What Team Shooters Can Learn From Battlefield 2142
Posted by Nirav | Filed under Games
I first played (and last played) Battlefield 2142 last winter break with a couple of friends. It seemed pretty much like every other Battlefield game: yes, there were big flying machines and mechs, but the game mechanic worked the same way. Except for one thing: the ability to tag enemies on your team’s map.
I didn’t really see the use of this at first. BF2142 introduced a context menu that a player can always pull up, and one of the options is to report an enemy’s position. If you’re not looking directly at an enemy player (i.e., if their name isn’t visible) then it just puts a flashing arrow on your team map. If you are, it makes that enemy show up on your team map for a few seconds.
I thought no one would use this at all, or else people would spam the feature. But in reality, it brought a whole new tactical level to the game.
It meant that if you were sneaking around and were outnumbered, you could tag enemies instead of having to choose between getting slaughtered and being bored until the conflict drifted over to your area. It meant that you could reliably wait for backup because your teammates would respond to the your “Enemy spotted!” cry.
There was now value in staying alive instead of trying to be a vigilante. It occurs to me also that this makes the game much more realistic; what kind of army has a bunch of guys running around with no way to report enemy positions?
After playing BF2142, there were so many times in games in Halo 3 (whose multiplayer is excellent in so many other ways) where I longed for this feature, instead of having to call out over Live that there was a guy behind the rock. No, the other rock. Oh well, he’s gone–no wait, he slaughtered us all with a grenade.
Since Electronic Arts has recently announced that no less than five Battlefield titles are in the works, I can only hope that some of them bring this feature along with them.
And now, a giant robot (courtesy of IGN):
