Battlefield Heroes Preview

GameSpot, GameSpy and PC.IGN have published their impressions of Battlefield Heroes, the upcoming free to play web-based installment in the Battlefield series of multiplayer military shooters. Here's a taster:

The game is indeed free to play. All you'll have to do is go to the game's Web site and click on the brightly colored play button, and that will launch the installer. The system requirements are low enough to support most integrated graphics chipsets found in budget computers. (The other requirements right now are a 1GHz CPU and 512MB of RAM.) When you install the game, you also create a login and a password for your profile. It will not ask for you a credit card number. Once the game is installed, you just go back to the Web site, hit play, log in, and the game launches. The entire process is designed to very similar to registering for an Internet forum or social site such as MySpace.

Free sounds like a great deal to the consumer, but not for businesses. EA plans to make money mainly through advertising. For instance, whenever the game is loading, you'll see ads. We saw two big banner ads for EA games that were released last year (keep in mind we saw the in-development version of Battlefield Heroes, so those were placeholders). EA says that there will not be any in-game advertising in the game itself, so you will not see any billboards or posters for the latest Hollywood movie or Detroit car while dodging bullets. A secondary source of income is microtransactions that are entirely optional, though EA didn't really go into depth about what types of things you'll be able to purchase.

Heroes will distill the Battlefield experience into a more intimate package online. Like with other Battlefield games, there's just one mode in Heroes, and it is sort of a mix of team deathmatch and the classic Battlefield conquest mode. Each team has 50 tickets, or respawns, at its disposal. When a player dies, he uses up a ticket to respawn back into the game. The goal is to be the last team standing. There will be control points that can be captured, and they will confer a modifier to whichever team controls them. For instance, controlling all flags might result in your team being awarded two kills for every one that you make. The maximum player limit per match is 16; in comparison, Battlefield 2 tops out at 64.

There are three classes that you can play as: soldier, gunner, and commando. You select a class at the beginning of the match and you can't switch in midmatch. The commando is the light class; capable of being completely invisible at a distance and semitransparent up close. He's armed with a knife and a sniper rifle, each of which takes a couple of whacks to kill with. That is to soften the frustration felt in other Battlefield games, where you're suddenly killed with a single shot of a sniper rifle. In Battlefield Heroes, the first hit you receive is a warning and a chance for you to do something to survive. Next up is the soldier, which is a medium class, a good mix of speed and firepower. The gunner is the heaviest class, but also the slowest. He's armed with a machine gun and a bazooka. It's key to keep in mind that while the bazooka might be ideal for killing vehicles, all classes will be equipped with sticky mines so that they have an antivehicle weapon.