Almost three years ago, I wrote a review on a game that would change both the gaming scene as a whole and my own life. When I first heard about Battlefield 1942 I was pretty darned excited. I'd never heard of these DICE guys that were developing it, but I couldn't wait to see what they were working on. I've always had a dream of huge, really epic battles, and it sounded like maybe this new game was a step in that direction. BF1942 wasn't really a revolutionary game, but it took many of the things that other shooters did very well, and combined them all into a huge multiplayer experience that was truly amazing. Huge maps. Air, land and sea units, all controlled by the players. Some other games had done limited combined arms before (Operation Flashpoint comes to mind) and there were lots of other squad based shooters on the market: Ghost Recon, Counter Strike, Metal of Honor..... But Battlefield truly raised the bar on all of them, and set a new standard that has yet to be beat... Until perhaps now. I've been eagerly awaiting the release of Battlefield 2 ever since I first started to see screenshots on some of the bigger gaming sites, and E3 posts from various news outlets. After over two years of non stop BF and Desert Combat (Apparently some of the Trauma Studio guys, developers of DC worked on the early phases of BF2) I think everyone is ready for a change, and finally it's here! After a week or so of playing I decided we were about ready to start with the review.

Premise

Battlefield 2 maps involve two modern military forces of up to 32 players per team each battling for supremacy. The teams will be battling across swamps, city streets, oil refineries and desert wastes. Their weapons are Armored Personal Carriers, Main Battle Tanks, jeeps, trucks, boats, aircraft carriers, small arms, missile launchers, fighters, bombers helicopters and more. Each of the three teams have their own versions of the same vehicles, classes and weapons, all of which play pretty much the same way. No quarter is given or asked, it's all out war.

What's new in BF2?

Many, many things. When I first picked up the game I was hoping it would basically be Desert Combat with better graphics, especially after I'd heard that the Trauma Studios team was working on the game. Considering how much different it is from 1942 and DC, at first I really didn't like the game very much. The gameplay is very different, there's tons of new additions, and everything feels different. After playing for a while and getting used to the new stuff though I'm beginning to really enjoy it.

Team Commanders: One of the largest new additions to the Battlefield franchise is the Commander. Each team can have a player elected into the Commander position. The Commander plays the game as a player, but can also switch to a special squad view that gives them a top down view of the map. They can zoom in on the map and get a satellite view that puts them approximately 200' over the map looking down. In this view they can see everything that's going on on the ground with both friendly and enemy units. The Commander has the ability to put a radar drone out that lasts for a brief period and shows all units on the minimap of his team mates. He can also call in artillery anywhere on the map, spot enemy units, and drop supplies. Considering that there are no medical or ammunition crates around the maps, this last ability can be critical to the success of a team. Squad leaders can make requests from the commander for support, and the commander can give squads directions and map markers. A bad commander can cost your team the game, but a good commander can really make the difference. Luckily if your commander sucks you can mutiny and vote him out of position.

Destroyable bridges and items: Unlike previous Battlefield games, where the scenery was totally fixed, certain items in the game can be destroyed. Bridges can be nuked to prevent enemy heavy armor movement. Propane tanks and barrels explode when hit and damage units around them, as well as making cool explosions to add to your firefight. Some obstacles can also be blown up, such as boards covering holes in fences. Radar units, artillery and the commander's radar trailer can be destroyed as well, preventing the enemy commander from deploying many of his abilities and hindering his team. An engineer can repair most of these items quickly if he's given a chance. The one thing I don't like about having the commander's equipment destroyable is that it encourages base camping, but at least it seems that only the spec ops class' satchels can be used to destroy them, so vehicle camping isn't terribly helpful other than to cause general havoc. It would be interesting if they added something that would start to kill you if you camped an enemy's uncapturable spawn for more than say, one minute. There were a few mods for BF1942 that did this, and it seemed to be very effective.

Squads: Most commonly described as "a team within a team" when you're playing BF2 you should always join a squad, it's as simple as a button and one mouse click. You can chat within your own squad, your leader can give your squad directions, and (very cool) you can spawn at your squad leader's position if you get killed. Unfortunately, if you don't have any flags left this doesn't work.

Voice Comm: Assuming that the server you're playing on supports it, BF2 now has voice communications built into the game. The game configures it if desired on install, and you're good to go. You can voice comm with just your squad, or your entire team, with the press of a key. The audio quality is quite good, but I still prefer a separate program such as Teamspeak, as I'm usually playing with friends.

Medic and Support Drops/Revival: Since there's no health or ammo crates in BF2, you're going to have to rely on other players. Medics will heal anyone around them when they have their health pack out, and they can also drop health packs for other players to pick up. The machine gunner/support class can drop ammo packs for their teammates. Medics also have the ability to revive dead players, up until the point they respawn. It doesn't seem to always work and it's a bit hard to do under fire, as you have to use shock paddles on your player but it's often a real life saver in a firefight and a total frustration to the enemy. I'll always go after the opposition's medic first if I can. If a medic is in a vehicle he'll heal anyone near to his vehicle automatically.

