Connection-wise, despite having to spam "Join Game" for a few minues just to get in on Wednesday morning, it wasn't too bad. I also noticed that it's 43 seconds until autokick and that the Coral Sea event is scheduled at 19:43 GMT on the 10th. Neat. When the evening arrived, however, it was almost impossible for me to get back in.

I was really curious to see what DICE had done with the game and there are things I miss, but on the whole, I'm having a lot of fun with it. One of the things that I miss from having played too many hours of Battlefield 1942 on the PC was that there are no more driveable carriers or battleships. I'll miss pummeling a target at distance while trying to avoid beaching the ship. That also means that it avoids having players beaching (accidentally or intentionally) what might be the only spawn left in the game for their side allowing the enemy to sink it.

What I no longer miss are how indestructible wooden houses were when hit by bombs, tank fire, or grenades. I was caught by surprise when I was crossing a bridge in a tank on Wake Island and it collapsed beneath me, blowing both of us up.

But one trick that I liked to use in '42 was the exploding kubelwagen.

Vehicles packed with explosives make for great tank killers...if you survive long enough to get in close. 

In Battlefield 1942, you could do this with almost any 'car' like vehicle...jeeps, Japanese staff cars, or German kubelwagens...as long as you had enough demolition charges as an Engineer.

German kubelwagens were often best because they had closed doors all around and were fast, meaning that the explosives wouldn't fall out as often if you drove around like a nut while being able to coast the car far enough away after jumping out, catching the enemy by surprise. Jeeps were fast, but because of their open sides (and wonky physics), the charges would often fall out before you had gotten to that tank you wanted to take out.

Now that the dynamite is sticky in '43, you don't have to worry as much, turning these four wheeled transports into deadly tank-killers leaving it only to your timing.

The big downside to this is that you have to choose the Scout class for the demo skill and if you don't like sniping, you'll find yourself running back for another car if you're not as good with the rifle as you are with crazy. The timing is also tricky as you can easily blow yourself up along with the tank. Oops.

As for some things that I've noticed that haven't changed from the old game:

• there are only so many planes...please stop camping plane spawns and help your fellow soldiers!
• when spawning on the carrier and you get into a landing craft, don't just take off like it's your personal limo to the war. Please look around and see if anyone else needs to hit the beaches with you. The same goes for jeeps (unless you want to blow it up). If someone is shooting at your vehicle and they are on your side, they probably want a ride.
• as boring as it might sound, leaving some people behind to guard flags isn't a bad idea

Team balancing also seems to be something of a problem. In one game, most of the people on the losing team left leaving only three people versus nine. The game didn't autobalance the sides. There wasn't an option that I could see for anyone to switch sides, forcing us to leave the game and go through spamming "Join" all over again to find one with better balance. Hopefully this will get fixed later on.