like comic book guy? How do you get across how fucking insulted you are by the stupidity of something without slipping into Internet Hyperbole Rantard Mode?
It’s a conundrum wrapped inside a shit-smeared dollar bill rolled up inside a Colostomy Bag Of Gaming, it is.
I think I’ll just not even bother trying.
“For those that say its a free game and therefore shouldnt be commented on”
not seen but have seen its a free game therefore it shouldnt be compared to tf2.
Really, you deleted the really good amusing ranty bits, RPS fellows? Is that the way you guys roll?
In that case please delete the comment you left up, too, just up there, boys. Because, you know: fuck you.
I played this and the Arma2 demo last night. I’m a bit confused now!
i was a bit irritated at this first off because there’s no server browser, and it would connect me to servers in far away places, then the admin would kick me for having too high a ping. it’s a bit crap when one has no choice in the matter. but then it started finding local servers, and i’ve been playing it more or less all evening. fun!
i tried to play commando first but i’m hopeless at it, i’m having a lot more success as a vanilla soldier spamming heals and doing the see-through-walls thing.
i doubt this will displace evening tf2 sessions with friends, but its an amusing diversion at least.
Didn’t take more than an hour of restling with bad servers, bad connections and bad gameplay to have me uninstall this. As unique_identifier said the lack of a server browser is a deal-breaker.
I love the art direction, but for those worried about this taking any market share from TF2… don’t. DICE and EA should have really worked on bug fixes before this release.
Finally got it working. I have to say I enjoy it. I was driving a tank when some guy ran up to put a bomb on the back of it so I just backed up over him and killed him ;P He didn’t see that comin.
I had a crack at this last night. I’m not much of a third-person shooter guy on the PC, so free/casual is fine, but the server finding thingy is broken. I got in a handful of games (maybe 5 or 6) and was having fun, but then it wouldn’t/couldn’t find me a game. I’ll have another crack at it tonight, but if I spend more time looking for a game than actually playing, well, that’s a recipe for uninstalling.
You can bookmark the server you’re playing on once youre in a game. Just hit TAB + F5. When you’re in the client and haven’t started a game go to options and look for the server-tab. I believe you can try to connect to bookmarked servers. Haven’t tested this so far. Can anyone confirm this?
It seems I have been fortunate as I always found a server when I wanted to play.
You can only have 4 max heroes (without paying for more slots), and you can’t delete any of them. That fact is completely hidden until it’s too late.
Also I can’t seem to find a server but once every hour or two, and it was the same way last night. I once saw a count that there were only 120 people in the game last night. Is the issue a lack of players, or a lack of servers?
I had very low expectations but what the heck was that I just just played… oh my, what a terrible, terrible game, I see now why it’s free.
I like both serious army sims and the silly stuff. I play about 50/50 BF:H and TF2 now for my silly fun. Mainly as most of TF2 is micspam and idiots screaming n00b if you dont uber uber them in the microsecond a crit sticky lands in thier face and they pop.
I just made a character but couldn’t find a server after trying for a little while. I’ll probably try again tomorrow.
I don’t think the RPS crowd is really the target audience for this game, so a lot of criticisms of the game not being deep enough seem to miss the point. It’ll be interesting to see how this reviews in the MSM.
Have to admit, i am loving this game. its excellent fun. i love the casual nature of it, and have to admit i have genuinely nearly pissed my pants at some of the things that happen.
sniper issues are over stated if you ask me, its just a case of using your noggin and not standing out in the open. and yes sometimes you will get sniped no matter what you do, but i play a soldier and at first i was frustrated by snipers, once i figured how to play my class, i rarely find them a issue now. also once you have been playing for a few hours, you get used to the places that people snipe from and its easy to counter.
the games great fun though , very much love it.
stupid thing is i have NEVER liked BF games, but this i love. much more than i like TF2 (i fell out with TF2 pretty much at launch, not enough CTF and the “checkpoints” game mode on such small maps just turns in to choke point zergs imo.
/Theo
@ – A-Scale says: – You can only have 4 max heroes (without paying for more slots), and you can’t delete any of them. That fact is completely hidden until it’s too late.
you mean the writen warning when yuo CREATE any hero? (including your first one?). way to go with the reading there.
/Theo
I see a lot of you people did sign up for beta but never played it again… you should have recieved some mails from them with codes for 200 BF and some badges… if any1 has the code but doesn’t use it, i would really like it if you forwarded the mail this account erollero111@gmail.com
Thanks in advance