Battlefield 2, is the next release of the best-selling "Battlefield" series by DICE studios (published by EA). Battlefield 2 puts you in a fictitious future conflict between the United States, China, and a Middle Eastern Coalition. The game has all standard elements of a first person shooter, including various soldier class types, vehicles, diverse weaponry, and well constructed maps. What Battlefield 2 brings to the table is an unprecedented ability to coordinate your team’s actions to defend and assault various targets.
Battlefield 2, is the next release of the best-selling "Battlefield" series by DICE studios (published by EA). Battlefield 2 puts you in a fictitious future conflict between the United States, China, and a Middle Eastern Coalition. The game has all standard elements of a first person shooter, including various soldier class types, vehicles, diverse weaponry, and well constructed maps. What Battlefield 2 brings to the table is an unprecedented ability to coordinate your team’s actions to defend and assault various targets. For those of you not familiar with the original Battlefield 1942 mode of play, let me summarize it briefly for you. The objective of the game is to conquer and hold strategic control point points throughout the map like a spread out version of “king of the hill”. Each team has a number of 'tickets' which slowly decrease in number. The speed at which your team loses tickets depends on how many control points you occupy, and the rate at which your team members die. The team whose ticket count reaches 0 first is the loser.
Game Flow
The game opens up with a heart-pounding CGI video of a team holding a control point while wave after wave of enemy’s assault it. It's been quite a while since I've seen a game with an introduction video that got me as pumped up as this one.. Once in the game, you're faced with the choice of single player or multiplayer. Both modes are essentially the same game: one being with humans and the other with computer-controlled bots. Not wanting to spend my evening playing with bots, I decided to join the masses and try online play. A new addition to Battlefield 2 is a persistent online profile which tracks practically every stat imaginable for you. The more you play online, the further you progress in ranking and the more special weapons you'll unlock for each class type. Ranking is very important if you want to apply to be the battlefield commander as the highest ranking applicant is the one selected for the job.
Once past the horrific server browser interface (more on that later) you'll hop into a 16, 32, or 64 player server. Each map size offers a completely different experience ranging from the close-combat firefights of 16 player maps to the sprawling airplane friendly 64 player maps. You'll need to pick what class of soldier you want to play as which include Engineer, Anti-Tank, Soldier, Support, Medic, and Special Forces. You'll also need to choose a squad of players to join, unless you enjoy being a lone wolf and gunned down by groups of 6 enemies!
At this point it's time to lock and load. Hop in a tank, airplane, boat, or humvee and get to your objective. You could try to walk to your objective, but 15 minutes later you may think that was a bad idea as you'll find yourself in the middle of nowhere with no help in sight. After each round is over I was pleasantly surprised to find a summary screen of statistics while the next map loaded. The summary screen shows which players received awards for the previous round as well as the statistics for each squad.
Weapons
Weapons are fantastic in this game. Each class has their own type of pistol, rifle, and special equipment. As an example, the Special Forces class has C4 packs which can be placed on the enemy’s artillery, radar, or command center. Detonating the packs with the remote detonator is always a good time. The rifles in the game are great because they’re slightly random in their fire spread. An engineer with a sub-machine gun isn’t going to be doing any type of sniping as the bullet ‘spray’ is completely ineffective except for close combat.
Why run around on foot and shoot when you can hop in a multi-million dollar vehicle and do hundreds time more destruction? The weapons on the vehicles are devastating. Transport vehicles are generally unarmed except for the occasional machine gun but the others are usually equipped with various cannons and rockets. I particularly enjoy the ‘fly by wire guided’ missiles that the attack helicopters can fly. When the missile is fired you’re provided with a “missile cam” that you can use to make minor adjustments to the flight path of the missile. Of course, when you eventually get blown out of the sky by a round-based anti-air battery, you can jump ship and deploy your parachute to hopefully glide in for an on-foot assault.
Maps
I haven’t played all of the official maps which released with the retail version, but I got a good 6 or 7 in last night and I enjoyed the layout of all but one. The buildings make for great cover and ambush points. I particularly liked the use of water in most of the maps. In addition to strategic road access points there are out of the way water access points which are great for covert attacks. In Battlefield 2 bridges are also now able to be destroyed. A few maps play on this and position strategic points which are easily accessed via a destructible bridge.
BF2 is not Destert Combat 2
For those who played Desert Combat: Battlefield 2 is not a carbon-copy of the Desert Combat mod for the original Battlefield 1942. The new features that Battlefield 2 brings to the table practically revolutionize online military combat games as far as I'm concerned. Most notably, the new "Commander mode" and the addition of built-in voice communications allow for levels of team coordination that make this game great. At the start of the round, you can apply to be the commander, and if you're the highest ranking applicant, you're elected to the position. The commander has a top-down view of the entire battlefield and is responsible for coordinating the actions of each squad. Using a simple point and click menu, the commander can issue orders like attack, defend, move, and support to specific squads at specific locations on the map. In addition to ordering squads, the commander can offer tactical insights to the team by dropping UAV's that give away the position of the enemy.
