Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Just plain fun"

We all know about the various ingenious shooting games that EA and DICE have come up with. Battlefield Heroes takes the series into an enjoyable cartoony 'World War 2ish' shooter.

The core mechanics are simple and enjoyable. Shoot your opponents and capture the flags.

Players utilize a variety of weapons and skills to fight the opposition. There are three classes a player can choose from, each of which have their own unique abilities and weapons. Gunners are the typical machine gun toting meat shields, soldiers are the medics and submachine gunners, and commandos are your typical sniper. The usable abilities include everything from increased damage potential for a short time to healing your teammates.

Gameplay is quite fun. Players shoot at each other, stand near flags (some of you may know them as command posts) to capture them and get a new area to respawn in, take tanks and planes to shoot the enemy team, and use entertaining emotes to mock their enemies. There is an in game chat for talking amongst the other players in the game. Also, by meeting certain conditions missions can be earned. During loading times and at the end of a game a catchy whistled cracker-jack theme plays, adding to the fun of the game. Another thing to note: the Axis and the Allies don't exist. They're called the "Nationals" and the "Royals" (respectively) to give the game a more relaxed feel.

The game is definitely not perfect. Glitches can get you killed quite easily. Also, it isn't hard for hackers to find auto-aiming software online and ruin the fun for everybody else. The classes are extremely unbalanced, which often leads to massacres of commandos and soldiers. It's also worth mentioning that the friend and bookmarking server features don't work sometimes. Also, loading times are extremely long in many cases, which can lead to frustration.

Another fatal flaw deals with the weapons. Players can earn "Victory points" in game that they can use to spend on certain clothing items and timed uses of weapons that are better than the standard issue gear. However, people with at least $5 to spare can buy "Battlefunds" which can be used to buy even better clothing items and unlimited uses of super-powered weapons. Because of this, people with absolutely no skill or patience to learn how to play better can just get a hold of some of the best guns in the game, effectively making them about ten times better. This can really ruin the game for everyone else involved.

One last thing. The software used to get rid of cheaters and hackers, Punkbuster, sometimes kicks people who are playing legitimately. This leads to having to reinstall and update the software manually, which is a big time waster sometimes.

The game itself has a great website, full of helpful people willing to share their opinions and advice about the games. The forums there are extremely helpful and earn good marks. There is also a section to look at your statistics and accept friend requests.

Battlefield Heroes is a great game. However, it is an online game, which means that it will always have errors and it will always be updated with new content and error fixes. If you have some spare time, i completely recommend playing this game. It's (mostly) free, and even with the few glitches it has it's still quite enjoyable.

I hope you'll try downloading and playing this game, because it's a very enjoyable and rewarding experience.