Battlefield 1943 - my game of the year for 2009!

I love video games, although in all honesty I don't have as much time for them as I would like these days. Since my son was born I've probably done more reading about video games than actually playing them. Even though I thought I'd managed to catch all the exciting news from E3 and knew about the most exciting upcoming releases, I still managed to miss the news that Battlefield 1943 is coming out!

This is huge news as far as I'm concerned. I'd say that DICE's Battlefield 1942 is probably my favourite game ever. And I've played a lot of games. The pace and intensity of the game was perfect to my mind and although its WWII setting is very serious, the game never took itself too seriously. Basically, playing it was just a blast! I spent a crazy number of hours playing the Wake Island map in BF1942 and they're bringing it back here (see the vid below). That's why, without having even played the game yet, I'm declaring Battlefield 1943 to be my game of the year.

What's even better news is that it's not even a full priced game. I guess that since DICE are using a game engine that they'd already developed (for Battlefield: Bad Company) and it's a multiplayer only game with just 3 maps initially*, they're making it available on Xbox Live Marketplace for just 1200 points (and on the PlayStation Network for $14.99, with a PC version coming later). Fantastic!

* Another nice feature of BF1943 is the community reward of a 4th map once everyone has built up a combined kill count of 43m. Great stuff.