Battlefield 1943 was released on July 4th as a digital download for the Xbox 360 and PS3. The 4-map 24-player ggme costs 1200 points ($15) on the Xbox LIVE Arcade and weighs in at about 600 MB. It is set in the Pacific Theater on WW2 (US versus Japan) on maps with plenty of land, air, and sea to be explored. The game has gotten an average score of 85 out of 100 in critical reviews and 30 man-years of gameplay was performed on the day the game launched.

At first, I thought Battlefield 1943 was an unwise purchase given that Battlefield: Heroes is absolutely free to play on the PC and has similar features. But in the last week, the game has grown on me. Battlefield 2 on the PC was one of my most memorable first-person shooters; a game that was even deeper than our beloved Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Battlefield 1943 doesn’t offer the scale of BF2 or even CoD4, but for a 1200 point Xbox LIVE Arcade game, it certainly offers many hours of entertainment. Having played the same 4 maps for the last week, those maps have not yet gotten old. This is because the whole Battlefield series doesn’t just offer a first-person shooter experience, but an experience of being on the battlefield. Battlefield was the perfect name for this series as the whole game revolves around battlefield play; not just localized first-person shooter perspectives found in the Call of Duty series.

The physics in the game are good. The destructible environments add depth while the graphics which seem bold yet simple. Mounted machine guns can mow down brush and trees. Tanks can plow through buildings and walls. Grenades can blast holes through chain linked fences or sides of buildings. Weapon fire can explode gas tanks and storage barrels. The destructible environments are well done, add value to the gameplay, and seem to occur in a way that doesn’t happen too often or too easy, yet is always available when you need it.

The conquest gametype (think multiple areas of king of the hill) offers a gameplay experience that scales to a wide array of gamers: the competitive gun aimer who will want to shoot the rifles or the sniper rifles, to the submachine gunning cowboy who wants to charge out on his own and blow things up, to the prop plane flight simulator lovers who want to have air to air or air to ground combat. Gamers are able to scale the match into a game of team slayer, king of the hill, or dog fighting.

While we all hated vehicle play in Call of Duty 3, that’s not the case in BF1943. In BF1943, the vehicles are not over powering and not always the preferred way to get to another part of the map. And because of the availability of explosives in each class and of the anti-air artillery guns scattered around the map, vehicles can be defeated by one person with a seemingly small time investment. Vehicles available in the game are a jeep with mounted machine gun, a tank with mounted machine gun, Corsair and Zero airplanes, and troop carrier boats launched from the side of an aircraft carrier or on docks on the shorelines.

The troop carrier boat is one that is very memorable. To start a map, both sides begin on their respective aircraft carrier. From there they must make their way to the island to capture territories. Along with 2 airplanes that spawn on the deck of the aircraft carrier, 4 troop carrying boats spawn on the sides of the aircraft carrier. They can carry up to 6 players and have 2 mounted machine guns. Hitting the Left Trigger button drops the boat from the side of the aircraft carrier into the water below. The driver can them drive to boat to shore; usually somewhere near an enemy or unoccupied territory. The trooper carrier boats were done very well.

The physics in the game make driving the jeep fun. And the classic Battlefield move of attaching explosives to the side of a jeep, driving the jeep toward the enemy, and remote detonating the explosives is a very useful move in BF1943.

The airplanes, equipped with a machine gun and boms, are a lot of fun to fly in the airspace over the maps. All players still have their parachute so they can fly a plane behind enemy lines and parachute down to a strategic spot. I have not found a comfortable control scheme for the airplanes yet which makes the dog fight map more challenging than it should be. Unlike other titles in the Battlefield series, including BF: Heroes, you can not transport other players on the airplanes.

Periodically throughout the game, teams will have the opportunity to call in an air raid, which is a group of 3 large bomber planes that will drop a small amount of bombs on an area of the map. The person that calls in the air raid will have their camera view move to the view from the 3 bombers. The person is able to fly the bombers left or right across the battlefield; not change their altitude. Once the pilot is ready, they can release the bombs on board to hopefully drop on or near enemy assets. Anti-artillery guns stations around the map and on the aircraft carriers can shoot down the bombers.

There are 3 classes of warfighers: the Sniper, the Rifleman, and the Infantryman. The weapons are responsive and inflict enough damage to kill two or three persons between reloads. The Sniper rifle has a noticeable delay to get to scoped mode with even a short blackout between between carrying the weapons and scoping in an enemy. This prevents a lot of twitch shots. Yet with a small adjustment, headshots will be possible for sniper rifle lovers.

The Infantryman submachine gun is good a close range, but his M9 Bazooka is a great defense against enemy vehicles. Infantryman can also use their Wrench to repair friendly vehicles.

The Rifleman is my favorite class as the semi-auto rifle is good at hitting targets at long range as well as good for pulling off no-scope head shots. Reloads do not get in the way of inflicting a lot of damage into the enemy. Because the Rifleman is so good at killing the other team’s troops, they don’t have a great defense against enemy vehicles. The rifle grenades aren’t enough to take out a tank.

Battlefield 1943 is no doubt the most advanced first person shooter in the XBOX Live Arcade. It will no doubt make more money than any other Arcade game. I think the game is well worth the $15 price.