Few years ago, my friends invited me to come with them and play at a cybercafe. I was reluctant at first because a) I don’t play games a lot (not much of a gamer) and b) they wanted to play “Battlefield 1942“, a game I never even heard of before. But what the hell, I’ll just play it anyway and the rest is history…
**Play Battlefield Theme music** Duhdun dun duhdun dun! Duhdun dun DUHDUN DUN!!!
Battlefield 1942 is a WWII first person shooter (FPS) that can be played either as a single player or as a multi-player (which is more popular). You play as one of the five classes: Assault, Sniper, Medic, Engineer and Anti-Tank (Two classes were added on the sequel: Support and Spec Ops). The basic gameplay revolves around ‘tickets’. Your team loses tickets when one of your own dies or your opponents captured a flag (flags are used as respawn points for the deceased players). Later installments includes Battlefield Vietnam, Battlefield 2 (the true sequel) and Battlefield 2142. I’ve yet to play BF 2142 although I don’t like the whole future concept thing. I guess I just like history and BF 1942 and BF Vietnam actually taught me few lessons on history or at least made me want to find out more about stuff like “Operation Market Garden” and “Ho Chi Minh Trail“.
I never considered myself as a good player. Unlike my friends who has the game at home, the only time I play Battlefield was evertime we go out to the cybercafe on weekends. Besides, I played it because I enjoyed it and not for showing off my skills to people (sure, I get boastful when I beat people once in a while). I always use “I Really Suck” as my name for the game which makes it more hilarious if I claim the top score (Haha! you got beaten by ‘I Really Suck’). I don’t play Battlefield anymore because a) I moved on to other more important things and b) Battlefield isn’t big here in Brunei (the masses are more into Winning Eleven or Tekken 5; It’s not that I have anything against those games but I just don’t play them). I don’t want to write everything about these games because you can find those here or just go to any of the fansites such as PlanetBF or Total BF2. What I’m going to write instead is a list of memorable moments (my so-called war stories) that happened to me while playing Battlefield in no particular order:
Jumping over the landing craft – Omaha Beach, BF1942
I was a noob back then (I’ve always been a noob in BF anyway) and this fact was immortalised by one incident that friends and I would always talk about. We were planning to storm the beach together but I mistakenly spawned at the wrong ship! thus delaying the attack. So I had to commit suicide and respawned at the right ship where the landing crafts were. Meanwhile, all my friends have already gathered at the landing craft waiting for me. I was in a hurry so I jump, thinking that I would land on the landing craft. Instead, I jumped OVER it and splashed into the waters. After a minute of laughter, they decided to leave me and storm the beach without me. WTF! I had to swim to get to the beach only to get shot in the head by a German sniper!! Eventually, Omaha Beach became my favourite map and I kept getting first place for it.
Never ending battle – Ho Chi Minh Trail, BF Vietnam
Our intention was to have a quick play at this map called the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It looked to be a short round when we captured all the flag except one under 15 to 20 minutes. But we end up spending the next hour trying to capture the last flag. The problem was simple, the Vietcongs had only one flag so everytime we kill one, he will respawn at that flag. Thus creating a nonstop wave of Vietcongs coming right at us. After half an hour, some of us (like me) gave up and decided to just try to get as many frags rather than capturing the flag. We eventually got the flag after many suicidal attempts.
I went guerilla and ’Aim & Shoot’ – Operation Cleansweep, BF2
When it comes to FPS, I tend to just shoot the enemy without attempting to aim. This happened to me at Counter Strike where I wasted bullets with my Big Machine Gun only to be killed by a single shot to the head by a sniper. Aim and shoot…that’s the golden rule.
Once we played Operation Cleansweep, a heavily one sided map with the US team was raping us (MEC team) with their air superiority. I got pissed off so i decided to infiltrate their base and try to attach as many c4 that I can on the jets, helicopters, artilleries, radar, EVERYTHING!! (Just like the Trashcan Man from the Stand) Since I was a commander, I can easily request supply drops to continously resupply myself with c4. I took a boat and drove it to the US base. One of my friend, let’s just call him Necro, spotted me and attempted to blow me up several times with his jet. But with a simple ‘zig zagging’ of the boat, I managed to avoid him. It was like in a James Bond type action movie hehe. I abandoned ship and hid in a small island covered with trees. Necro couldn’t spot me so he just artillery fire the area. Luckily I survived (WTF) and swam to the base. Attached c4 to all the artillery, planes and helis. I hid on one of the building and watched a recently spawned American soldier getting blown up in mid air by my c4.
Eventually, they knew I was at their base and I became a target of their manhunt. One guy spotted me and was shooting while running towards me. He missed because he was doing my mistake; not aiming. So I stood there and aimed my hand gun. Bang! I killed that son of a bitch with a single shot to the head. Aim and shoot…aim and shoot. Then Necro came with his jet to blow me up WTF!
Here are several very amateur (& embarassing) flash cartoon that I made few years ago. Events from the cartoon are inspired by those Battlefield stories told in this post:
