Battlefield 1942

The Good
The absolute freedom of non-linear maps is a big reason why this game is the best of all time. You don't have to follow a specific path as in Medal of Honor or Castle Wolfenstein or any other FPS I can think of. You can see up to 1.5 miles into the distance and you can spend 10-15 minutes walking from here to there. Great graphics for the sheer size of it all. The vast range of weapons and vehicles that are at your disposal is impressive. You can fly planes and bombers, man AA guns and coastal guns, captain battleships, landing crafts, and submarines, drive tanks, jeeps, transport trucks. Then you can choose from 5 types of soldiers (infantry, armor, medic, engineer, sniper). You can pick up any dead soldier's pack. (Very helpful) Huge maps. Tactics for victory are limitless. Some of the things I've seen have been really funny. An Infantry dude got on top of my tank and I didn't know he was there. When I got out of my tank to check out a building, he jumped in my tank and nailed me . Another time, an engineer left a tank with expo packs around it out in the open. When I approached, he blew the packs and killed me...and then fixed the tank and drove off..

The Bad
Really nothing, but these are some petty annoyances. The controls are clunky. You've got keyboard, mouse, and joystick for planes and you have to switch back and forth depending on what you are doing. The game crashes from time to time, but it is a rare occurrence and only bothers me when I am leading in points.or about to take a critical flag. I had fun for the first week playing single player game but soon learned the bots AI went from lobotomy to gung-ho, snipe you from a mile away with very little in between. Don't even think of flying planes in single player near AA guns. I do most of my flying practice on empty servers. The communications interface could be easier. You must have a kick ass system of at least 1ghz with 512mb memory and broadband connection. This is strictly a multi-player (online) game with single player mode for practice.

The Bottom Line
Simply the best game I've ever played. The most open-ended game I've seen and the patches and updates only continue to improve this masterpiece.