Gamespot reviews BF:Heroes

While there are a couple BF:Heroes hands on previews, Gamespot seems to be the most complete.

The game certainly lives up to the cartoon billing, being cute, cheery, and bright throughout. The map we played looked gorgeous, with bright green fields, yellow wild flowers, and blue skies, but the real stars prove to be the quirky characters in the game, which are all animated in a rubbery, cartoon, style. Along with their general moves, characters will also be able to pull off a number of wacky animations with which to taunt other players. These differ according to the character that you're using. Each character is part of one of the two armies in the game: the Royal Army or the National Army, which are loosely based on the British and German armies, respectively.

It looks like Digital Illusions has put a lot of work into streamlining the game, which runs on the Battlefield 2142 engine. Impressively, the company claims it has managed to reduce it from 500MB to a 200MB package, and the game should work on a wide range of PCs including those with mid to low specifications (think a 1.2GHz CPU, and higher), when it launches later this year. While the game will be free to download, it will feature adverts in menus and offer micro-transactions such as clothes to buy, which you can then use to customise your players. These options will not affect your performance (they're merely cosmetic), and you won't have to buy weapon upgrades. There aren't any adverts visible while playing the game itself either, which we're happy to see.

What I find interesting, that they actually have to see if the community wants larger then 16 player maps. Do developers these days play their own games and listen to their own customers?

Heroes only contains two 16-player maps thus far, but expect to see more added after its release. Digital Illusions is also considering adding larger maps that can support 32 and 64 players, if there's enough demand from the community.

- To read the full preview, click here