For those looking for screen shots, take a peek at the links to the side and visit Gamespot’s gallery.

As someone who’s played several of the previous Battlefield titles, it feels quite familiar.  Select a class and spawn location and you’re in.

Classes:

The classes fall into 3 categories: Infantry, Rifleman, and Scout.

Those of you that know me, I immediately rolled out as a Scout for my first try.
The Scout is primarily equipped with a sniper rifle with a pistol and melee weapon for backup. Manually activated satchels fill out the load out for some anti-vehicle action.

We don’t need no friggin’ headshots!
The sniper rifle promptly dropped opponents in two shots if I didn’t get a headshot.
The rifles unzoom between shots as the shell from the last shot is ejected, adding some time between shots and making sure you need to line your shots back up so aim for those headshots if you can get them.

I wouldn’t exactly say that headshots are hard to get. As the somewhat renowned Blind Sniper, I have a tendency to damage opponents with the first shot, causing them to scurry around for new cover, and unnecessarily headshot them as they become a harder target. Maybe that’s just me, I can’t say for certain.

Things I noticed as a Scout:

• There are lots of spots that give good, long distance overview of the map. There are not always targets scurrying around in this area but you won’t be lacking some decent sniping spots.
• Vehicle usage is pretty heavy so that all you might see are planes and tanks at time. The usage of vehicles is fairly dependent on how well you and your allies blow them up, thus removing a few tanks or planes from your area for a few moments.
• That tank you want to blow up is usually going to rip you to pieces long before you can get close enough to use your satchel charges on it but you can catch them looking elsewhere sometimes.

When I was lucky enough to be grouped with my friend Danny, I gave the Infantry class a try because he lives in the thick of things and nothing is quite so painfully slow as trying to pull up a scope on a target 10 yards away.
Infantry are equipped with a submachine gun, a bazooka for antivehicle operation, a trusty wrench, and some nifty hand grenades.
These guys are best equipped to take down vehicles or keep your own up.

Things I noticed as Infantry:

• Accuracy is still important as ‘spray and pray’ tactics will find you with an empty clip when you need a few more rounds.
• Infantry requires almost no set up to be effective. Get in there!
• Remember your rockets will arc downwards quickly. Take it into account and you will be a bane to tanks in no time.

I have a brief moment as a Rifleman.
They get a semiautomatic rifle with no scope, some nifty grenades, and a grenade launcher attachment for antivehicle use.
These guys are there to fill the mid range fighting and deal best with infantry rather than vehicles.

Sadly, I only rolled a Rifleman for about 4 seconds and switched shortly after spawning and subsequently being exploded by a tank.
I don’t have much to say about them except for two things:

• Iron sighting with their rifles doesn’t look as bad as I’ve seen before, they may well.
• There’s no scope. Did I mention I’m the Blind Sniper? Seriously, I need that scope.

Apologies to those looking for more depth out of this class description.

Vehicles:

Vehicles play a core role in the game and also fall into a handful of categories: Planes, Jeeps, Tanks, and Boats.

Planes are quite fun but most people suck at flying them. It takes some practice and you will crater into all sorts of things: trees, the water, the ground, or that AA Gun you were trying to bomb.

I did a little testing of the planes in the Tutorial level. After finally getting the flying part mostly down, I couldn’t get a straight run for a decent bombing run on the target tanks. Instead I landed the plane and put my satchel charges on them to destroy them faster. My plane evidently didn’t like staying on the aircraft carrier my targets were on as it exploded on its own accord about 30 seconds after I landed it.

Lesson learned: Don’t let Joe fly. My friends know better already. This also includes driving but to a somewhat lesser extent.

The Jeep is quite fun. Jeeps are fast and have a mounted gun on the back. They’ll get you around but you are still visible in your seats or at your gun so can be dropped fairly easily. Use these to get to your next base faster.

The Tank is your heavy hitter, of course. As the driver is inside and well armored, you’ll need specialty weapons to take them out. If you’re good enough with your tank and have a good gunner you can keep rolling around until the map ends, wreaking havoc wherever you go. Tanks are pretty slow so if you’re after easy flag captures, don’t use them.

The Boats are armored and have two turrets on them. If both your turrets aren’t manned, don’t use them except as transports. Someone wants to kill you and there’s no cover in the water.

Things I learned about vehicles:

• Planes have strange controls but some people are good with them. Keep moving if you’re in a vehicle to avoid bombing. Same goes if you’re on foot but you don’t have to move quite a much as you’re a smaller target.
• Any mounted weapon works well on Planes but AA Guns work best, obviously.
• Jeeps are great for quick flag captures and dropping small groups of defenders if you have a gunner. They normally stop within range to start capturing a point so that’s when to take them out easier.
• Tanks are a menace but can be destroyed. Clear everything as you move forward rather than rolling right into a camp with enemies all around. Tanks are vulnerable to bombing and infantry hits from the side or rear with their anti vehicle gear.
• Attacking a tank that’s aimed at you, even with a rocket launcher, is going to get you killed. If you’re driving a tank and get killed by a frontal assault like that, shame on you!
• Boats are usually necessary early on but are death traps. Get out of them as soon as it’s safe to do so or when you crash into the beach.

Maps:

There are only a handful of maps at this point, each of which is quite similar to the others so it’s not hard to pick up any given map.
Each side has a base that cannot be captured so they can keep spawning.
Commonly this is an aircraft carrier with boats on the side an a couple of planes.

This is where boats being deathtraps come into play. If you’re pushed back to being forced to spawn at your aircraft carrier your boats will often be gunned down by planes. I believe this stems from a ‘Your Team probably sucks at using AA Guns’ phenomena. This is usually because the better players usually want OFF THE BOAT and everyone else wants to try to jack a plane (usually so they can crater is shortly afterward), leaving stray people to decide the AA Guns are needed.

Maps are roughly balanced but teams are becoming stacked seems pretty common so getting ‘trapped’ at your default base can happen a lot but usually won’t last over 2 or 3 minutes but is usually longer if that base is an aircraft carrier rather than a normal base.

Otherwise the maps are balanced fairly well with lots of places for you to scurry off to and capture or just blow up according to your whim.

Squads:

The game allows you to spawn where your squad members are at if you so desire.
Squads are 3 people with linked voice chat (if you’re not in a Party already) that are easy to track on the minimap.

Not too much to say about squads except for:

• Squads work pretty well unless your squad mates aren’t actually playing. Having a squad mate sitting at the spawn AFK isn’t helping anyone, least of all you.
• Parties are supposed to be pushed into the same squads when possible. This happens sometimes but not always. Same concept is also accurate for teams.

Overall, I’ve enjoyed my experience with BF1943 and it’s worth the price. It’s a little more simple than the other battlefield games due to lack of customization and less classes but it still works out well for easy to get into action that’s a blast with friends.

My final note:
If you’re unlucky enough to end up getting repeatedly put on the opposing team from your Party, run. Run a lot.
Your friends will kill you. As often as they can find you. They want to hear you scream, gurgle, or otherwise curse them out.
They’re evil like that