14 DAY TRIAL // Free games sound like a whole lot of fun, but usually they're not. While there are a lot of free online titles, the fact that they don't have a proper budget and lack the necessary investments is all but too obvious once you log in and start playing. They may feature some of the big, core elements of the big-budget titles, but the gameplay itself is very often more flawed than the graphics. Still, there are games that have proven they can be free and still maintain a high level of quality. A classic and overwhelming example is the Half Life mod, Counter Strike, before it reached 1.6 and became part of Valve's priced titles.
But there's another free shooter out now, and it looks like it's doing pretty well for itself. Electronic Arts and DICE have put together a spinoff of their classic franchise, Battlefield, and made the game available to everyone for free. Battlefield Heroes is a cartoonish version of war, in a somewhat mix of Battlefield and Team Fortress 2, but with some RPG elements thrown in. There are far fewer classes available, but each has its own special abilities and they provide enough versatility to keep the scales of war interesting and fun.
As for just how well the game is doing, the developer announced today that it had over three million registered users. Its general manager also released some pretty impressive figures for the game. "Battlefield Heroes continues to grow fast with well over 50,000 new players joining us every week," he said. "Our players have already logged in over 1,300 years worth of game time and nearly 300 million kills over 150 million five-minute game rounds. The vast majority of our players play for free, but if they want to customize their character or enhance their game with weapon upgrades or widgets then there is a cool item for them in our store."
While there aren't really three million people playing Battlefield Heroes, since most of them just registered to check out the free game and stopped when it didn't fit their tastes, the fact that the developers actually managed to get this many people interested in the game is still very impressive.