BallsupField: 1943

I am invincible. I am here with my fellow servicemen cocooned in the belly of this steel beast, rolling over the hills in search of those that seek to do us harm. Look at them, the pitiful ants scrawling across the land in fear as our tank bumps and grinds its way over the terrain we will soon claim as US soil. There they are, in plain site and shaking at the knees as they await confirmation on their position being compromised or that they will escape unharmed. They don’t want to believe it but deep down they know there is a canon looking directly at them, ready to destroy their bodies having already destroyed their hope. I speak into my headset “let rip – destroy them”…… “I said open fire – they’re over there look”……. “stupid bloody voice chat”. It would appear that the voice chat has cut out again and thus this little story cannot continue I am afraid.

Any guesses to which game I am referring to when I say: “sort it out EA”? That’s right – Battlefield 1943. The game is great and for just under ten British pounds you cannot argue with the bang for buck value. Or can you? You see, when I purchase something I like that something to work, to do what it says on the tin. Battlefield is a great game and the fun factor is potentially leagues higher than other full priced retail games. However, when you cannot communicate with your squad as the voice chat cuts out just as the action starts, or worse – you get disconnected half way through a match, the game becomes a chore.

Needless to say that the game works fine on the 360 with only a couple of disconnections during the high demand period when there were only a few servers. Which leaves us to then accuse the PS3 and its hardware as the reason for this epic fail, that the voice chat software is weak and just not up to scratch. An easy accusation to make and one that would excuse EA and DICE of these issues as they can only work with the tools to hand. But then Killzone 2 has worked flawlessly for me, Inferno Pool has also worked fine. The only games that have suffered with this voice chat problem are Battlefield 1943 and Call of Juarez, both released recently I might add. Whether this is down to developers getting sloppy (or remaining sloppy in some cases) or a recent update has altered voice chat in some shape or form we shall probably never know.

What we do need to know is that these issues will sorted very soon. You have our money now and you could just walk away with the ten pounds I gave you for your product. You will never see another ten pounds from me but maybe that doesn’t matter to you. Or you can sort this issue out and listen to the gaming community when they say “fix this game please”. Dice and EA are onto something special in that Battlefield 1943 is a great example of a good game at a very good price and available to purchase anywhere at anytime. But the issues with voice chat and connection problems could brand it a cheap game with a cheap execution. So please – get this fixed and I mean now damn it!

Tournaments and competitions for this title are on hold until it is fixed. I cannot host a competition when people are failing to connect or are getting disconnected whilst playing. I will be keeping a sharp eye on this title and hope they fix it soon.