I go to EA’s Community Day for Battlefield 2142

Sorry for the lack of posts today… I wasn’t around. I had been invited to EA’s Community Day for their coming release of Battlefield 2142.
I hate waking up early, but that’s what I had to do to be there in time. I had been invited since I work for the Battlefield 2 mod RisingConflicts and have been involved in modding the Battlefield series game(s). I got there and after meeting with the guys gathered for the day at the Sofitel Hotel across the street from EA’s (Electronic Arts) Headquarters. After walking over there and being given a chance to buy some EA swag, we where directed to a room full of Nvidia provided machines to play 2142 on. After playing a bit of Conquest on a variety of maps. We went to a lunch in the EA cafeteria with their 4 Chefs and large variety foods. Enjoying our comped meal, surrounded by large posters touting different games (in different areas) and one very pretty car, was a nice way to spend a break. We went back to find they hadn’t finished switching everything over to Titan mode, and we realized we had missed a demo on Crisis, they had shown that to another group since we where battlefield community, it didn’t matter for us… I wonder why EA was doing a demo on that.

Game wise it felt buggy still. They had some good things in it, be we had numerous crashes, funky bugs and Titan mode we’d have the titan blow up and respawn (even if it was supposed to blow soon). so you’d have new shield and a soon destroyed titan. We where given 40 unlocks which allowed us to play with all unlocks, and I have to say that was a lot of fun. There are some very interesting unlocks like sentry bots that fired at bad guys… so you could just leave it and go… but only 1 at a time. Also I noted floating sentry’s that fired on the same people you fired on, and followed you. But it has limits on use… something to do with the number in a squad. So I never saw it used, or was able to use it. All the kits (four of them) where pretty nbalanced and with all unlocks, I was able to go from one to another without feeeling that I was screwing myself. Each has it’s strengths, but I still found myself playing similar kits that I usually played.

All in all I think it’ll be a fun game to play, but modding wise it sounds like it’ll be a nightmare. And League wise with how neutered the kits are without any unlocks (no grenades or mines and most the cool things), I can’t see it being played as is. But they said they may make a “stock unlock” for league use that can be selected. There was lots of other talk but one cool thing they did (besides let us play a lot of BF2142, which actually got complaints from some who were not as used to hours of play…), the one cool thing, was showing a preview they made of Battlefield: Bad Company. Bad ass graphics, destuctible environment, and funny preview. That was one I wish I could release with the below pictures, but not photos or clips of it where allowed.

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BTW – Quick hint: After you activate a unlock, make sure you customize you kit and add it to be used. (only has to be done once per server join)

UPDATE: IGN was able to get some video while we where there. They must of came in, played for a very short period and then left, because I don’t rememebr them being there… let along being able to do videos. We where told Screenshots where ok (and yes I realize I forgot to make a bunch) but oh well.

The videos where from this page.

Videos too big for inlining, Quicktime wants to fully load each time, so linked. (Right click and save-as)

Video 1
Video 2
Video 3
Video 4
Their write up about the day is here.

Tags: Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142, Computers, Electronic Arts, Gaming, Interesting, News, Photographs