The Commander Rocks The Clit
The commander has the ability to communicate with all of the squad leaders via in-game voice chat. This makes it remarkably easy and quick to get feedback on how squads are doing, or to request assistance such as artillery support or a supply drop. Voice communication for everyone else is limited to within the squad you're a member of. Although in-game voice support has been around for quite some time, Battlefield 2 really brings out how incredibly useful it can be over traditional menu-based communication.
What Sucked
Of course, not everything in Battlefield 2 is up to the author's liking. I'd really suggest to EA and DICE that they consider dropping GameSpy the next time they consider doing a game. The in-game server browser is horrible. It's slow, doesn't offer an in-game mechanism for meeting up with clan mates or buddies, and seemed to be lacking the ability for a 'favorites' server listing. The UI for the menu is a bit clunky and navigating it isn't exactly fluid. While playing the game, if you hit escape to access the menu, it actually has to pause and "load" the menu system, which brings me to my next point. Load times for Battlefield 2 are pretty lengthy, especially the first time you load each level with new graphics settings. The developers have decided to not ship the game with pre-optimized levels for particular graphics settings, and instead perform run-time optimizations for your particular settings on the first load of a map.
I'm also just a bit concerned with one of the 'optimization' techniques suggested in the manual. The manual recommends that you open up the Windows Task Manager and start killing running processes until you're only left with explorer.exe and taskmgr.exe. That's going to be a tech-support nightmare if someone kills the wrong process. As an example: I accidentally killed ‘mixer.exe’ which led to a reboot because I had no sound after that.
A minor annoyance is that when playing for the MEC or China, all of the ‘chatter’ from keyboard issued commands are in some Middle Eastern dialect or Chinese. It’s rather annoying to have to look at the chat history to find out what a player just said, although listening to the battle chatter is kind of funny.
Eye Candy
Graphically the game ranges from on-par with the original Battlefield 1942 to the super-sweet high settings for the lucky folks with $500 video cards. I'm personally running an "old" GeForce 5900 and am more of a fan of frame rate instead of eye-candy. I turned all of the settings to as low as they would go and was pleasantly surprised on how well the game actually looked! When the next line of nVidia cards comes out (which will drive the prices of the 6800 down) then it'll be time for an upgrade. Being an 'old timer' I'm much more interested in a game's content rather than how innovative a game uses pixel/vertex shaders.
Conclusion
Overall, Battlefield 2 is a must-buy for military combat fans. If you weren't impressed with the original Battlefield 1942 because of the difficulty in organizing your team (who wasn't?) then this version is for you. On the other hand, if you're looking for Quake or Unreal style combat, you may want to try the demo before considering picking this one up. Weapons are not as ‘powerful’ as you may be accustomed to in the rocket-jumping action of those types of games.
I truly believe other military combat games will need to start offering the “Commander Mode” to make their games more sophisticated and tactical. Until now the “everyone for themselves” mode which has been the modus operandi for first person shooters but that’s all about to change.
Overall:
~S'Greth
Game Flow
The game opens up with a heart-pounding CGI video of a team holding a control point while wave after wave of enemy’s assault it. It's been quite a while since I've seen a game with an introduction video that got me as pumped up as this one.. Once in the game, you're faced with the choice of single player or multiplayer. Both modes are essentially the same game: one being with humans and the other with computer-controlled bots. Not wanting to spend my evening playing with bots, I decided to join the masses and try online play. A new addition to Battlefield 2 is a persistent online profile which tracks practically every stat imaginable for you. The more you play online, the further you progress in ranking and the more special weapons you'll unlock for each class type. Ranking is very important if you want to apply to be the battlefield commander as the highest ranking applicant is the one selected for the job.
Once past the horrific server browser interface (more on that later) you'll hop into a 16, 32, or 64 player server. Each map size offers a completely different experience ranging from the close-combat firefights of 16 player maps to the sprawling airplane friendly 64 player maps. You'll need to pick what class of soldier you want to play as which include Engineer, Anti-Tank, Soldier, Support, Medic, and Special Forces. You'll also need to choose a squad of players to join, unless you enjoy being a lone wolf and gunned down by groups of 6 enemies!
At this point it's time to lock and load. Hop in a tank, airplane, boat, or humvee and get to your objective. You could try to walk to your objective, but 15 minutes later you may think that was a bad idea as you'll find yourself in the middle of nowhere with no help in sight. After each round is over I was pleasantly surprised to find a summary screen of statistics while the next map loaded. The summary screen shows which players received awards for the previous round as well as the statistics for each squad.
Weapons
Weapons are fantastic in this game. Each class has their own type of pistol, rifle, and special equipment. As an example, the Special Forces class has C4 packs which can be placed on the enemy’s artillery, radar, or command center. Detonating the packs with the remote detonator is always a good time. The rifles in the game are great because they’re slightly random in their fire spread. An engineer with a sub-machine gun isn’t going to be doing any type of sniping as the bullet ‘spray’ is completely ineffective except for close combat.
