Review: Battlefield Heroes

In case you hadn't heard EA has finally released Battlefield Heroes out of beta. It is now open to the public to play for free. Yes..that's right for free. The game itself does not cost a penny beyond having an average PC with an Internet connection. You can go ahead and download and get playing at BattlefieldHeroes.com.

Instead of charging money for the game EA uses microtransactions to generate revenue. Each player has the option of purchasing Battlefunds. A payment structure kind of like Microsoft points is used. In this case $5.00 will purchase 700 Battlefunds and so on. These funds can be used to customize your heroes with clothing, weapons, experience boosts etc.

Currently in Battlefield Heroes you can select between two factions that resemble the British and German armies from World War II. The player can then choose between the soldier, gunner, and commando classes. You can create up to four different heroes total.

Each class offers different weapons and abilities and the battlefield. Obviously with the ability to create multiple heroes, it is good to at least have a hero from each class.

The gameplay itself is based on classic Battlefield 1942 in which each team tries to capture various points on the map. A few vehicles are available at your disposal to accomplish this task such as planes, tanks, and jeeps. Your team wins when they can make the other teams ticker reach zero. This is mostly through kills on the battlefield.

Controlling your character can be somewhat difficult, considering all gameplay is from the 3rd person view. Also the lack of a sprint function can make reaching the next point rather tedious if a vehicle is not close by. I'm not sure if I would completely categorize the character movement as slow and clunky, but it certainly isn't fluid.

Even with the above mentioned control issues I still have had quite a bit of fun with the game. In fact I usually find myself playing about six matches in a row during sessions. In total I have probably played about 45 matches between my beta participation and the publicly released version.

Stoked:

-Fun atmosphere with vibrant cartoon graphics. The player animations can be hilarious at times. It seems that EA was going for a cross between Team Fortess 2 and World War II. This works decently although I still prefer the characters from TF2.
-Classic Battlefield gameplay. In others words crazy things are happening all of the time. Nothing is quite like jumping out of a plane, parachuting into a tank, and then taking out 3 enemies to take control of a point on the map.
-FREE! This should be stated again and again. For a free game certainly expectations should not be through the roof. Nobody is forcing you to purchase Battlefunds. You can jump over to BattlefieldHeroes.com and start playing right after download.

Broke:

-Movement can feel sluggish from the 3rd person view. You can adjust mouse sensitivity, but it doesn't always help.
-Balance on the battlefield can be affected by the amount of players using perks from Battlefunds.