So if you’re one of those lucky few who haven’t trapped yourself in Battlefield Heroes’ web of intoxication yet, I salute you.  Literally, from the instant the loading screen boots your brain’s functionality seems succumbed to the toxins of the theme song’s whistle.  For a game revolving around warfare and buckshot, the mood comes across jollier and more chipper than an Easter decked in a holiday ham.  Truly you’ll never find yourself a more picnic-esque bounce through historically influenced reenactments of violence and wounds.  What Battlefield Heroes offers as a unique title may escape the average passerby who knocks its credentials with poor, price-concentrated sizing-up; however, to those gamers humble enough to pocket a few Jacksons and give a third-person blast a whirl, I salute you.  Battlefield Heroes, regardless of quality, depth, immersion, or any other qualities longingly sought after in many releases of late, delivers a giggle worth playing every now and again.  Pinching pennies turns the eye in this case, it seems.

          Crafting your avatars is as flexible as you’d like, as grounded as you’d hope.  One of my initial blunders when double-clicking yon desktop icon was my underestimation of the game’s deep customization.  I was giddily surprised to learn of my mistake when the character creation screen peeped onto the monitor.  Again, that previously-stated infectious theme song accompanied.  The packaging of character creation perfectly hugs the game’s already confessed mold of “whistle while you work” cheer.  All the clothing and physique options offered present a robust coagulation of gag costuming and notable realism.  After scratching together your character’s essentials on www.battlefield-heroes .com (meaning hair color and style, facial hair color and style, faction, class, and pigment), your character gets automatically injected into the login screen as a character choice.  From here, individual clothing pieces are up for swapping at your discretion.  These range from grenade earrings to an Indiana Jones-styled repertoire.  The player is given a plethora of variations to nitpick over, choosing a single clothing item for each significant portion of the outfit.  Such sections include the following: the head, the neck, the torso’s first layer, the torso’s second layer, the shoulders/flanks, the waist, the legs, the feet, etc.  What's surprising is the sheer amount of options given the player in a game that stresses pick-me-up gun powder flinging and pop explosions.  Besides clothing, however, the menus unroll in a delightful fashion relinquishing point-and-picking of weapons, ability stats, and the expected likes of class-based gunning.  So if you heartily expect to find yourself zipping through screens in pursuit of grenade spams and flag hoisting, sure, go for it.  The irony lies in missing out on the game’s most whimsical and solid presentation of resources.

          As far as gameplay: put circle over bad guy’s head, ignite fire stick.  Really now, what do you expect from a shooter?  Control schemes are standard and, as should be, don’t really veer from what other shooters have or what the latest PC war game sports.  The controls are happily customizable and offer nothing new to the genre (but what more can a game offer than fully exchangeable control setup?)  Keyboard and mouse mapping have never truly been an issue in many computer games and such renders the platform unarguably adaptable.  Nothing along those lines have changed so individual control swatches shall continue sticking around.  As far as gameplay handling, no issues readily present themselves and by now the shooter genre has developed glued standards.  Battlefield Heroes has stepped in them like similarly minded predecessors, stuck to them, and satisfies thusly.  There’s nothing overly or “underly” interesting about interface input versus output.  Do you have a mouse and keyboard?  You’ll survive dandily.  Do you know which end says “Blam!?”  I thought so.  Everything else is cookies.

          Game difficulty falls under the same umbrella of user controls – you dictate without resistance.  Difficulty in online multiplayer games is usually restricted to your own ability (if you suck at shooters, obviously life in Battlefield Heroes will be a little bit gruffer).  However, this title takes a clever yet simple alternative route in server selection.  Players are automatically placed into servers with people of similar or equal character levels and skills.  This reduces the feeling of “newbs” versus Norse gods that often reigns in online games.  Camping of the talentless, here, eats its gun, and those who are no longer the victims of veteran peashooters often give thanks to this mechanic.  This implementation constricts players’ access to coordination among friends, though.  Because players cannot choose specific servers to populate, hopping a-to amid foes and throes with your best friend comes around only by luck.  In a sense this can be judged as crippling difficulty – deprivation of coordination among gaming buddies – but really just serves as a roadblock before noncommittal good times.  Whereas many other games in the genre offer explicit information regarding which map you launch, how many people are currently connected, the match’s progress, which players, specifically, are currently playing, their rankings, teams, and all that jazz, Battlefield Heroes juts you into a game hassle-free… and option-free.  Other than this quirk, however, nothing stands between your own spitfire and victory but your ability to align a crosshair with a baddy’s skullcap.  It’s really as simple as that.  If you can’t wrestle your opponents’ bullets to the ground tactically, you surely will bodily.  Resting assured everyone else firing away alongside me sucks as bad as I do does supply peace of mind, of course.  This feature gets a thumb up for usefulness and a thumb down for selection.

