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Review: Battlefield 2
- Title: Battlefield 2
- Developer: Digital Illusions
- Publisher: Electronic Arts
- System: PC (only)
- Reviewer: Zonk
- Score: 8
So how do you improve on an already great title? The sequel to Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield Vietnam stays very close to the source material. So close, in fact, that it's hard to point to any fundamental change in the gameplay mechanics. The changes, instead, are quality of life improvements. The game's engine allows for lagless infantry combat and accurate vehicular strikes. A fantastic audio environment places you directly in the action, raising the heart rate as bullets whiz by your head. Graphical improvements allow for a beautiful setting to slay your enemies, and tight level design makes for surprisingly tense house-to-house fighting. Stripping away options in favor of enjoyment, BF2 only ships with the Conquest game type, which pits armies of varying size against each other in a bid to control a set of nodes scattered across a map. Though there aren't that many maps each of them scales from 16 to 64 players. This allows for each map to evoke a different feel, from squad on squad to army vs. army, depending on the battle's size.
The additions they've made to the Battlefield series instead changes the framework of the tried and true gameplay they're offering up. Players have several different kits they can outfit themselves with, as in the original titles, but new kits such as the special forces soldier add in some variety. Support characters, like medics and engineers, can also increase their effectiveness by entering vehicles. These vehicles become mobile support bases, with medics inside vehicles healing fellow players that stand near the unit. Players can form themselves into small squads, each of which has a dedicated voice chat channel. Squad leaders can issue orders via a push-button system or voice, and have their group act in unison. The squads on a particular side are in turn directed by a commander. The commander of a side has a very different perspective on the game, a top down map interface giving him a birds-eye view of the proceedings. The commander has several tools at his disposal, including a kind of enemy detecting radar and the ability to call down artillery strikes. When the entire system is working in unison, players acting in concert within their squads and in league with other units directed by a commander, the experience is something akin to poetry in motion.
Unfortunately, that frission of so many different players working together rarely happens. While gamers have adopted voice chat for everything from Massive games to UT Tourneys, they generally do so with people they already know. In playing online, very few individuals seemed willing to make their voices heard to strangers. The in-game text commands are easy to access and informative, but they're still no match up for a quickly uttered statement. While cohesion within squads does seem to be generally good, as there are only a few people to coordinate, the level of effectiveness is entirely dictated by the squad leader. One suicidal or absent-minded guy at the reins can meant that you and your comrades are in for one messy death after another. In the overall picture, the commander's role ends up less utilized than it could be. Armchair generals abound in the FPS world, but in practice few are anything approaching a virtual Colin Powell. The experiences I've had lead me to believe that overwhelming force will almost always win the day. Beyond the game itself, the frustration involved in getting into combat is often off-putting. It may seem like picking nits, but the glacial slowness and murky obscurity of the server browser is extremely frustrating to have to deal with when compared to the user interfaces offered by other games.
Battlefield 2, then, is an extremely competent first person shooter with a strong pedigree and a vision to improve the way in which the genre is played. It is hampered by the vagaries of online play with strangers, poor user interface decisions. On top of these issues, bugs have been a problem since the game was released. Numerous patches, some even more devastating than the bugs they were meant to fix, have not endeared the game to players. Despite all these problems, when a group of players clicks in a Battlefield 2 game it is unlike any other team-based FPS on the market. Fans of the previous games will be happy to get back into the game they love, no questions asked. Veteran FPS players should definitely consider picking up a copy, as it's highly likely that you're going to run across this title at your next LAN party ... but you'll probably want to save it for LAN parties. Players new to the PC FPS experience will find things to enjoy here, but may be intimidated by the amount of knowledge the game assumes on the part of the player. Overall, while not a disappointment, Battlefield 2 falls short of a dramatic reprisal of the Battlefield series.
It's much more satifying to play as a sniper now that the game doesn't give away your hiding spot everytime you successfully take someone down.
Also the spawn times of the vehicles should scale based on how many players are on the map. On maps with fewer players there are far too many vehicles to go around.
I've been playing since the game came out, and have the following hardware:
P4 3Ghz with HT
1 Gigabyte of RAM
ATI X800 SE PCIE
160gig Western Digital 8meg SATA Drive
Soundblaster Audigy 2 (in 4 channel mode)
The game runs like a dog in anything higher than 1024x786 resolution on that hardware. You have to leave all the settings at "medium", otherwise stuttering will occur (I've heard this is because higher settings require 256+ megs of video RAM, which I don't have.)
