Battlefield 2142

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Battlefield 2142
Battlefield 2142 box art
Developer(s)	Digital Illusions CE (DICE Stockholm)
Publisher(s)	Electronic Arts
Distributor(s)	Electronic Arts
Series	The Battlefield series
Engine	Modified Battlefield 2 engine
Release date(s)	October 18, 2006 October 18, 2006 October 20, 2006 October 27, 2006 October 18, 2006
Genre(s)	Online First Person Shooter
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: Teen (T) PEGI: 16+
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Media	DVD, download (via the EA Downloader)
System requirements	See System Requirements Section
Input	Keyboard, Mouse, Joystick (optional)

Battlefield 2142 (abbreviated BF2142) is a first-person shooter using a modified engine of Battlefield 2 set in the 22nd century, during a new ice age. Battlefield 2142 was released on October 18, 2006 in the US and October 20, 2006 in the EU.

Contents 1 Story 2 Gameplay 2.1 Infantry classes 2.2 Weapons and equipment 2.3 Vehicles 2.4 Maps 2.5 Ranks 3 Beta release 4 Rumors 5 Advertising components 6 Technical issues 6.1 Bugs 6.2 Widescreen support 7 Pre-order bonuses 8 Patches 8.1 1.01 8.2 1.05 9 System Requirements 10 Trivia 11 References 12 External links

[edit] Story

By early 2138, the world's six factions were heavily fortified, ready to battle over the world's remaining land and resources. Expecting an invasion by the Pan Asian Coalition (PAC) into the agriculture-rich plains of Northern Africa, the European Union concentrated its resources along the Mediterranean, ready to assist the Union of African States. A foray by two PAC battalions into Egypt seemed to confirm their suspicions, but the attacks were merely decoys, meant to distract the world from the PAC's primary objective, to destroy the military might of the EU's premiere units still located in Europe.

Following the defeat of the EU army in Europe, the stage was set for the Pan Asian Coalition military to force its way into the EU-occupied African mainland. In February 2142, the EU formed 'The Mediterranean Wall', a line of defenses along the North African coast from Morocco to Egypt. Meanwhile, the Pan Asian Coalition was drawing up a series of deception plans under the code names Kupalo, Dazhbog and Perun. These exercises were designed to preoccupy and divide the EU forces in preparation for the PACs primary mission, Operation Motherland. It is a comprehensive, multi-pronged assault on the African continent.

[edit] Gameplay

Gameplay in Battlefield 2142 includes the classic conquest mode of play with up to 64 players, but it also introduces a new 48-player game mode called "Titan" mode. The game involves players from opposite teams trying to destroy the other team's Titan,^[1] while trying to defend their own. Titans can be moved throughout the battlefield by commanders. Titans can be boarded by infantry via pods launched from an APC, pods launched from a rival Titan, or by landing on the Titan in an air transport, after the Titan's shields have been worn down. Players must then destroy four reactor consoles and then the reactor itself. When the hull of the Titan fails, a 20-second abandon ship timer is triggered, allowing players to evacuate the Titan before it is completely destroyed and avoid dying in the ensuing explosion. During the beta release of the game, there was an award for those who managed to escape the destroyed Titan before the 20-second timer ends. To the dismay of many fans, the developers decided to remove this award prior to inital release. In the retail game, the round ends when the Titan is destroyed, and because player deaths triggered by the end of a round do not count, the evacuation is entirely for inducing a rush in the player. However, in the coming patch 1.05, as stated in a community update by EA, there will be a chance to be awarded for escaping the explosion of an enemy titan.

Battlefield 2142 also uses nearly the same ranking and points system as Battlefield 2, however, some ranks have been renamed. Also, Battlefield 2142 requires the game DVD to remain in the disk drive for play unless purchased online from EA and downloaded with the EA downloader.

Players that participated in the Veterans Program had a chance to reserve their name for Battlefield 2142 before launch, an immediate in-game rank-up, an in-game notification icon that will let other players know you have participated in Battlefield 2 games, and exclusive verbal taunts to use against other players.^[2]

[edit] Infantry classes

Battlefield 2142 has four classes per team, down from both Battlefield 2's seven and Battlefield 1942's five. The classes can be described as a combination of two of Battlefield 2's classes:

1. Recon: A combination of Special-Ops and Sniper, can carry explosives and anti-personnel mines, and have the potential ability to cloak.
2. Engineer: Anti-Tank and Combat Engineer, can repair assets/vehicles, lay mines, and use Anti-Vehicle weaponry such as the Sudnik VP.
3. Assault: Assault and Medic, can heal and revive comrades.
4. Support: Traditional support role and can deploy auto defense turrets as well as replenish teammates with ammunition. Support players can also deploy shields that block small bursts of fire or detect cloaked recon troops.

