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Battlefield 2142: Northern Strike

Electronic Arts strikes back with a download-only booster pack for its latest Battlefield title. Battlefield 2142: Northern Strike was announced in mid-January, and EA almost managed to get it out of the door before the snow melted in developer DICE's native Sweden. Northern Strike garnered a lot of interest and anticipation, as it promised much more than previous Battlefield booster packs: ten new unlockable items, two vehicles, three maps and a whole new gameplay mode.

Northern Strike fits into BF2142's loose storyline as follows: the European Union is preparing for a counterattack against the Pan-Asian Coalition's forces, which are entrenched in key positions in Western Europe. Europe, under a new ice age, is dead and inhabitable, and only a few locations have enough strategic importance to occupy with military force. Enough of BF2142's less than well-developed storyline, though: let's look at what Northern Strike really has to offer in terms of playable content.

Maps, Guns and Assault What?

The vanilla version of Battlefield 2142 only has 10 maps, a major gripe for many players, so Northern Strike's three maps are a considerable addition. Two of the maps, Port Bavaria and Bridge at Remagen, are playable in both the new Assault Lines and the familiar Titan game mode. The third map, Liberation of Leipzig is Assault Lines only and it is the best example of this game style. Assault Lines is, in short, a slightly modified Conquest game. Just as in previous Conquest games, both teams attempt to capture flags placed on the map, and the side that controls fewer flags continuously loses tickets. Every time a player gets killed, their team loses a ticket. When one side runs out of tickets, the game ends. Assault Lines changes only one rule: one side, the defending PAC, can now lose all their flags and therefore the game.

The name Assault Lines is somewhat counter-intuitive: to many players, the name suggests that there are either supply lines involved, or multiple routes for victory. Instead, EU has to take all other flags before they can attack PAC's home base, and flags can be captured in any order. Based on the name, I expected an Unreal Tournament Onslaught-style design, where finishing one route to the objective is enough to unlock the main objective. Right now it is relatively easy for PAC to stop EU's assault on their home base, as all it takes is one Recon soldier sneaking behind EU's lines and taking one flag. Despite this simulation of supply lines, flags cut from friendly territory are still usable as spawn points. Only the new map design and two new vehicles spice things up a little.

The single biggest flaw of Northern Strike is EA's failure to provide proper documentation. In the days before and following the booster pack's release, Battlefield-themed forums were filled with questions about Assault Lines and other features of the game. The boxed copy of Northern Strike contains nothing but a download code for EA Link, and the expansion's official site is only advertised in-game. Even Northern Strike Training resembles a promotional site rather than real documentation, as it is done entirely in Flash and concentrates on catchy blurbs, pictures and other eye candy and contains a few paragraphs of information at most. Most of the site is completely irrelevant for actual gameplay, and some of the info there is outright misleading.

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