Xboxist

Electronic Arts, Please Don't Nerf Battlefield 1943

In gamer nerd parlance, to "nerf" something is to remove all of its hard, pointy edges and replace them with soft, child-proof foam. That is exactly what Electronic Arts plans to do with its upcoming console shooter, Battlefield 1943. Over the weekend at Comic Con, the company revealed the upcoming game would be geared toward “accessibility”. What this means in the minds of developers is that any hindrance to shooting people in the face should be taken out of the game. Pesky limitations like Ammo and Health should be removed, they feel, in order to make the game more appealing to the masses. Hello? A war game with unlimited ammo and health? We wonder what other horrible surprises the developer has in store for us as we get closer to the game’s March release date.

The Battlefield series started life back on the PC, where it was one of the first and most popular team-based multiplayer shooters. What made the game so engaging was the fact that players had to really think in order to emerge victorious. Working as a team could yield results, as players launched a coordinated attack on the defender’s positions. But equally effective was the lone-wolf strategy – sending one skilled commando behind enemy lines to grab that one unlikely control point and turn the tide of battle. Commandos had to be careful though, because machine gun ammo was realistically limited, and once that ran out – well, things quickly degenerated into a Yosemite Sam style pistol fight.

Everything else we’ve seen so far looks great – the game features lovely updated graphics using DICE’s Frostbite engine. A welcome addition is fully-destructible buildings, which will surely add a tactical dimension to the old strategy of camping the Japanese village near the airstrip on Wake Island. If only DICE and EA would stick to their roots and retain some of the realistic trappings that made the original such a pleasure to come back to, this game could be a complement -- rather than an insult -- to the original.

.