Each class has two "trees" of weapons - for example the Assault class can unlock a medic tree which gives them a defibrillator and other useful tools. Players must make their way up the upgrade tree, buying add-ons and equipment before unlocking a weapon. In addition, the classes are now given an option to customize their soldier at spawn time, with heavy or light body armor, two types of equipment, a helmet, and a weapon. Unlocks are available to be chosen and used at the time awarded, unlike Battlefield 2 which required a reboot.^[3]

[edit] Weapons and equipment

Battlefield 2142 has a variety of weapons, each with their own advantages and disadvantages.

Default Sniper Rifles

• Park 52
• Morretti SR4

6 magazines of 5 rounds each. A high-powered rifle with zoom capabilities (approximately 2X enhancement). 2 shots will down an infantryman (those wearing light armor will take more damage, though), while a headshot will kill any infantryman (regardless of whether he is wearing light or heavy armor). The long reload time and ineffectiveness in close combat make this class limited to medium- and long-range engagements only.

Default Assault Rifles

• Krylov FA-37
• Scar 11 AR

The futuristic standard assault rifle with 6 magazines of 30 rounds. These guns are accurate enough at any range, however at extreme ranges, the damage per shot of the assault rifles drop greatly.

Default Light Machine Guns

• Bianchi LMG
• Shuko LMG

These weapons have a large box-type magazine(150-200 rounds) and fire only on full-automatic mode. Accuracy increases as the gun is fired longer, increasing the guns' effectiveness not only as suppressive weapons, but precision ones as well. These weapons overheat very quickly when fired full-auto.

Rocket Launchers

• Mitchell AV-18
• Sudnik VP

An anti-vehicular, fly by wire rocket launcher. Highly effective against vehicles and Titan components, but has a long reload time. Because of it's extremely good accuracy, it can be used against infantry effectively, but only if they are stationary. The rocket has nearly no area of effect damage, so it is best used directly against targets.

[edit] Vehicles

Battlefield 2142 has a wide range of different futuristic vehicles (such as Mechs, known in the game as "walkers"). There are no watercraft or even amphibious vehicles present in the game. As with Battlefield 2 vehicles take damage from being rolled over or at abnormal angles, unoccupied and ramming objects at high speeds. They can also be immobilized for a brief period of time by EMP weaponry and EMP landmines. In Battlefield 2, the game designers added in fighter aircraft, thinking that the players would have to spend a lot of time trying to master the aircraft, but would still easily be shot down. However, the designers saw that most of the players, when in a jet fighter, were virtually invincible; while the master pilots were practically gods of the sky. This led to the combination of helicopters and fighters in Battlefield 2142, with the combat helicopter gunships handling both fighter jet and gunship roles, and the transport helicopters handling the airborne transport.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Maps

Battlefield 2142 was shipped with 10 maps in total, of which 5 of them are edited into Titan maps. All maps are split into two regional settings, with seven maps within a European Theater and eight maps within an African Theater. Many of the maps are 'repeated', and have a customized level specifically for the Titan Mode of gameplay, reducing the number of purely 'unique' maps to 10 (five for each faction). Depending on the number of people the server is configured to accommodate, the scope and objectives of maps change. However, servers can be set up support more or less than the map is designed for (EX. 64 players on a 16-man map or 16 on a 64-man map).

List of maps in Battlefield 2142
European Theater	African Theater
Minsk Belgrade Fall of Berlin Verdun Cerbere Landing	Camp Gibraltar Suez Canal Tunis Harbor Shuhia Taiba Sidi Power Plant
Titan Mode
Minsk Verdun	Suez Canal Shuhia Taiba Sidi Power Plant

[edit] Ranks

The ranking system in Battlefield 2142 is based off of points which can be earned through kills, in game achievements, and by earning pins and badges.

Example: The "Good Conduct" ribbon awards you 500 points which counts towards your next rank-up. Ranks go in order of the standard military ranks, (with some futuristic exceptions) The ranks and required points are as follows:

Only the first 40 ranks (excluding Recruit) will allow you to chose an item to unlock. The "Commander" Ranks are only available for a certain number of players, based on their stats in the Leaderboards, while only one person in the entire world can be the Supreme Commander. The Supreme Commander will have to upkeep his score to remain in that rank. It is unknown what requirements enable these titles.

