Battlefield Play 4 Free - Test & thoughts

If you read my "Battlefield 2 - Bugs and glitches" article, you maybe could figure out that I'm some sort of big fan concerning the complete Battlefield series. Even if I didn't have the time to play recent battlefield games(and I didn't want to spend money on games I'd never play either) such as Bad Company or Bad Company 3, I was quite astonished about what EA is going to try next. After the free "Battlefield Heroes" comic-style shooter, EA now released another Play 4 Free game, as the name says: Battlefield "Play4Free".



What is the idea behind it? EA says that they used the class sytem from Bad Company 2 and some of the maps from Battlefield 2 aswell as the vehicles from Battlefield 2 and put them together into one game. Sounds simple, infact, it is quite simple. Instead of being able to select your class upon spawn like in Battlefield 2(and constantly changing the class, of course), you now set your class upon registration for the game - and you aren't able to change it.

However, it soon gets obvious why you can't constantly change your character: Battlefield Play for Free has used quite much from the comic-shooter Battlefield Heroes. Not just the "free-play" idea is the same, but also the game menu looks very close to the one of BF Heroes. Not just the game menu though - In order to be able to use the "best" weapons, you once again have to invest real money: The first point I dislike concerning Battlefield Play for Free.

The original idea of Battlefield Heroes was to only be offering clothing for your character for money. Obviously this didn't work out, so EA had to think of another way to work around this issue - But hey, the game's free!

But now back to the gameplay: As soon as you registered your character/ connected your EA account to the Battlefield Play 4 Free game, you're asked to create a class. As soon as you selected your prefered class(such as medic, sniper..), you're asked to install an add-on into your browser(firefox in my case) - just like the one of Battlefield Heroes. As soon as you restarted Firefox in order to finish the installation of the game, you're downloading the game and in the end starting it up.

As soon as you see the interface, it comes obvious why it's called Play4Free: There is no option to select the map you're going to join for example. Only thing you can do is join servers that your friends are playing on, aswell as bookmarked servers. No other filter options are available.

Upon joining the first server, I had to get used to some new keys aswell as key combinations. But not only these were new: When I first ran up to a jet, I was already wondering why there was one still being available(Back in BF2, the jets were quite the first thing that were taken). Why? It came clear quite soon: You need a special skill in order to fly a jet - which isn't a bad idea, when I remember all those bad pilots in BF2.

Same goes for helicopter and certain armor functions, by the way. The XP system is also taken from Battlefield Heroes: When you hit someone, you get XP points - you don't need to kill somebody. If you kill somebody, you get some extra and if you do an assist kill, vehicle kill or what-so-ever, you also receive some points as bonus.

But apart from the unability to select a certain map or further filter options, I disliked another thing that is a very big minus point in my opinion: There is no need to lay down completely! Of course, crouching is possible via the control(CTRL) key on your keyboard, but you can press the "z" key on an american keyboard as many times as you want: There is no way to lay down completely! A big minus point, especially when you're in infantery battles in Karkand or in the middle of the desert.

Still, I didn't play the game for so long yet. I'll test the game furthermore and report about more news, updates and tips as soon as I'm more experienced with it. So long for now, and thanks for reading! By the way, you can download the game here if you're interested in playing it - It's free (atleast up to a certain point)!



Header image source: http://www.battlefield3-online.de/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/battlefield-releases-play4free.jpg

Link to the Battlefield Play4Free page: http://battlefield.play4free.com/en/