The game easily consumes my gig of RAM, and starts forcing Windows to swap to disk. It gets so bad, that after exiting the game, I have to wait approximately a minute before I can use the PC again (from it swapping all the memory out of the disk.) This PC just has Windows XP installed on it, nothing else running in memory.
The game will also randomly "crash" while loading a level. I'll complete a map online, and it will appear to start loading the next map, a black screen will appear, and then my desktop. Yay!
There are also issues with the "aiming"-- I think it's a case of the server/client prediction being different. I can unload an entire clip of an MP5 at short range (5-10 feet), with crosshairs on someone, and somehow 90% of my bullets miss, and the guy goes into "prone" mode and stabs me up close. Huh? There's also this funky "jump and go prone" manuever, as well as the "jump from a building and fire accurately while falling" manuever. Things that shouldn't be happening, essentially.
It's still an enjoyable game, it just has flaws and needs patching..
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
... Got it with my EVGA 7800GTX board (got sick of the SLI skitzing all over the place in WoW).
This game is starved of RAM at 1GB if you play on uberhigh settings, you need 2GB. Yes, that's obnoxious.
Also, where's the shooting range so I can practice with the iron sights?
The game has it's good points, but it feels massively rushed to production, and shipped with some glaring bugs. However, even with all the issues I list below, it's still FUN, but very frustrating at times. I figured this would bide my time until Call of Duty 2 comes out in October.
If you want to really get a feel for how the game is, just go to these forums and listen in: http://www.forumplanet.com/planetbattlefield/ I haven't listed even a smidgen of the valid complaints people have listed online.
Well, not really even 2 patches as within days of the first patch EA "recalled" it and suggested people just reinstall the game and NOT patch it.
But that's neither here or there. I'm done with this game. It's just too tiring to play anymore.
1. The voting system sucks...I've NEVER seen one vote ever go through. Ever. I'm sure there's someone out there that's seen a vote pass...but not me.
2. The punish system just plain sucks. You kill someone by accident..like in a tank and you can't see behind you and you're not totally paying attention to the mini-map to see anyone near you and WHAM you run over your team mate cause they decided to just jump out in front of you. Do they forgive? Not a chance. Always get punished. Very rare do you not get punished. This just needs to totally go away.
3. People never act like a team anymore. In the first few days of the retail release there were people that seemed to really want to win the game...but now it's just point whores that only care about how many points they can rack up...doesn't matter if their side wins or loses. The retard level is very high at the moment.
4. Now we get into the people that rage the game. Like the myg0t morons and their ilk. The ones that go out of their way to run out in front of a jeep or tank so they CAN punish people on purpose. They'll jump on top of a chopper so they die when they take off, they'll run to a place that's about to be shelled so they can punish the commander. This is happening more and more.
5. Random disconnects for no reason.
I'm done. Guess it was a 50 dollar lesson in waiting a few months after release of a new game. EA should be ashamed of themselves releasing this bug-ridden crap. I may just go back and play the demo as that wasn't as bad.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Actually, it's a known problem with the Geforce4 and under series of graphics cards. EA knew this when they game was being developed. This means that at least 20% of PC gamers who can play Half-Life 2 perfectly cannot play the graphically inferior BF2 (According to Valve's hardware survey). BF2 uses pixel shader 1.4, Geforce4 cards only support up to pixel shader 1.3. EA has officially announced that they know about the problem and will not be doing anything about. They claim that the "obsolete" geforce4 will not render the game at an acceptable level of quality. This, in my opinion, is complete bullshit, since the game supports the SLOWER Radeon 8500, just because it supports ps1.4.
There is a community hack being developed to attempt to get the game to work, but it's very much just a kludge at this point.
All the same though, I don't buy EA anymore anyway. I even hear there is already an expansion pack that's nearly ready for release! I was laughing when I heard that, typical EA product life cycle. Launch, patch, patch, expansion, patch, expansion, launch new game, stop support of old game, patch, patch, expansion...
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
MOHAA was fantastic for a while, but it too was buggy, and let's face it, the door trick made the game stupid. The beach assault level was wonderful for a while, then became impossible because of the door campers.