Ranking/Unlockable Weapons: If you happen to get yourself on the "Ranked" servers, you can gain ranks and awards that stay with your player as a permanent record, and allows you to unlock weapons. Your record will also allow you to keep track of an amazing variety of stats, such as number of kills, deaths, teamwork scores, ribbons and awards and more. Some of the weapon unlocks you can get are quite powerful, and much more effective than the standard gear. I unlocked the medic's upgrade, the L85 and it makes a big difference in my game. :) Interestingly when I got my second promotion I had to quit the game, then log back in to unlock the weapon. I sort of figured it would just ask me right in game, but nooooo.... That's okay though, now I know. Rank also hath it's privileges. If you apply to be the Commander and someone with higher rank wants the job, it's theirs. Unfortunately right now it's sometimes difficult to get yourself on a good ranked server on a regular basis as they're usually pretty packed.

Improved single player A.I.: The AI on your single player teammates has been vastly improved over that of Battlefield 1942. It's still not up to Half Life standards, but at least they're no longer drooling idiots to the same degree. There was nothing more annoying than having your "teammates" crawling around on the ground for no apparent reason, rather than fighting. It was admittedly pretty funny seeing an American and German back to back looking for the enemy and turning the same way. Funny in a "look out Curly, the monster is behind you!" sort of way. But after the fiftieth time it got old. On the subject of the AI, I can't find the old co-op mode anywhere, I'm assuming it's been removed. Damned shame, I loved opening up a 50 player server full of bots at LAN parties and having a few friends join in. Now it might have actually been a challenge. I hope it gets added back in.

Tracking/Wire guided Missiles/Counter Measures: My friend and teammate VA_Killer would never, ever forgive me if I didn't mention his favorite toy: Guided missiles. Anti tank missiles can be guided onto target by simply keeping your fire button in and guiding them in. Stingers will lock onto heat sources and track on them. To counter these nasty new toys, most vehicles have counter measures. Planes and choppers have flares, and armor can deploy smoke screens.

Select fire long arms: Most long arms (rifles and submachine guns) have select fire. You can go full-auto or semi auto for long range precision shooting. I love this option, as I'll go single shot as the enemy closes in, and then full auto for close quarters combat. The only problem is that one has to be careful they remember which mode they're in. There's nothing worse than holding your trigger in and only firing one shot. (This happens to Rune a great deal.)

Weapon sights: When you zoom in, you get a view just like that in America's Army or Call of Duty where you are looking through your weapon's iron sights (or scope). It takes some getting used to, but it really makes you feel like you're actually there.

Sprinting/Endurance Meter: Players now have an endurance meter, and can sprint for short distances before fatiguing and returning to their normal run speed. Jumping also uses a big portion of your bar, but you can still jump with your bar at zero. Your endurance does regens quickly, which is good as it's so, so very handy. Different classes have different levels of endurance as well.

Passenger firing positions: Most of the vehicles now have passenger firing positions. It's lots of fun to do a high speed drive-by in a jeep with three gunners firing wildly everywhere.

Ragdoll Physics: There's few things as entertaining as killing an enemy sniper and watching him fall from a tower and hit balconies on the way down. BF2 has ragdoll physics, so player's dead bodies get thrown around in ways that are quite amusing. It also adds to the realism of the game, as every death is different. As Prococal points out "It's all about the ragdoll."

Scaleable Maps - No longer are the maps always the same size. Each map has a 16-32 and 64 player size available.

There's other new things, but this list should give you a taste of what to expect.

Gameplay

Usually new versions of a game add some new modes of play. In the case of Battlefield, they've actually removed some. CTF isn't really a great loss in this case, as few people played it. I played it a little bit in BF1942 and thought it was terrible, but it would be nice to have a "King of the Hill" or something like that. Battlefield is played from a first person perspective for the most part, but the view in vehicles can be switched to third person as well. The only real use for third person most of the time is for screenshots, as there's no cross hair in this view, which is something I've always wished for.

With the removal of CTF the only mode of play is conquest, although when you're creating a game there's a pull down menu for game type that indicates to me that perhaps they're going to be adding some more in the future. In conquest each team starts with a certain number of points (tickets). The first team to run out of points looses. There's a series of flags scattered around the map, you can cause the other team's tickets to count down by controlling over half of the flags. Anytime a player dies, you also loose a point. Some of the maps are "head on" where each team has one uncaptureable flag, and on some of them you can win by taking all of the flags and killing all opposing players. Players can only respawn at flags their team currently holds, or at their squad leader, assuming they still have one flag available to them. Players can also be revived by their friendly neighborhood medic, if the revival is successful, there's no ticket loss. It's nice to have a goal in a shooter rather than just killing everything that moves. You can go play lone gunman in BF if you want, but if you're not getting flags, or helping to hold them, you're really not doing much. It's all about the team effort.