Why run around on foot and shoot when you can hop in a multi-million dollar vehicle and do hundreds time more destruction? The weapons on the vehicles are devastating. Transport vehicles are generally unarmed except for the occasional machine gun but the others are usually equipped with various cannons and rockets. I particularly enjoy the ‘fly by wire guided’ missiles that the attack helicopters can fly. When the missile is fired you’re provided with a “missile cam” that you can use to make minor adjustments to the flight path of the missile. Of course, when you eventually get blown out of the sky by a round-based anti-air battery, you can jump ship and deploy your parachute to hopefully glide in for an on-foot assault.
Maps
I haven’t played all of the official maps which released with the retail version, but I got a good 6 or 7 in last night and I enjoyed the layout of all but one. The buildings make for great cover and ambush points. I particularly liked the use of water in most of the maps. In addition to strategic road access points there are out of the way water access points which are great for covert attacks. In Battlefield 2 bridges are also now able to be destroyed. A few maps play on this and position strategic points which are easily accessed via a destructible bridge.
BF2 is not Destert Combat 2
For those who played Desert Combat: Battlefield 2 is not a carbon-copy of the Desert Combat mod for the original Battlefield 1942. The new features that Battlefield 2 brings to the table practically revolutionize online military combat games as far as I'm concerned. Most notably, the new "Commander mode" and the addition of built-in voice communications allow for levels of team coordination that make this game great. At the start of the round, you can apply to be the commander, and if you're the highest ranking applicant, you're elected to the position. The commander has a top-down view of the entire battlefield and is responsible for coordinating the actions of each squad. Using a simple point and click menu, the commander can issue orders like attack, defend, move, and support to specific squads at specific locations on the map. In addition to ordering squads, the commander can offer tactical insights to the team by dropping UAV's that give away the position of the enemy.
The Commander Rocks The Clit
The commander has the ability to communicate with all of the squad leaders via in-game voice chat. This makes it remarkably easy and quick to get feedback on how squads are doing, or to request assistance such as artillery support or a supply drop. Voice communication for everyone else is limited to within the squad you're a member of. Although in-game voice support has been around for quite some time, Battlefield 2 really brings out how incredibly useful it can be over traditional menu-based communication.
What Sucked
Of course, not everything in Battlefield 2 is up to the author's liking. I'd really suggest to EA and DICE that they consider dropping GameSpy the next time they consider doing a game. The in-game server browser is horrible. It's slow, doesn't offer an in-game mechanism for meeting up with clan mates or buddies, and seemed to be lacking the ability for a 'favorites' server listing. The UI for the menu is a bit clunky and navigating it isn't exactly fluid. While playing the game, if you hit escape to access the menu, it actually has to pause and "load" the menu system, which brings me to my next point. Load times for Battlefield 2 are pretty lengthy, especially the first time you load each level with new graphics settings. The developers have decided to not ship the game with pre-optimized levels for particular graphics settings, and instead perform run-time optimizations for your particular settings on the first load of a map.
I'm also just a bit concerned with one of the 'optimization' techniques suggested in the manual. The manual recommends that you open up the Windows Task Manager and start killing running processes until you're only left with explorer.exe and taskmgr.exe. That's going to be a tech-support nightmare if someone kills the wrong process. As an example: I accidentally killed ‘mixer.exe’ which led to a reboot because I had no sound after that.
A minor annoyance is that when playing for the MEC or China, all of the ‘chatter’ from keyboard issued commands are in some Middle Eastern dialect or Chinese. It’s rather annoying to have to look at the chat history to find out what a player just said, although listening to the battle chatter is kind of funny.
Eye Candy
Graphically the game ranges from on-par with the original Battlefield 1942 to the super-sweet high settings for the lucky folks with $500 video cards. I'm personally running an "old" GeForce 5900 and am more of a fan of frame rate instead of eye-candy. I turned all of the settings to as low as they would go and was pleasantly surprised on how well the game actually looked! When the next line of nVidia cards comes out (which will drive the prices of the 6800 down) then it'll be time for an upgrade. Being an 'old timer' I'm much more interested in a game's content rather than how innovative a game uses pixel/vertex shaders.
Conclusion
Overall, Battlefield 2 is a must-buy for military combat fans. If you weren't impressed with the original Battlefield 1942 because of the difficulty in organizing your team (who wasn't?) then this version is for you. On the other hand, if you're looking for Quake or Unreal style combat, you may want to try the demo before considering picking this one up. Weapons are not as ‘powerful’ as you may be accustomed to in the rocket-jumping action of those types of games.
I truly believe other military combat games will need to start offering the “Commander Mode” to make their games more sophisticated and tactical. Until now the “everyone for themselves” mode which has been the modus operandi for first person shooters but that’s all about to change.
Overall:
90%
~S'Greth
