Battlefield 2142

Battlefield 2142 is the 5th full installment in the Battlefield series. It was developed by DICE and published by EA in October 18, 2006.

Setting
Battlefield 2142 is set in an "ice age" period of the Earth in the 22nd century (near the mid-point of that time period), where the PAC (Pan-Asian Coalition) and EU (European Union) forces fight for the remaining pieces of habitable land in North Africa and the Middle East that the ice age has not devoured in a conflict known as The Cold War. The game features a new game mode, Titan, and is the first game in the Battlefield series not to have the United States as a playable faction.

Conquest
The classic Conquest mode from previous Battlefield games returns as the main game-mode in Battlefield 2142, where both teams try to control the majority of the flags on the map. If one team controls more than half of the flags, the opposing side's tickets slowly "bleed" or decrease until they ultimately reach zero. It is a sound strategy to have a few squads detailed to only defend flags, while other squads are detailed only to attack and capture flags. This way a team can have tough defense and lightning fast offense maneuvers. To capture flags faster get more teammates on the flag.

Conquest Maps thumb|250px|right|Battlefield 2142 intro clip
 * Camp Gibraltar
 * Tunis Harbor
 * Sidi Power Plant
 * Shuhia Taiba
 * Cerbere Landing
 * Suez Canal
 * Fall of Berlin
 * Highway Tampa
 * Operation Shingle

Titan


New to Battlefield 2142, the Titan game mode is a variant of the Conquest game mode, where the objective of both teams is to destroy the opposing side's Titan. To do this teams must capture and hold missile silos in the same fashion as Conquest Flags. When the game starts, all 5 silos are neutral, and the symbols (the numbered hexagons on the map and top of the HUD) will be gray. In this condition, they are easier to capture, as each team only has to activate them to capture them. If the enemy, however, has captured the silo already, then the symbol for them will be red, and your team will first have to deactivate the silo, and then your team can capture it. Capture progress is represented by a bar, and if the enemy captured it, then when deactivating it a red bar will lower; once it has finished lowering, then a blue bar will begin to rise, and once it has risen, the silo will be captured. To capture silos faster, more players can move around the silo, increasing a side's presence in the area, and making the capture process faster. Once a Titan's shields go down, the opposing side can now board the Titan using either an Air Transport or APC (Assault Personnel Carrier). Once inside, a side needs destroy four consoles to be able to destroy the Titan.


 * Console 1 (Blue Corridor): First level, right side, has a more winding path than 3 or 4.


 * Console 2 (Green Corridor): First Level, left side, has a bigger path than 3 or 4.


 * Console 3 (Red Corridor): Second Level, left side, has a short path with sparse cover from the Titan flaps on the side of the forcefield wall.


 * Console 4 (Yellow Corridor): Second Level, right side, a short path has sparse cover from forcefield flaps.

To gain access to Red and Yellow Corridors a team must destroy the two consoles on the lower level (Blue and Green). To gain access to Red Corridor destroy Blue Corridor. To gain access to Yellow Corridor destroy Green Corridor.

Consoles can be destroyed with either the player's primary gun or explosives (such as RDX or Frag Grenades), with the latter being far more effective.

After destroying the consoles, two armored security doors will explode, revealing the reactor core room. This is the heart of the whole war machine. Attackers must damage the reactor core for long enough, until it begins to disintegrate the Titan. Then every person is recommended to evacuate the ship and spawning is disabled. The titan explodes in 30 seconds in a cutscene.

Titan Armament

A Titan has many exterior weapons:

Four Titan Cannons below deck: These guns are massive and pump out giant yellow blasts to devastate ground infantry and vehicles. The four guns face different directions. The Titan Guns can be destroyed from a Stationary AA, Primary Engineer Weapon, Gunship missiles, Gunship TV missiles and tank shells. Cannons can be repaired from the controls by an Engineers repair tool.

Two above AA (Anti-Air) guns: These two guns have different directions. One faces the front of the Titan, the other the back. The AA guns have nonstop fire and unlimited ammunition; however, they can be destroyed and avoided. These can be repaired from the consoles by an Engineers repair tool.

Titan Maps
 * Suez Canal
 * Sidi Power Plant
 * Verdun
 * Minsk
 * Highway Tampa
 * Shuhia Taiba

Vehicles
In Battlefield 2142 gameplay, a player has access to many different vehicles from the light vehicles (including APCs), to heavy tanks, up to the powerful battlewalkers and combat gunships. However there is no naval vessels due to the very limited presence of water in the game.

Quick Land transport
These vehicles have three seats : a pilot, a gunner and a passenger. The pilot is restricted to driving but have access to a very nice and useful horn. The gunner have access to a anti-infantry machine gun with high fire rate, infinite bullets but quick overheat. The passenger is placed on the back on the vehicle, exposed but with access to his own conventional weapon. This vehicle is extremely fast but suffer from a very little armor and can be destroy from a single rocket shot and damaged by normal infantry assault gun. It has a turbo used to speed up the vehicle for a limited period of time which helps the driver to get out of trouble or avoid fatal shots. The available FAV's are; MK-15 Bandit in the EU team and UAZ-8 Ocelot in the PAC team.

Armored troop carrier
These land vehicles have the largest capacity of the game: six places. The pilot has a light anti-infantry machine gun with 360 degree vision and electromagnetic rockets that stop every vehicle on the game and induce fuzzy vision in infantry for a limited time. The first passenger (second position) has a triple-shot automatic mortar with infinite ammo but with a high cooldown time (in seconds). The four other passengers have the same machine gun than the pilot but restricted to approximately 120 degree of vision. They also have ejecting pods capable of great height which are used to get on the enemy Titan (see below) once the shield is down or to quickly evacuate the transport in emergency. The AMV-2 Groundhog in the EU and BTR-4 Romanov on the PAC are the only Armored troop carriers to be seen in the game. All APCs have the active defenses by default.

