The years have apparently been kind, too: DICE's latest sees Wake Island tweaked, rebalanced, and raring to soak up even more of your blood.Ī spiritual reworking of the first Battlefield, 1943 is a title that's been heavily shaped by its new platforms: alongside the PC version, the game will be appearing on XBLA and PSN this summer. It's familiar territory, but not unpleasantly so, and spawning there in the forthcoming Battlefield 1943 feels like coming home. As long as there have been Battlefield games, there's been this particular battlefield - it debuted with the demo for 1942, and has been cropping up ever since, even making a surprise appearance in the hit-and-miss 2142 instalment.

Who knows? Maybe Shadow's knocking about nearby.Īnd so I return to Wake Island, a balmy South Pacific hell-hole where visitors can spend the day relaxing inside scarred concrete bunkers, dine at dusk on the scrubbed decks of an ever-circling battleship, and then, when night falls, wander out for a gentle stroll along the golden sands, taking in the view and shrugging off the odd headshot.

And the second? The second is the fact that I'm currently under fairly heavy gunfire. Looking around, this could be the Greenhill Zone, were it not for a few important distinctions, the first of which is the thick plume of black smoke rising ominously from the distant jungle. The grass is a brilliant green, the sky a perfect blue, and down towards the sandy beaches, with their artfully ragged lines of gently swaying palms, I can just make out a hint of bleached white rock.

Battlefield 1943 demo xbox 360