Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons of World War II (Mac Games, 2004)

While the secret weapons add on to Battlefield 1942 is not a whole new game it is a welcome addition to the game play. If you have gotten bored with the original missions and weapons this will renew your thirst for the game. It's true there are not a ton of new missions but they are not bad.

The bad news is that some of the new weapons and vehicles pretty much suck. The worst in my opinion is the tiny rocket planes, they are so fast they are all but impossible to control. I suppose if you have ultra quick reflexes you might love them. Same thing goes for the guided missiles (I.E. rockets).

Just like many things in the game though everything has balance. The biggest tank (and I do mean big) crawls at less than walking speed making it a easy target. The tank that has the most punch now is basically a rolling sawed off shot gun with a big diameter barrel and no length at all. It has a great punch but you must point the tank at the target and you can't move the barrel at all (even up and down) so getting good aim is hard but when you do everything in it's path is a goner.

One item that is really cool to play with if not that helpful is the rocket pack (ALA buck rogers), it allows you to fly in short bursts to scale walls and fences and even get up on roof tops. Problem is everybody sees you take off and the enemy tends to target you. You also have a throwing knife and it does come in handy. You have a flying wing, Amphibious vehicles and such that are fairly good and help out a bit.

I do like the sidecar for getting around quickly and I now will grab one of those instead of a jeep as I think they are a little quicker.

One major thing to note, and the reason I did not give this more stars is that the new weapons only work in the new scenes, you can't use them in your old favorites.