[edit] Beta release

The Battlefield 2142 beta was released in the third week of August, after generating immense hype. However, it was revealed that the beta was not a complete "open" beta upon its release, and this disappointed many fans. At first, it was believed to be a Fileplanet subscriber-only beta,^[4] but was later revealed to also have an invite system. At that time the beta was only available to certain Fileplanet subscribers (keys were given out on a first-come, first-serve basis) and those who were invited. Some fansites had been holding contests giving out invitations to the BF2142 beta as prizes. On August 31, a large number of keys were given out by Fileplanet for free, and the beta client was upgraded. However, as of September 2, the beta was closed as all the keys had been given out.

On September 12, 2006 the Fileplanet beta ended.

[edit] Rumors

Battlefield 2142 had been rumored to be in development, ever since a February 2006 interview with Dan Blackstone of DICE, the senior producer of the project, in which he mentions:

We’re about to announce something very big, so stay tuned. One other interviewer asked this and I gave him a hint, so it’s only fair that I do the same for you: 3213/3X2. Or said another way: S.R. 4588164.^[5]

The S.R. (Square Root) of 4588164 is 2142 (3213÷3×2 equals 2142 as well), hence the rumors. The only proof of existence was the cover story of the PC Gamer magazine and the trailer, published on the very same magazine, until March 21, 2006, when EA/DICE announced that, the next game in the Battlefield series would be Battlefield 2142, in their March 21, 2006 Community Update.^[6] To further show proof of the game's existence, at Multiplay i27, a LAN party which EA sponsors regularly, Battlefield 2142 merchandise was given out, along with further details on a release date.

BF2142 was officially announced and was playable at E3. Several trailers and previews are available on major gaming websites from this event.

There are rumors circulating on some gaming websites that a port of Battlefield 2142 will appear on the Xbox 360,PS3 and Wii.^[7] Though, EA and DICE only commented in a video that "If the community demand is high enough, everything is possible."^{[citations needed]}

[edit] Advertising components

Battlefield 2142 shipped with dynamic in-game advertising provided by IGA Worldwide, a similar system is featured in games such as Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, and SWAT 4.^[8], which means changing adverts on objects such as billboards in-game. These in-game adverts have been dubbed as adware by some and there has been a vocal backlash against the game. ^[9] There were also accusations that the game contained spyware which monitors the user's web-browsing habits. However, DICE employees have claimed on the game's forums that the game only reports what in-game adverts you look at, and for how long.^[10] The Australian version of 2142 however lacks the Dynamic Advertising feature ^[11] as it is believed to be illegal under the Australian Spyware Act.^[12]

[edit] Technical issues

[edit] Bugs

Missing DirectX DLL

Despite fixing over 3,000 bugs during the beta testing,^[13] quite a few people who use the demo have issues with running the game, due to the fact that the game uses a new build of the DirectX library, d3dx9_29.dll. This file is not present in older installations of DirectX 9.0c. Microsoft Knowledge Base suggests that the user download the latest version of DirectX 9.0c to resolve this issue.^[14] Users who haven't updated DirectX have also had issues with starting the game. The latest version of DirectX 9 must be installed before playing the demo. This problem is only in the demo, the full version installs the new DirectX imedeatly after the games is installed.^[15] Because the newest version of DirectX is not included in the demo to make the download smaller, many people do not have the proper version, and cannot start the game as a result. However, downloading a copy of the missing file might also work in some cases.^[16]

Connection Problems

Many have noted difficulty getting and staying connected to the main EA servers.^[17] EA stated that the disconnection issue is due to their servers being overloaded.^[18] On October 9, 2006 EA added new servers to deal with the overpopulated user connection servers. A new patch was also released on these servers to fix the issue where users were being disconnected.

Ranking Issue

As of now, the rank updates are still very buggy on the full game, but the server connection problem seems to have been fixed. The rank-up system was disabled for a short period, confusing players who had earned ranks through pre-order or regular gameplay.

Punkbuster issues

Due to conflicts between punkbusters speed in updating itself after a recent patch, some players are encountering an error where punkbuster repeatadly kicks them from servers unless they downgrade their system settings on the game, in some cases significantly downgrading graphic settings below what their computers can handle. Punkbuster's official word is they are working on this and the issue is almost resolved as of Nov. 9th 2006.

14 November ea updated their datebase and punkbuster kick people with normal ping, none higher than 100.

Titan Mode Issue

Users also complained of the Titans making the game laggy.^[19]

In addition, the nature of the Titan in the Titan mode causes a number of technical issues. One who is wounded in a moving Titan clips through the floor as the Titan moves. In addition, moving Titans tend to lag the player, as the engine must keep up with moving all players and vehicles on the Titan with it. Players have complained of extreme lag when on a moving Titan, especially during assaults, although this only happens when the Titan shields are down. There are some issues with the ranking not showing up in BFHQ and unlocks earned not being available in game, but it follows the same sort of process as Battlefield 2 and only takes a restart of the game to fix.

