As usual with EA games, something doesn’t work right out of the box, this time it was the registration utility. Oh sure, I only had to re-enter my serial number, but it was just a sign of the bad programming to come. That registration routine had a glitch in it that caused my serial number to get turned to garbage… it was one of those “hold the delete key for 30 seconds and then type in the right code” errors. No big deal… just a Testament of things to come.

On to the game! First, let’s see if there’s a patch… it’s been out for a while, surely there’s a patch. Ah ha, the 1.25 patch. 300MB?!?!?!?? For a patch? Oh well, I must get tons of new content with the patch. (Or maybe not)

Finally! Patch loaded and i’m in! Ready to game! Okay, pop in the clan tag and the player name and we’re rolling. Wait a second… no spaces in the names? Bummer. Another sign of the horror that awaited me.

Alright, first stop, options. Keymaps – Check. Video – Check. Audo – Wait a sec… the voice command won’t let me select a secondary sound card for voice input / output. Weird… TeamSpeak does, Ventrillo does… BF2142′s voice engine doesn’t. Bummer. True bummer. Well, i’m not reconfiguring my PC for one game, so, voice support off… moving on. Having done some DirectSound programming way back in the day, I don’t remember it being that difficult to enumerate the sound card list and display a choice to the user as opposed to just lighting up the default. I suppose that extra 20 lines of code was too much to ask. I’m sure it falls into the “Nobody will use this” category. Yeah, except all of the people with a Sound Blaster and an onboard sound card. Or a USB headset… which appears as a virtual sound card. Or a bluetooth headset, which also appears as a virtual sound card. But nobody has those, so we’ll just move on.

Okay, finally… let’s play! We’ll start with single player as i’ve never played this game before and a good bot match will get me used to the game engine. That way i’ll have at least played the game before I go out and get my few weeks of spankings as a new player online. Here we go! Single player, select maps, and start the game! Woot! After an excruciating optimization thing, the level loaded and now I can’t get in to the game. It shows the “kit” screen, I pick my kit and hit “Select Spawnpoints”. Nothing. That must just be a tab or something, even though it looks like a button. So, i’ll just click on some spawn points! Nope, nothing happening here either. Oh wait, I need to join a squad… Okay! Click the squad tab, here’s three… I click join. Good. Now i’m in a squad. I click the “continue” button (which looks exactly like the “select waypoints”, which isn’t a button.)

Game up! I’m in… no wait… i’m not. I can’t spawn. A few seconds go by and now the squad screen shows up. Okay, let’s see, let’s click all over the place and see what happens. Nothing. Nothing happens. I get a clicking noise as a conformation that i’ve done something, but no responses on anything except for leave squad, create squad, and join squad. I create a new squad with me in it, hit the manage squad button, and that interface doesn’t seem to work either. I must be crazy… it must be me… right?

I bust out the mighty Google and start running queries. Sure enough, others are having the same problem. Single player is broken in this 1.25 patch. Most people’s response in the help forums is something along the lines of “But why do you care? Single player sucks!”. Gee, that’s helpful. So now I have two options, I upgrade to the new “beta” 1.40 patch, or downgrade via uninstall/reinstall. This is just sick. I’ve also seen reports that the 1.40 beta patch has the same issue. So much for the QA process.

I fiddled around with the multi player and decided I didn’t want to bother. The spawn works in the multi player, but I die so fast it’s not even funny. I can’t get the good weapons b/c they have to be “unlocked”. Which can be difficult for those who have no clue how to play the game.

So, thank you again EA for a “pleasurable” game experience.

I’d also like to take this moment to say thanks to EA for not doing any further updates on SSX Tricky so I could play it on my Xbox 360. Oh sure, SSX 3 works… but SSX 3 SUCKED compared to Tricky. What I wanted was more tracks and some new riders for Tricky, what EA gave me was something less impressive than Tricky… and now it’s the only thing that will play on the Xbox 360. Thanks EA! This is almost as good as the C&C : Red Alert 2 thing… no updates for XP to fix any compatibility problems, but you’re sure as hell repackage it and re-sell it… bugs and all. What a crock!

So now I’m on my way to return BF2142… another disappointment from EA. I think i’ll just pre-order Enemy Territory : Quake Wars instead.