The future of games is going to be through downloadable media. It is inevitable. The sheer amount of money companies can save on packaging and burning and stocking fees will be tremendous. The only thing holding back this natural progression is the limits of what can be currently downloaded and at what quality. Most downloadable games are decent at best but are usually lacking some polish and are graphically inferior. Battlefield 1943 has set the bar for downloadable titles. Pick up a controller and get into this fight as fast as you can.

BF 1943 is an update to the smash hit BF 1942 on the PC. The graphics have gone through a tremendous upgrade and the game runs on the Frostbite engine which allows 90% of anything you see to be destroyed with great explosions. BF 1943 is an online multiplayer game. No single player, no tacked on campaign, no offline bots, nothing of the sort. I just got my trophy for playing my 100th match last night and have not had the slightest bit of trouble getting into a match (the servers on Xbox Live have been a bit saturated, but the PS3 servers are fine). The game allows 12 v 12 play which is awesome because the maps are of medium size and you won’t find yourself wandering around with no one to shoot.

The game has some limitations. There are only two factions, American and Japanese which have three classes: short, medium and long range. These are your machine gunner, rifleman, and sniper. You will soon find they are weighted perfectly and offer different styles of play. The true test is when the games are evenly classed. Each class has secondary explosive weapons which are as deadly as they are fun. Right now there are three maps, but a free fourth is coming once your respective console gets 43 million kills in the Coral Sea Challenge. New free map, new game variant. All for the price of zero.

You honestly will not find a better value for your $15 bucks this summer. You can fight on land, sea, and even air. The game is a blast to play. The controls are tight, the weapons/classes evenly weighted, and the graphics are surprisingly good for a game you just downloaded. Battlefield 1943 is selling like hot cakes and chances are you may have bought it already. You made a smart decision my friend. For those who were waiting for some consensus reviews to come out, hop on the bandwagon and hop on the servers. This game will be played a lot this summer and expect it to break a lot of records in the process.