[edit] Widescreen support

Battlefield 2142 does not support wider field of view for widescreen resolutions.^[20] The lack of this feature in Battlefield 2142 has caused criticism from widescreen users.^[21] EA claims widescreen support "provides an advantage for widescreen players and a disadvantage for non-widescreen users".^[20]. However, it is possible to tweak the game in order to display custom resolutions (including widescreen).^[22].^[22] This stretches the screen to fit the widescreen resolution, however player's field of view does not change.

[edit] Pre-order bonuses

Players who pre-ordered Battlefield 2142 from Best Buy were not only given a free 64MB dog tag styled flash drive, but a free "downloadable assault weapon," which, replaced the existing standard assault rifle of the EU faction's assault kit (the SCAR 11) with the BOFORS, a much larger weapon. While some players like the replacement, many are angered by the size of the gun blocking nearly the entire right side of the screen. There is currently no way to restore the original assault rifle. Electronic Arts customer service currently has no way to remove the pre-order key from an EA account, which would restore the original gun.

Players who pre-ordered Battlefield 2142 from Game Stop received a free in-game rank. This rank was stackable with the Battlefield 2 Veteran's Program promotion, allowing players to receive two ranks upon release of the retail game.

[edit] Patches

[edit] 1.01

On October 17, 2006, the 1.01 patch became available^[23], one day prior to the official release of the game. It fixes a client side Titan Mode crash.^[24]

[edit] 1.05

Announced on November 3, 2006, currently in a closed beta test. The DICE Live team has said this patch will fix many problems, such as players not seeing the same names of titan silos, getting the silver titan destructer for wrong requirements, and it will also prevent movement of titans when the shields are down to decrease lag as well as make revieving players on the titan easier as when the titan moves, so do the corpses of players. Many players have pointed out that the glitches which get players massive amounts of points (stat padding), the transport switch-dropscore glitch and titan resupply glitch were not mentioned, although many people believe this is because EA and DICE do not want to tell players how to statspad so they do not have to reset them. ^[25]

[edit] System Requirements

System Requirements for Battlefield 2142 are as follows:^[26]

• Windows XP
• 1.7 GHz Intel Celeron D/Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon XP/Sempron Processor
• 4 GB free hard drive space (5 GB hard drive space recommended)
• 512 MB RAM (1 GB recommended)
• DirectX 9.0c compatible video card (128 MB memory and NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 or ATI Radeon 8500 chip set)
• DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
• Broadband connection (cable, DSL, or faster)
• A DVD-ROM Drive (boxed version)

The EA Downloader version of the game does not require a DVD-ROM drive.

[edit] Trivia

• Battlefield 2142 is set exactly 200 years after the first game in the Battlefield series, Battlefield 1942.
• It is the first Battlefield game to not feature the United States of America as a playable military faction.
• This is the first game that only features two main sides, as Battlefield Vietnam additionally incorporated the Viet Cong and South Vietnamese army.
• Though billboards will have real-world ads on them, DICE has still managed to do product placement for "dice" labeled items. The medic hub will have a drug in it called "DICEperine" and another drug called Hepititis A.
• In the Armored Fury Booster Pack map Midnight Sun, there is a drivable muscle car with the license plate number 2142, which is a reference to Battlefield 2142.
• Additionally in Armored Fury, there is a billboard advertising a digital wrist watch, which displays '21:42' as the time, with the caption message "Watch For The Future".
• Also in Armored Fury, the drivable semi-truck has a magazine on the passenger seat that reads "Ice Age Approaches"
• The fictional war in Battlefield 2142 (World War III) closely mirrors the stages of WW II when 200 years are subtracted. (WW III began in 2139, WW II began in 1939, the battle for France in WW III began in 2140, the battle for France in WW II began in 1940).
• There is a reference in one of the teams titans, on one of the walls towards a console it reads B.F. 1942, referring to Battlefield 1942.

The muscle car and its license plate.

The billboard with a watch and mushroom cloud.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Official

• Official Battlefield 2142 website
• An EA/DICE follow up Community Update
• The Official EA/DICE announcement

Reviews

• Battlefield 2142 Reviews at Metacritic.com

Fansites

• TotalBF2142
• BF2142Fever.com
• BF2142Wiki.com

Battlefield video games

Battlefield 1942 • Vietnam  • Battlefield 2 • Modern Combat • 2142 • Bad Company