Battlefield 2142


Battlefield 2142 is a 2006 first-person shooter game developed by DICE and published by Electronic Arts. It is the fifth game in the Battlefield series. Battlefield 2142 is set in 2142, depicting a war known as "The Cold War of the 22nd Century", in which two military superpowers – the European Union and Pan Asian Coalition – battle for the remaining unfrozen land during a new ice age.
The game was designed primarily for multiplayer gameplay and allows for a maximum of 64 players on a server or a maximum of 16 players in single player mode against bots on Conquest mode. It has its own ranking system to keep track of the user's statistics similar to the one used in its predecessor, Battlefield 2. It opens up new categories of vehicles and weapons not seen in Battlefield 2. Battlefield 2142 has an unlock system that allows the player to choose a new unlock every time they achieve a new rank instead of forcing the player to purchase items. A booster pack called Northern Strike contains new maps, unlocks, and vehicles; a deluxe edition was released that contains Battlefield 2142 and Northern Strike.
In July 2014, all online components of the game were deactivated following the shutdown of GameSpy. The game's online multiplayer was revived by the Project Revive community in 2016. However, the project was shut down in 2017 following a legal notice from Electronic Arts. Alternatives were made available shortly after Project Revive was shut down, including the 2142 Novgames Alliance project or the 2142 Reclamation Project.

Gameplay

Battlefield includes two gameplay modes, Conquest and Titan, the latter of which can only be played online in multiplayer maps. Both modes support varying numbers of players, up to 64, depending upon the server a player chooses to join online. The single player mode consists of a maximum of 16 players, which includes 15 AI bots. Commander Mode from Battlefield 2 returns, as one player from each team can apply and either accept or turn down the role of becoming commander. The player in the commander position has vital roles in the game, such as deploying UAV's, artillery strikes, airdropping supplies or vehicles for their team.

Classes

Battlefield 2142 features four different playable kits. These kits can be selected at any time during gameplay. The kits are a combination of the kits in Battlefield 2, which had seven playable kits, but were less customizable and upgradeable in comparison. Each kit has different weapons and equipment that are unique. Each contains a basic weapon, a secondary weapon, and a knife. The knife differs in this game from Battlefield 2 because when a player is killed with a knife, the killer acquires the player's dogtag. The player is able to gain rank, options, and equipment by acquiring points in the game.
Battlefield 2142 has customization, allowing the player to gain more unlocks for one kit, which makes it more effective. Each class has two unlockable weapons and one passive unlock which upgrades the soldier's helmet, each helmet upgrade having different functions. The benefits of one soldier's helmet upgrade will be shared with their squadmates.
  • Assault: The Assault and Medic classes from Battlefield 2 are combined as the Assault kit in Battlefield 2142. The main weapons are assault rifles with unlockable rocket or shotgun add-ons. Other unlocks include advanced first-aid kits which can be deployed to restore the health of anyone standing close to it, smoke grenades for screening, and a defibrillator for reviving fallen comrades.
  • Engineer: The Engineer class works the same way it was intended since Battlefield 1942. Engineer can still repair vehicles and have the access to heavy weapons that can damage and destroy enemy vehicles, such as rocket launchers and mines.
  • Support: The Support class provides ammunition with ammo boxes and can deploy turret guns and electric shields to help the team in the close quarters combat.
  • Recon: The Recon kit is aimed to provide perimeter support for the team with high velocity sniper rifles. In the other hand the Lambert-carbine is a full-automatic carbine weapon suitable for the assault gameplay style and combined with RDX explosives and the cloaking device recon turns into special ops class.

