Who doesn’t like to shoot the living crap out of their friends in a simulated environment? Seriously, I know I enjoy it, and if you don’t, then you’re either weird or a devout Buddhist. One of these is acceptable, the other is not.

The Battlefield franchise has always served well as a primary facilitator of online death-dealing. And for the most part, they’ve succeeded spectacularly when attempting to make the experience as fun and replayable as possible.

Battlefield: Bad Company was my first true experience with the series (outside of dabbling, at least), and thankfully so, because Battlefield 1943 takes the engine that powered Bad Company (the so called Frostbite engine), and throws both it and you onto three (soon to be four), tropical islands. I say “soon to be four”, because as soon as each system hits 43 million total kills in the game, the fourth map will be unlocked for everyone. Frankly, the three initial maps are fun enough for what you pay here, so one more map coming for free is a huge bonus. And that kill count won’t take very long. At the time of writing this, Xbox 360 is about half way and PS3 just over a quarter of the way there.

The team at DICE have essentially given us Bad Company set in the world of Battlefield 1942, although the weapons aren’t customisable or unlockable and there are only three classes to choose between. Those classes, however, seem to be a combination of the usual Battlefield standards. Demolitions are combined with Sniper, the Tactician now combines with Engineer to form an Anti-Tank load-out, and the general all-rounder Soldier class marches forward as per usual. And the lacking of a Medic is not noticable, as DICE have provided us with an army of regenerating troops. Yeah, they’ve gone the way of Call Of Duty with this one so health kits or injections are not required.

The melee weapons are quite inventive too. The Soldier comes with a generic combat knife, whereas Mr Anti-Tank packs a wrench for his head-knocking duties and the Sniper pulls out a menacing short-sword. All of these kill in one hit, but suffer greatly from the same annoyance I found in Bad Company, no auto-aim (a game mechanic much appreciated in Call Of Duty). This means precision is key, otherwise you’ll miss and likely have your face breached by your opponent, before you’re even capable of swinging a second time.

The maps are extremely well balanced in terms of their layout, with small to large areas housing multiple buildings and plenty of open space and foliage in between. You’ll also find a myriad of vehicles in typical Battlefield style, with jeeps, tanks, boats and airplanes all at your disposal. There are also bunkers on each map which allow you to control an air strike (although be warned that these things are so powerful that team kills are fairly common in order for someone to gain access).

So there you have it, in a not-so-nutty nutshell. Battlefield 1943 is essentially Bad Company on some islands with a little less choice for customisation, but hey, its 1200 MS Points. Who’s really going to argue that there isn’t enough content for that steal of a price?

As a huge fan of Bad Company, I’m already obsessed with this game (gamernights are abound, believe me). And initial server issues aside, everyone even half-interested should at least download the trial and give it a shot. If you’ve enjoyed the previous entries into the franchise, you’ll appreciate this game for what it is; a cheap yet enjoyable, condensed Battlefield experience.

Oh, and the menu screen isn’t too shabby either.

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