Battlefield Heroes Launch (Trailer and Game Analysis)

By BlueZero
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Battlefield Heroes is officially out and like other blogs have mentioned, it has been a very quiet launch. I was expecting this video to fly across the Internet via a coordinated effort on EA's part. Instead, it seems like the development team has made the first move to transition the game from Beta to the official release. The trailer is very catchy: "Battlefield Heroes, HEROES!" I made one character and took the game online.

First the Battlefield Heroes website. I log in with my EA account that I have used for such amazing games like Burnout Revenge and am greeted with choosing a username for the website. BlueZero is already taken, sure it's just probability, so I take BlueZer0. Take that Internet, I'm up one, "BlueZero" nothing. The landing page greets me with the phrase "Can you say…Paypal?". No, I can't say PayPal. I don't believe in paying for upgrades and I especially dislike PayPal for their ability to freeze financial assets with no real jurisdiction. I remember hearing that if you buy clothes and other items with real money, you are only RENTING them for a few months. Hopefully EA has fixed this oversight and the American culture already hates paying for upgrades, but our culture hates a limited license of electronic goods.

So I make a soldier for the Royal side ala the "Americans" because the Imperial Empire soldier class character model was bland. I proceed to give my character a nice mustache/gotti combo and tried to name him a variety of names before it accepted SirHart. I tried to put in SirIssac, SirGlutton, and they weren't accepted so I thought the game didn't like the surname of "Sir". The website accepted SirHart so the character was good to go. I had a hard time finding the large "Play Now" button at the top of the website and finally got it downloading.

After a substantial download to my computer, the Battlefield Heroes was finally mine. Since it is an Internet game, you can ONLY launch the game from the official website. I tried launching the exe file which should work, but EA developers really want that web traffic so they can make sure you are logged in. You can only make four characters still and they have to be created outside the game on the website.

SirHart, being a dashing soldier from the Royal Empire, started his tour of duty by taking the very boring tutorial level. If you have played Battlefield 2 or any other Battlefield title, just skip the tutorial. Since I completed the tutorial, I got a nice text box saying that someone was saluting my effort. No thank you text box, I can give myself a hand.

Next the game thrust me into a live game in which I was kicked within two minutes for having a high ping of 150ms. Thanks EA, this ping is acceptable to play this casual shooter. This isn't Unreal Tournament where you need twitch action. I can handle firing these hilariously sounding guns at sublight speed. I got on another server and proceed to fire the slow gun at distant enemies. I got a few kills and liked throwing the dynamite because it has the best sound effect in the game. I also like how firing a tank shell sounds like a pin whistle.

Battlefield Heroes was created to be accessible to all levels of players. In reality, I doubt this is the case as my friends have said that grenade spam is very effective, the protective shield is overpowered, and the sniper rifle is still good. I didn't feel like creating the other classes since I have seen how they worked from my friend's Beta.

My brief time with Battlefield Heroes made me want to go play Team Fortress 2, something that I did and I am probably done playing Heroes for a while. My attention span is usually long but this game doesn't seem to offer much for me. I'll just remember the trailer as being the best part of the game.