    Conquest

Conquest mode, similar to its predecessors, involves two teams of players fighting each other while working to capture and defend spawn points. Spawn points are represented by flags and display the color of the controlling faction. To hold a simple majority of flags will initiate a ticket drain on the opposing faction, which will only speed up if one faction controls all the flags. Both teams begin the match with a preset number of tickets. Each time a soldier dies, a ticket is removed from their team. Players have the opportunity to reduce their number of lost tickets by reviving their "critically wounded" teammates with the Assault class' defibrillator. By reviving a teammate within 15 seconds, no ticket will be lost and the player will not need to respawn. The team that has no tickets, or no places to spawn with no one alive, loses the match.
There are several types of Conquest modes: Head-on, Assault, Assault Lines, and Double Assault Lines, Conquest Assault, No Vehicles.
  • In Head-on, both teams start with one flag that cannot be captured. The rest of the flags are neutral.
  • In Assault, play in either of the Assault Lines modes.
  • In Conquest Assault, which is identical to normal Assault in both its coding and function, the PAC starts with one uncapturable flag, while the EU starts off with the rest of the flags and an immobile Titan which can be captured by the PAC.
  • In No Vehicles, infantry are the only option, which will stack with the conquest mode that the map uses. No vehicles will spawn, including static ground turrets.

    Titan

The Titan mode involves players from opposing teams whose objective is to destroy the other team's Titan, while trying to defend their own. Titans are massive, heavily armored, flying warships that have powerful force fields protecting them from enemy intrusion or conventional weapons fire. As the force fields are up during the first part of a battle, players must fight to control the anti-Titan missile silos scattered about the battlefield on the ground. Titans can be moved around the battlefield, but only by the team's Commander. Each Titan can defend itself and contribute to the fight on the ground with 4 anti-ground guns and 2 anti-aircraft guns. Titan movement can cause latency issues, so some players prefer not to move them at all. Some servers even disable the commander's ability to move the Titan.
After the shields are down, there are two methods to destroy the enemy Titan. One way is to simply remain on the ground and hold the anti-Titan missiles until they wear down the hull. A quicker alternative is to board the Titan using "assault pods" launched from an APC, air transport, Titan, or spawn beacon, spawn on your squad leader, or land an air transport on a Titan as a mobile spawn point. Once inside, the players must destroy 4 reactor consoles to gain access to the reactor room. There, they can blow up the reactor, and have 30 seconds to flee the Titan before it is destroyed.
During the beta release of the game, players who managed to escape the destroyed Titan before the 30-second timer ended received an award. In the retail game, the round ends when the Titan is destroyed, and because player deaths triggered by the end of a round do not count, the evacuation of the Titan had little significance aside from inciting a rush in the player. In patch 1.05, DICE reinstated the award for those attacking players who escaped the destruction in the "Titan Survival Pin." However, receiving the pin requires very precise timing to land on the ground, causing confusion amongst players initially.

Vehicles

The vehicles of Battlefield 2142 are similar to those in Battlefield 2 except for a more futuristic design. For example, the PAC team tank, the Type 32 Nekomata, has a hovercraft driving system. The air vehicles are more futuristic, propelled by turbines instead of rotors. Almost all vehicles have a short duration protective shield called active defense. The active defense protects the vehicle from all attacks for about five seconds.

Statistics tracking

The ranking and points system of Battlefield 2142 is similar to Battlefield 2, however, different ranks are featured. As with Battlefield 2, a key feature of the game is "Character Persistence", which saves and tracks almost every aspect of gameplay for players. Unlike Battlefield 2, however, the user is given the option to create up to four soldiers, as opposed to Battlefield 2's limitation of one per account. When playing the game in online multiplayer mode on specified servers, a master server tracks player points, ranks, equipment, and other statistics.

Ranks

The Battlefield 2142 rank system consists of a number of partially fictitious, partially realistic military ranks, and are each divided by a silver/gold format, with players attaining the silver version of the rank before reaching the gold rank. New ranks are earned by attaining experience points, which can be earned for actions on a ranked server such as killing an enemy soldier/vehicle, healing/resupplying teammates, repairing ally vehicles/strategic objects, capturing/neutralizing control points/missile silos, assisting in kills or carrying out orders given by the Squad Leader/Commander.
The rank system is designed to be progressive so ranks are earned faster when a player begins. This provides new players with a number of unlocks straight away to give them an edge. Later ranks require more effort, time, and skill from the player as the extremely high number of points can usually be attained only through awards. The final three ranks of the game are only given to a certain number of players at a time, with Major General given to 50 players, Lieutenant General given to 25 players, and the highest rank, Supreme Commander, given to only one player at a time. These top three are brevet ranks; players retain those ranks until other players surpass them.