Game Review: Battlefield Heroes
In this article, I will describe the gaming aspects of Battlefield Heroes, a new free cartoon shooter from EA. It is a new installment in the high-acclaimed Battlefield series, but it is very different in gameplay from other shooters. Its system requirements are low and it introduces micro-transactions to the shooter genre. I hope this article will act as a good introduction of Battlefield Heroes.
Battlefield Heroes is a new third-person shooter of the Battlefield series from EA. It has been under development since 2008, and entered open beta in June 2009. Three months later, EA announced that Battlefield Heroes had reached three million players.
What makes Battlefield Heroes different from other popular shooters is that it’s free, features cartoony graphics and does not have high system requirements. The game is the first of the Play4Free project by EA, a series of free games in which players can pay through “micro-transactions” to customize their characters.
Same as other games belonging to the Battlefield series, Battlefield Heroes feature expansive vehicle maps, in which players can dominate the battlefield with tanks, or rule the skies with fighter planes. Vehicles are notably weaker than in other Battlefield games, but they still remain strategically important.
The game is heavily inclined to the “fun” aspect. Players now have an amazing amount of health, and will find themselves engaging in close quarter firefights lasting for half a minute. As EA said, being skilled will not the most important, it’s more important for everybody to have fun. The best thing, however, is that you can now blast tanks into the air, set fire to your opponents, eat grenades and even use a legit wall hack. All of these are called abilities, and each class has its own unique set of them. These can be gained by leveling up, which I will explain later.
Three classes are available at the time of writing, and EA has mentioned that there are no plans of adding more. The classes are:
1. The commando, who by default has a sniper rifle and a high-damage knife. His abilities include becoming invisible and poisoning enemies with the knife.
2. The soldier, who is the all-rounder. He excels in mid-range combat, but is still a deadly opponent in all ranges. By default, he is equipped with a sub-machine gun and a shotgun. His abilities include blasting anything away and healing comrades within a certain radius.
3. The gunner, who is deadly in close-range combat. He has an amazing amount of health and can often take on several opponents at once. By default, he has a machine gun and a shotgun, and his abilities include eating enemy explosives and hurling an explosive keg.
