Sunday, March 01, 2009

Battlefield Zeroes

A long, long time ago on a server far, far away... Well, it does feel like it was a long time ago.  When the morons at DICE/EA announced that they will be making a new Battlefield game that will be free to play, I became interested in how this will turn out.  What seem to have complicated the matter is that they were probably riding on top of the other game that uses a similar art style: Team Fortress 2.  Ever since feeling burned from the shit support for the Battlefield franchise, I opted to not bother to buy any future games from them.  This also includes the odd eye-opener Battlefield 1943 which uses the same 3D engine from Bad Company.

When it was announced that the bitches at DICE will be handing out beta keys to a select bunch of people, I figure I’d throw my hat into the ring and try my luck.  I did not score.  However, time went on and their projected release date slipped away.  This is of no surprise, as the retards over there have no sense of priority.  Many months has passed since people tried to sign up for the limited beta access.  It wasn’t until recently that the assholes there actually made progress on the matter, to the point where they actually have reworked their backend and the game is being made more available to those who tried to sign up for the beta.

Last week, I got an email in regards to the Battlefield Heroes beta.  Turns out that I finally got a key to use.  So I quickly signed on and hopped aboard.  After playing around for a while, I do find that the game has some entertainment value.  But there isn’t enough to really keep me in unless I have buddies playing the game as well.

Like any game that is going to be made readily available for free, there are caveats and pitfalls.  A free game is, of course, attractive to those who do not wish to spend cash on games that they may not like or ever play again after a few months.  It also attracts players of almost all kinds, ranging from mature and adult players (like me) to annoying and whiney kiddie players who do nothing but bitch and whine about everything.  Unfortunately, I ran into one not too long ago.

In the game, there are 3 vehicle types: a jeep, a tank, and an airplane.  Each of those vehicle type has its own purpose and its role in the overall playing field.  Nearly everyone can understand that a tank will be destructive against infantry ground forces and can also go up against other tanks.  I’ve done some flying before when Battlefield 2 was around.  And what I have learned is that one of the ways to keep a pilot from messing up ground forces is to keep the pilot busy.  And that’s either by chasing it around trying to shoot it down or making sure it never gets off the ground.  Suppression tactics are common and I will use them if it means my team will win in the end.

So a plane is available and nobody has jumped into the pilot seat.  If that’s the case, I’ll give flying a few tries and see how well I can fly around shooting up ground targets and shooting down enemy planes.  A guy starts complaining about being chased around.  This continued on for a few round and for many minutes.  But this tactic has helped my side to win a couple of rounds.  Sure it’s hard trying to shoot the enemy down but that’s the tradeoff for being in the air most of the time.

The guy complains more until I actually managed to shoot the stolen plane down before it gets off the ground.  He then knows that it was I doing the chasing.  He tries to tell me off but of course, I don’t pay much attention.  I only say that I do this in order to keep enemy pilots busy.  If it means it frees up the worry of incoming fire from the skies, then that’s good for me and my team.

Nothing annoys me more than retards who cannot look at the bigger picture when factoring in all the elements of the game together.  When there are tanks and planes, I do expect that there will be some people who use the same tactics as I have: seek out other enemy pilots and kill them.  If not, then they are free to disrupt enemy ground forces.  Even worse are the gutless pilots who bails out of a plane when it’s about to be destroyed, especially when being chased down by an enemy.  If they are that scared of dying, then they should be playing something else, like Super Mario Bros.

They’re not heroes.  They’re zeroes.  Damn pricks...

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