There was some truly wonderful objective levels in the game, and the sequels did pretty well, but alas, its time has passed.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Battle field lacks a great deal of traits that make a good game. 1. You don't always want to play with a team, sometimes you want to fight on your own. You don't always want an objective, sometimes you want to have plain ole have fun. The variety of game types is lacking. 2. The server interface is terrible. Why should there be so much trouble to get on a server? If you have played halo II with xbox live, everything works seemlessly. 3. Since it is a computer game, some inherent disadvantages come with it. Your friends can't come over and play easily (there is no way i'm going to lug my computer to a friends place for BF2). Overall, in all honesty, this game is subpar.
# No multiplayer coop - playing against a few friends at a lan party with bots for backup was one of my favorite things to do in BF 1942.
This is actually not true. It does have it. You just have to trick it and you're restricted in functionality.
1. Start a single-player game, which is effectively a single-client multiplayer (hence why it says "starting server" during load).
2. Have the others launch an Internet multiplayer session, but click Connect To IP and enter the "server's" IP address. That will directly connect them to the LAN PC.
My nephew and I do this every weekend. It does have its limitations, though:
- 16-player maps only
- You have to manually load new maps
- Each map goes for 3 runs
- Each user must have a legitimate on-line account (or approriate crack, I would assume, but since all of my copies are legal I don't know what the crack status is on this)
No, it doesn't have a direct, configurable, LAN multiplayer, but you can still have LAN multiplayer.
You need a new video card, not because you couldn't play without but because the designers just decided to use the new shader model.
Define "new". The system that my nephew uses has a 128 MB, GeForce 5500 FX card, which by current standards is hardly a new card. The game runs just fine.
I like playing on my work computer and my home computer, why do I have to lug the DVD around?
There is no way in hell that I could agree with you more. On-disc protection is ludicrous and inconveniences only the legitimate purchasers.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
rbanzai is correct. The BF:1942 and BF2 engines are completely flawed when it comes to collision checking artillery. There's no concept of splash damage, either. Tank shells should obliterate a foot soldier if they land anywhere within a 30-ft radius. In none of the BF games is this the case, even with stationary tanks and soldiers.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
They also decided to make it all team play and did not include bots for LAN multiplay. This sucks!! I'm sorry, I don't live in an area with broadband and cannot access any of the servers using POTS. Loogs like my little group of gammers will have to stick with BF:DC and BF:1942 so we can all play and have fun killing the AI.
The reviewer failed to mention player based boycotts of Electronic Arts. Also there was no serious discussions of the flaws of the game. I know of one serious boycott of their already announced (follow the money!) expansion pack until Electronic Arts fixed the heinous flaws in BF2.
In-game BF2 is tolerably good though you do need a considerable system to play it. However, everything external to the game is horrible. Mostly the problems result from a completely obvious money grab by Electronic Arts. Follow the money!
The ranking system is designed to make money ONLY FOR Electronic Arts. It is NOT an anti-hacking system as EA claims. That is the purest form of sophist marketing tripe. It will take me, and I play 2-3 hours a day, probably 2 years to make 1st Lieutenant. I only have about 2000 game points. Yet, there are already people with over 300,000 points. Eh? We all got it at the same time! The ONLY reason for the ranking system is so that EA can require a fee to run a ranked server. Between $4-$8 per player per month. $250 per month for 1 server. Follow the money!
Once you register you CANNOT change your nick without going through gyrations that would make a die-hard Rube Goldberg fan flinch. In game I'm R2N2. Out of the game, everywhere else Battlefield, I am PoW_Njall. I made a simple mistake with the demo and I'm hosed. Why? Follow the money!
No one I know, and I play A LOT of BF2 and BF1942 uses GameSpy. Yet registration with GameSpy is required? Why? Follow the money!
Electronic Arts says that modifying a Python configuration file is "hacking" and users caught "hacking" will be banned. Servers are not allowed to turn on all weapons thereby requiring players to play on "ranked" server in order to gain in-game access to upgrade weapons. Even if the players on the servers don't want to play for ranks. EA Games will "de-list" any server which opens the weapons. Why? Follow the money!
Had I written the game server browser I would hide myself in absolute shame about how poor it is. It is slow, inaccurate, and without features. Yet, EA prevents other game browsers from working with BF2. Why? Follow the money!
There is a LARGE list of problems that should have been found in testing. Why weren't they found? Follow the money!
If you want to get a clear idea of what to expect in Battlefield 2 from people who LIKE Battlefield 2 check out http://www.totalbf2.com/