EA's new Battlefield 2142 map pack conducts a surgical strike on your wallet.
One of the really neat things about in-game advertising is that it offsets the price you pay for your games. So when Electronic Arts sells ad space in Battlefield 2142, you don't have to fret about being charged for new content. Hence these three new maps and a smattering of other content in the Northern Strike expansion.
Oh, wait, that's not quite how it worked out, is it? Battlefield 2142, a full-priced game with ads, has expanded with Northern Strike, a three-map pack you can buy and download through EA Link, a mandatory store program that wants to live in your task bar. Northern Strike is arguably worth the ten bucks you're being charged not necessarily because these three maps are good, but because Battlefield 2142 is worth playing but short on content. Considering how stingy the game's map selection was when it was released, what else are you going to do? Turn to the mod community? Not if Electronic Arts has any say in the matter.
Northern Strike adds three new maps that play by their own slightly tweaked rules. You can play them in Titan mode, fighting against and eventually inside giant ships hovering over the battlefield. Or you can play a variation on Conquest mode called Assault Lines. These battles are set up as attacker/defender matches, with the caveat that the attacker can't take the defender's main base until he's seized the rest of the map. This doesn't have much practical impact on the gameplay, which is the same flag capping Battlefield has always been known for. But it does mean you can't take out the defender's assets with a coordinated deep strike. In other words, you have to play fair, and then you have to push hard against a final stronghold, probably taking heavy casualties in the process and possible swinging the score in the defender's favor.
The new maps don't have any bot support. Electronic Arts has quietly done away with any sort of single player option. This is disappointing, since the bots in the Battlefield games have gotten slightly less stupid with each iteration. They at least offered a great way to learn the smaller versions of the maps before you jumped online. Now you get to wander around an empty LAN server if you want to learn a map.
All the maps are some variation of blue. Port Bavaria is an icy blue mountainside that showcases the new Goliaths. These squat menacing personnel carriers have regenerating armor and are studded with turrets. In Port Bavaria, the attackers drive a half dozen of them to the bottom of a steep slope, at which point infantry have to fire themselves up the mountainside using the Goliath's launch pods. From here, they'll have to fight their way through hangars overlooking the valley. It's a brutal D-Day style landing that actually lends Battlefield 2142 a touch of character.
Bridge at Remagen is a blue-grey city map with a ruined bridge as its centerpiece. It's otherwise easy to confuse with the blue-grey city maps from the original game. And Liberation of Leipzig, a night-time city battle, is the moodiest and bluest of these three blue maps. Aside from Port Bavaria, it's disappointing that the artists and map designers of Battlefield 2142 can't consistently muster creative energy that lives up to the gameplay.
There are new two-man hovercrafts that look like something a meter maid would drive. They're good mainly for fast transport and also for watching new players crash while trying to steer. But like the Goliaths, they only appear on the new maps.
There are new unlocks at the top of each "tree", which can also be used on the original maps. Snipers get a decoy and improved stealth, assault troops get increased ammo capacity and a radar attachment to their smoke grenades, engineers get increased ammo capacity and a homing mine, and support gunners get a deployable short range radar and a new grenade launcher. Anyone spending points on the general upgrades get new boots that help running and falling, and squad leaders get a beacon with a shortened respawn time. Since these are each perched above the highest unlock points, you probably won't be seeing many of them. Which is no great loss, since they're mostly just tweaks.
There are also new badges, pins, and ribbons, which pretty much amount to the same thing: collectibles. These make for a pleasant carrot from time to time as you're playing. "Hey, look, I get the Arctic Recognition Service Commendation Ribbon Award Badge for playing six hours on expansion maps!" Battlefield 2142 is perhaps the only PC game to fully appreciate how pointless but gratifying it is to unlock achievements.
The fact of the matter is this is decent but minimal new content that you'll want mainly because you're sick of the few maps you were given in the original game. Electronic Arts knows this. So if you're content being nickel-and-dimed, here's your opportunity to show your support for their business model, and enjoy a few new blue maps in the process.