          Battlefield Heroes takes lightly the rigid formula of riflemen and rivalry, too.  As already stated, Battlefield Heroes offers gamers a niche with properties of flighty fun.  Those of short attention spans may easily slug giddy bodies 'round a shoot-‘em-up map with minimal guilt and minimal commitment.  War-based shooters have been chugging down the route lately of immersive engagement that requires patience to grow your attention into (and effortful attention to detail in order to appreciate their art completely).  These games serve a very particular and worthy purpose, but those without the necessary cash cow to milk for them, the dedication to skill or tactic building, or even the willingness to translate war games with a military jargon can jump into a BH match with no thought toward consequence.  Unhesitant leaps into gameplay can be made without untimely preparation.  Professional war shooters like the Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, and Brothers in Arms franchises offer immersive realism while Battlefield Heroes offers popgun innocence.  It delivers on its claim to a unique direction.  Casual gamers can achieve joy efficiency with its undemanding skill set and time constraints while more privileged shooter fans can enjoy its bubblegum playing style.  Such is a perfect confection for in-between serious titles hogging serious gamers’ attention.  As well, Battlefield Heroes allows for violence all ages can enjoy without military truths frightening younger gamers.  Goal orientation prevents the turning away of older players as well. A huge contributing factor in worth is yet to be counted, though.  The game itself comes quite literally without a price tag.  Not too many games online or offline can boast of that, and even if they can, not often deservedly.  So no, the title doesn’t break new ground with innovation or technology.  No, it doesn’t excite with “never before seen!” exclamations.  It does, however, package itself as a product fit for any age or interest level without wanting green in return.  That’s original enough for me, I’d wager.

          Our good ol’ BH opts for the classic approach of character classes like the standard offensive strikers, defensive railmen, and utility side-along comrades that make up the wartime gameplay execution.  However, the usual familiarities found in most other genre natives have been moderated to fit into a tighter, simpler, and more approachable manner with the straightforwardness equivalency of, well, firing a gun.  The player’s experience is largely dependent on the class they choose to play.  Players choose their characters’ bases according to the molds of the stealth artist, the average balanced “badge” (soldier), and the bullet dispenser.  These three classes are given the names Commando, Soldier, and Gunner; their names are pretty straightforward, really.  Each class is given a default assortment of weapons to equip a pair from, each class set differentiating from the others in the expected ways.  Commandos parry the battlefield with strong, detoured attacks using sniper rifles and a knife.  Gunners may choose from a hefty array of fully automatic weapons and miniguns.  Soldiers receive the standard package of generic rifles, shotguns, and semi-automatics.  Tagged onto these three sets are the pistols which can be found throughout each class (they’re the underlying basic weapon – everyone gets a few to choose from if they want).  On top of this is the segregation of class abilities.  Again, a short list of abilities is available to each class equally (minor healing, vehicle repair, etc.), but apart from these the central bulk of meaningfully unique abilities are restricted to their respective class.  This makes for a play style that caters to the player well enough, and the abilities have obvious correlations as well.  Commandos have a few abilities concentrating on stealth and damage increases for sniping, gunners have some to help them foot the game faster (they run slower by default) and allow damage spamming, while soldiers get some useful utilities like a handy healing and enemy detection.  Each class has some golden eggs that will and have become targeted and popular.  There’s always something useful to pack.  Of course, we mustn’t slight the inclusion of numerous piloted vehicles, though.  Jeeps, tanks, airplanes, anti-armored vehicle sentries, and the like are found by the score and gross dotting the Heroes maps (*whisper* only two maps exist though).  The game’s pace is broken pleasantly by easily alterable character specialization and hunkering metal steered into other hunks of metal.

