Battlefield Heroes

I saw a man in a sombrero raise a jeep by clapping

Everyone likes free stuff. More people like free stuff that’s useful, and even more people than that like getting stuff that you should be paying for, for free. Koreans especially.

In Korea, most games are not sold in stores, but are downloaded for free and then kept alive by microtransactions, often for items that can be done without. This system hasn’t work particularly well in the west,  probably because we are all a bunch of traditionalists but also because we expect a lot more from our games.

This situation, however, is going to change and EA must be able to smell the money making opportunity. They plan to release a Need for Speed game next year using this payment model, but in June they released a game that has been a long time coming: Battlefield Heroes.

Battlefield Heroes is a cartoon style shooter using the battlefield system from other games in the series (such as Battlefield 2 or Bad Company). Compared to the other games though, it feels a lot simpler. There are only 3 classes on each side and most maps are small scale with no more than 4 flags. It feels more casual and silly. The art style is similar to TF2 and the camera is in the third person, but more important is the change to the class system.

As said before there are three classes on each side. However, unlike previous games where classes and sides would change from battle to battle, you choose your side and class when you create your hero. This is a persistent character, whose abilities and appearance are carried over between games. Each class (Commando, Soldier and Gunner) can use certain unique abilities. Many of these are skits on annoyances in other games (such as the soldiers’ grenade spam). This carries on the sense of humour running through the game. Various clothing options add to the comedy.  For Battlefunds, paid for with real hard cash, you can upgrade your character with either proper military attire, as a participant in the eternal “Pirate vs Ninja” war or in other humorous clothing like an “I’m with stupid shirt”.

The main problem with the clothing options is the fact they cost money.  Worse, the payed stuff has a limited life on it and the free original options are rubbish. This was a problem I also had in the beta version, which annoyed me enough to make me blog about it. Thankfully, EA has managed to fix it slightly. Some clothing options can be bought with Valor Points which are earned ingame and can now be bought permanently for a premium.  It does make the game look a lot better; the craziness of the clothing just adds to the overall bedlam.

And bedlam it is. In the last game, I saw a man in a sombrero knock a jeep into the air by clapping his hands, before waving to the jeep he’d just crashed. I saw a spitfire with a sniper and a gunner riding on the wings with all three doing chicken noises. The game is just fun to play, in a way COD or even BF2 just can’t be. The feel from it is just one of happy mayhem.

Still, there are some problems. There are only four maps at the moment, which is typical for a free game. Also there is a slight imbalance between the two sides. It seems to be much easier to join a game as a National (fake German look-alike) than as a Royal (fake British trooper…with Kilt!). Not much of an issue as there are still plenty of players now, but after people lose interest it might be much harder to find games at your level. Finally, the number of items in the store is somewhat lacking. At the moment there are too few items for some sections and many of them are not actually very useful.

But, this is a free game, and it seems to be something that EA is more than happy to put money into so we can expect development to last for a long time with the promise of new items and maps down the line. At the moment the game is still great. It’s a free version of Battlefield which is fun to play and can be quite addictive due to its persistant character system. And it’s free. Did I mention that?