If this game was picked off the shelf, and our imaginary gamer went in cold, with little more in his head than hoping it might be like those other World War 2 games he'd played, only with more people, then he could end up being be perplexed, even appalled. Of course this seemingly small step is a fair hurdle to get past for the average gamer, and I'm acutely aware that I knew to do it. I arrived back in virtual 1940s Belgium with a friend of a friend and guiding hand, which made all the difference. There was only one logical way to conduct this review, and that was to get one of the major teams to show me what was really going on. During that time the player numbers stayed low and that the game has stayed ugly. Nevertheless, I knew Battleground Europe was going to be immediately unappealing because I've looked at World War II Online a few times over the years. Peekaboo! Tanks love to play hide-and-seek in the woods. The late night American contingent put on some impressive displays of firepower. Since there is a single server to log into, everyone who plays Battleground Europe is fighting the same war. The Axis and Allies are slugging it out to win the war right now, and the historically accurate technologies develop as that conflict unfolds. The frontline is a real one and the territory almost as vast as the embattled tract of Europe itself. With some organisation it begins to shine because, unlike the perpetual battles of closest cousin Planetside, World War II is a war that can genuinely be won or lost in weeks or months. The scope is vast, and it's a bit of shame that there aren't enough people in the game to truly demonstrate what it could be capable of. WW2 online delivers ships, towns, Messerschmits, Spitfires, tanks, infantry, rickety old Bedford trucks, and a lot of hedges to hide in. The idea behind it all is to recreate the entire Western front online, complete with everything except civilians. And yes, Battleground Europe is exactly that kind of game.īattleground Europe is the relaunch (or the latest iteration) of the World War II Online project, which has been going on for about five years. They rely on communities of committed and enthusiastic players to keep running. They're tough to get into, overly complex, reliant on lots of acquired knowledge. They remain resolutely out on the periphery of what it's possible to be interested in.
Their kick is in their complexity and their demands on the player. See World of Warcraft.īut then there are games which simply don't want to bend in this way.
Developers, meanwhile, work to make them ever more accessible to the general gamer - see Battlefield 2.
WORLD WAR II ONLINE GAME PC
Quite a few of my games journalist colleagues cite this problem as one of the major reasons why online PC games are flawed: they're just too awkward to be mainstream. All too often the newbie sidles into a game and looks around, is embarrassed by having to ask so many questions, and gives up to go back to something a little less forbidding. You have to get inside their communities to really enjoy the game, and these hardened fraternities of gamers can be obscure nuts to crack.
That's been a problem with online PC games for a while now, because there's really nothing casual about them.
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