          There’s not much to say about the plotted interaction – say, story, per se – and so doesn’t allot the most amount of premeasured attention.  What the game gives you as far as story really just boils down to do you want to fight for the brash, Americanized-yet-claimed-not Royal Army or the fellows that bear a strange resemblance to the Nazis, the National Army.  That’s it folks.  You needn’t read between the lines for climaxes and character development.  There just plain… isn’t any.  Is that a bad thing, though, in the genre Battlefield Heroes lends itself to and fan base it is aimed to generate?  Indubitably not, my dear.  What you receive is a carnival of fog horn humor and whistle-worthy catchiness.  You’ll have a good time with your war experience despite the lack of war stories and drama.  In fact, this loose character trait is what gives the game its edge.  It can’t miss on purposeful delivery if it’s not expected by the consumers!

          Battlefield Heroes doesn’t waste resources unnecessarily spitting out pretty pixels, I’ll say.  That doesn’t hurt its rep but of course it’s not a perk either.  Battlefield Heroes aims for a direction that many may be recently familiar with – toon-themed modeling and animation.  This tactic definitely does not play to the realism fan’s liking but, in effect, circumvents its personal weakness of being a nonprofit game.  If it isn’t “kneading” any “dough” then it in turn won’t be able to push graphical limits.  On that same note, though, its consumers’ visual expectations shouldn’t and shan’t be as high as they are when critiquing marketed games.  All of your fun times to be had in Battlefield Heroes will be completely devoid of eye-popping shading and awing textures, but of course such luxuries would not fit the vein of charisma the game has.  It keeps its gameplay simple, its appeal simple, and its graphical display simple.  One can compare the title’s art style with the popular examples of Team Fortress 2 and The Incredibles.  The concept shadowing the game’s design decisions, surely, mirror those made in those two products it compares to.  The gist of it boils to this when regarding graphical application: you get what you pay for, the art direction matches the genre to perfection, and none of it is notably incredible or discreditable, but exactly what it should be.  In the end, it just feels correct and that’s all you need.

          When audio value is considered… Well, it’s got a catchy theme song.  You’ll hear the blessed but burdening jingle at the title screen, when you fall asleep at night, when thumbing through the game’s menus, when listening to OTHER music, when loading new maps, when walk the dog in the morning.  Honestly, you’ll probably end up requesting for your own wedding or accepting that free CAT scan offered by your work instead.  It really is catchy but corrupting.  The point stressed earlier, though, is that this single melody is the only true noticeable music of interest in the game.  You may enjoy the brief songs of raising a team flag or the occasional whoop or clink, but that’s all there is to it.  No hard feelings because of it of course.  By the end of the day you’ll still be cussing yourself out for whistling jubilantly, incessantly, and probably crudely in public.  It can’t be helped.

          What makes all of Battlefield Heroes’ aspects commendable is that they come without any fees.  The bouncy fun seems bouncier, the gameplay feels more prone to good times, the art style looks more fitting, etc.  All of these sorts of things are made possible by not having to pay for them.  Unfortunately, if this weren’t the case then I don’t believe I’d find myself purchasing our good friend Heroes.  Such a statement is definitely not meant to knock the title in any way, but it simply would not be able to hold its own against online multiplayer games.  It’s inarguably cute for what it is; I’m fond of it in a casual sense.  Scheduling, gaming priorities, and the game’s lack of retention over multiple matches (it’s best played in half-hours) denies it spotlight.  It can have an in-reserve bench spot, of course.  Aside from this it is as fun as you are casual.  If you require shocking immersion or hours of bombshell lurching, you won’t find it here.  What you will find is a formidable addition to casual multiplayer gaming that nobody can dislike fully or pigeonhole as audience-specific.  At the very least it will make you a deliverer of chuckles and guffaws.  That’s not a bad thing now is it?