The Battlegrounds feature

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The Battle Grounds

You ever heard that old saying, “Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes”? Well with The Battle Grounds mod, you get that chance. The Battle Grounds mod, otherwise known as BG Mod is a multiplayer mod for the game Half-life by Valve. Based on the Revolutionary War, you get to fight with your black powder muskets, swords and Musketoons. It gives you the opportunity to drop those RPG’s, AKS and MP5’s and fight like a real man. This is the mod where one shot has to count.

Gameplay

BG Mod will feature 4 different game modes in the first beta from Line Battles to Capturing the base and Rescuing the Prisoners of War (POW’s). Including seven different classes for each team and thirteen different weapons, BG mod promises to show a different gameplay every time you play. Classes range from the Royal Infantry on the British side to the local Indian who feels like having a go too. As for the Americans, be anything from a Continental Solider to Militia. Medics in the mod will help you survive longer providing you are near one when you get shot. Those miniballs actually do hurt!! To make things even more exciting, why not try a cannon. Yes that’s right! Cannons will be usable in BG which should make for some really interesting games. The character models are very detailed in everything, which is where you can follow the old saying of not shooting till you see the whites of their eyes! Because you can actually see the whites of their eyes! Providing you get close enough! As far as the Net code is concerned, 32 players works a charm and is really fun on the Line Battle maps as you line up with 15 others and shoot at the advancing enemy just to watch them fall over and die.

The Battlefields

This has to be my favorite part of this mod. Playing the latest version, I was amazed at the maps. The openness and the texturing is just beautiful. If you ask anyone that was watching me play, they would tell you my keyboard short-circuited from all the drool. They are the kind of maps where they are detailed down to the last stone and make you think you were actually really there fighting. There are even ships which you can fight on. Massive ships. Not puny little things but absolutely HUGE ships. These are also detailed right down to the last wooden plank and just overall, really impressive. I congratulate the mappers of BG for their top-notch work.

Originality

This mod is one of a kind. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it before. The sounds of the mod like the ambience and the weapons are really well done with original sounds which make it all the better. It’s features like this which impress me most in a mod. When they make everything from scratch. It’s how it should be and that is what the BG team has done. From ideas to code, to design and graphics, all of it is original and that’s what I love about it most.

Lasting Appeal

The things that caught my attention with this mod, was the originality of it and the whole over design. With 7 different classes with different skills and abilities, and the 13 different weapons, you will be playing this mod for ages and ages. I started playing it 4 months ago and I still haven’t stopped. The maps are another amazing feature that stuck with me because of the detail in them. Some mods have really boring maps but the maps in BG never get boring. You can do something different every time and that’s a thing that will get this mod far. If you want to play some American and British history, this is the mod to watch.

Useful Links

The Battle Grounds Site
The Battle Grounds Forums
The BG moddb profile

ForK’s Rating

Gameplay: 9/10
Graphics: 9/10
Models: 8/10
Sounds: 8/10
Maps: 10/10

Overall: 9.5/10
KICK ASS

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Here are a few ingame images from the latest Build of BG mod. Enjoy.

Click Images to Enlarge