Heavy Tank
Tanks have two seats: pilot and gunner. The pilot has access to a very powerful canon capable of very high damage against other units (vehicles and infantry). The gunner has a anti-infantry/anti-air machine gun powerful against air transports and gunships. Shooting system is similar in the two teams but driving differs. EU tanks have conventional driving system while PAC tanks have an hovercraft driving system.


 * All Heavy Tanks have active defense.

Battlewalker (Combat Bipodes)
The combat bipodes are vehicles that walk or run (on use of the turbo) and have very similar piloting style in the two teams. The pilot has heavy anti-infantry machine guns and anti-vehicles rocket launcher. The gunner has an extremely powerful anti-air machine gun and anti-air electromagnetic rockets. So far the only battlewalkers available in the game are L5 Riesig in the EU and T-39 Bogatyr in the PAC.


 * All Battlewalkers have the active defense.

Combat Gunship
The combat gunship has two places. It can be used for both anti-air (AA) and ground attacks. The pilot has 6 chargers of 10 AA rockets and the gunner has a very heavy anti-infantry machine gun and guided missiles†. These missiles are extremely efficient against vehicles as well as infantry and are a major cause of complaints on the game : a gunship piloted by an experienced pilot is not only extremely efficient but also almost indestructible and has many unbalanced marked advantages on the other vehicles. Gunships are the most manoeuvrable and the fastest vehicles of the game. They also have weapons capable of destructing any king of opposition. Their only weakness is in their shielding which is very low but offset by the access to active defense. EU has the UD-6 Talon and the PAC, the Type 4 Doragon. Their functionalities and piloting are similar. A well piloted gunship has a huge influence on the ingame balance between the teams.

A missile shot damages a land vehicle from 85 to 100% depending on the region of the shielding touched by the missile. It instantly kills an infantry unit if dropped close to it. The strength of this secondary weapon on the gunner position lead to the creation of a new style of piloting: the seat switching. For a pilot alone in a gunship, seat switching means changing to the gunner seat to launch a missile then quickly switch back to the pilot position before crashing. This technique is very difficult to master and is banned on many servers due to the superiority it gives to a single player on the rest of the game.

Air Transport
The air transport has seven places. The pilot doesn't have any weapon but can use the active defence. The passengers in the second and fifth place are hidden to others view and have access to a machine gun efficient against infantry, aircrafts and light land transports. The four other passengers are exposed because seated in the middle of the aircraft. They have access to their own conventional weapon. When dropping out of the transport, all the passengers are in ejection pods and thus do not need to use their parachute and are protected from outside attacks during their fall. The EU has the UD-12 Shepherd and the PAC the BTR-20 Yastreb.


 * This vehicle has the active defense.

Active Defense
The active defense is a protective shield activated on command use by the player. It grants 100% resistance to all rocket/missile attacks for a short period of time (some seconds). It is disabled by an electromagnetic rocket shot or electromagnetic grenade.

Active defense is well shown on Figure 2.2 where is shown the PAC gunship (Type 4 Doragon) while using its active defense (the green energy shield around the main structure).

Titan
Even if the Titan is the principal base point of a team it is considered as a vehicle because of its possibility of movement and powerful weapons which make it a major attribute to a team that can position it well during the game. The Titan has an extremely powerful shielding. It has 4 air-ground semi-automatic canons on its lower part and two anti-air turrets on its top. These weapons are all incredibly powerful and ensure a very good protection of the Titan and its surroundings when used effectively. They can be destroyed by the enemy team from the outside and rebuilt by the Titan's team from the inside. The Titan has one front deck and two back deck s. The front deck is a spawn point for the Titan's team and for one gunship and one air transport. It is only usable by the Titan's team. The two back decks (upper and lower) are usable by anybody once the Titan's shields are down. They have entrance to the Titan's core which can be destroyed by the inside by the opposing team. The Titan can only be moved by the team Commander.

Weapons
There are many weapons and features that are unlocked in the usual way through online play, although they can be unlocked for off line testing/casual playing using modifications.

Maps
Europe:
 * Minsk
 * Cerbere Landing
 * Fall of Berlin
 * Belgrade
 * Verdun
 * Operation Shingle

Africa and the Middle East:
 * Shuhia Taiba
 * Suez Canal
 * Camp Gibraltar
 * Sidi Power Plant
 * Tunis Harbor
 * Highway Tampa
 * Strike at Karkand 2142

Northern Strike:
 * Bridge at Remagen
 * Liberation of Leipzig
 * Port Bavaria

Other:
 * Wake Island 2142
 * Molokai
 * Yellow Knife
 * Operation Blue Pearl

Windows Vista Criticism
Battlefield 2142 has, and still is being criticized for its difficulty to play on Vista. The game was only tested for XP. It's very difficult to get the game to function at all on Vista, and many times, it will simply crash before the game begins. Players have also reported connection issues online with the game when using wireless networks while using Vista as a operation system. The game may also freeze and, will be unable function again until reinstalling the game. However, EA has released a patch that supposedly would address many issues with Vista. The game functions fine on Windows 7, with the exception of some occasional Punkbuster compatibility issues with Windows 7, which may result in the player being kicked for "an unknown Windows API function."

Reception
Battlefield 2142 has received generally positive reviews from industry critics. The game has a score of 80 out of 100 on Metacritic and 79.77% at GameRankings.

Trivia

 * The game's cover artwork is simliar to Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield Vietnam, as these games display a soldier whose face is partially covered up by a vehicle.