Forgotten Hope (FH) takes place during World War II, just like the original BF:1942, however FH adds more realism to the game and the vehicles as well as adding additional maps. When I'm in the mood for some good old fashioned WWII fighting, I load up FH.
There are many more mods for BF:1942 which to this day enjoy some level of popularity. Some of them include BF:1918 - a WWI mod, BF:Pirates - the name says it all, BattleGroup: 1942 - another WWII mod, Eve of Destruction - another favorite of mine, and Interstate 1982 - one of the more esoteric mods.
Battlefield 1942 is still a highly enjoyable game with hundreds of online servers still serving up hours of multi player fun. And better yet, the game has relatively low system requirements. A minimum of a 500MHz CPU, 128MB RAM and a 32MB Video card are required. If you bought a low-end laptop today, the game would run just beautifully - and with nothing else to buy! And as if that weren't enough good news, Electronic Arts has been kind enough to bundle the original BF:1942 along with the expansion packs and Battlefield: Vietnam for one low price! In the end, you get two games plus the expansion packs. Next, simply download the patches to update the games, then download any and all of the mods you want and enjoy!
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Apache helicopter in Desert Combat
BF:1942 and all of the mods would almost certainly keep most FPS gamers content when all you've got to play with is a low-end laptop or older desktop. I have tested the game and all mods mentioned in this article with both a 3.2GHz P4 desktop running Windows XP and the previously mentioned laptop (a Compaq Presario F500) running Windows Vista Home Premium, and both machines played flawlessly with all settings set to maximum. The video resolution was set at 1024 x 768 on both machines. I experienced no stuttering or delay on either machine. This was how the game was meant to be played!
Also, you'll find many such games on the market - and the best news is that they are considerable less expensive than the current generation of games. Compare the price of the Battlefield 1942 collection versus Crysis. Then, to add salt to the wound, compare the system requirements of both games. When I played the downloaded demo of Crysis on both machines, the results were sadly disappointing. The desktop managed to struggle through the game with only an occasional hiccup, but the laptop was so severely lagging that I gave up after roughly twenty minutes of silently cursing both the game and my laptop.
Remember, sometimes it's not what you play, but rather who you pwn!