Firefights feel very personal and involved, I find myself actually jumping sometimes when I get ambushed.


Graphics/Environments

Amazing. Just amazing. The environments in Battlefield 2 are massive and on a decent computer, visually stunning. They've upped the viewable range, so it can kill a slower computer. The original Battlefield had a good level of detail on the buildings and models, but the viewable distances always seemed to short, and except for a few palm trees felt rather unoccupied. DICE has cranked the level of detail for everything up massively, the textures are lovely, the models look very realistic, and some of the landscape is just breath taking. One of the city maps has a construction crane that's pretty cool looking, and the nuclear power plant map just kicks ass. Everything is so big and looks so good you actually feel like you are there. There's even birds that fly up from the bushes when someone is near them which has saved my ass a few times when people were trying to sneak up on me. And hey! The clouds finally move. Booyah. There's grass on the ground, and lots of ground clutter to look at and use for cover. BF2 actually looks a lot like a sexified version of Vietnam. Even the insides of buildings are detailed with furniture scattered about.

Speaking of things moving, the new animations on everything look great. Player models actually move like real soldiers, and the vehicles look great when they're still and in motion. There's something very cool about watching a line of armor firing their guns. Dust rises from their treads, the vehicles rock back from recoil and impacts. Shells hitting the ground kick up huge plumes of dirt and smoke. It just looks so, so damned good. Battlefield 2 is the prettiest game I've seen from a realism stand point. Some of the other games like Unreal Tourney 2004 might have an edge on sheer eyecandy, but for real war immersion BF2 takes the cake.

Sound and Music

The music is basically remixes of the old BF1942 tune which I like. Other than the intro movie, load and victory, there's no music in the game. You really, really need to be able to hear enemies coming up behind you in this one, so the lack of in game music is actually a good thing. The sound effects are very well done. Gunfire up close is deafening, and grenades, tanks firing, or other explosions close to you make your ears ring for a few seconds. It's very cool when you're running towards a firefight, it sounds realistic both far away and closer. One weird thing we had happen with the sound during testing is that, if you put your audio quality to high, you loose sounds. (This is mentioned under the bugs a little further down as well.) This odd little problem doesn't happen very much with the sounds left on medium as they are by default. I'm not sure why this is happening, unless the Soundblaster Audigy 2 just can't handle the game's audio, but since it's currently one of the better soundcards on the market (And the one that Soundblaster advertises for use with BF2) I can't see that. I guess we'll have to wait for the new SB Xi-Fi to come out and see if maybe we can crank things up then.

Hmmmmmmm... Classes, Weapons and Vehicles

When you play any of the battlefield games on spawn you can pick which class you'd like. Anti-Tank, Assault, Engineer, Medic, Special Ops, Sniper or Support. Each class has it's own niche and the best squads have a wide variety of classes with them. All classes get a knife and pistol as well as unique gear. Anti-Tank, Assault and Support sport heavier armor than the other classes.

Anti-Tank: These guys pack a wire guided anti-tank missile launcher, and are your best defense against hostile vehicles.

Assault: The assault class is armed with an assault rifle, grenade launcher and smoke grenades.

Engineer: A tanker's best friend, the engineer carries a shotgun and wrench for repairing vehicles and bridges. He'll automatically repair any vehicles around his vehicle if he's mounted. He can also drop anti-vehicle mines to blockade areas.

Medic: One of the handiest guys to have around, the medic wields an assault rifle, grenades, carries a medical pack for healing (or dropping as a pickup for his teammates) and can also revive the badly wounded with his shock paddles. (CLEAR! ZOT!) A vehicle carrying a medic will also heal any players near it.

Special Ops: With a compact assault rifle, "sticky" remote detonated satchel charges and grenades, this guys packs a punch and can take out armor if the gunner is distracted. He's also excellent for booby trapping flags and critical areas.

Sniper: Heavily camouflaged he's great for your team, and a real annoyance to the other guys. The sniper can pick off infantry targets and give you cover fire when you're going into a flag. He's also got proximity fused claymore mines to cover his rear while he's about his business.

Support: Your squad's suppression guy. This fellah is armed with a light machine gun and grenades, and can also drop ammo for his teammates.

There's a heck of a lot of different vehicles you'll be running around with in BF2. Light Armored Vehicles (LAV) armed with missiles and cannons, anti-air vehicles with cannon and heatseakers, Zodiak boats, jeeps, tanks, helicopter gunships and transports, fighters, fighter/bomber and more. They all handle pretty well although as we've mentioned else where larger vehicles tend to stall out on tiny gentle inclines. I hope they fix this. The choppers are odd to fly as I'm used to the Desert Combat helos, but they are much easier to hover. They handle quite a bit like the ones from Battlefield: Vietnam. One interesting thing that's been removed is the artillery vehicles. That duty is now performed exclusively by the commander from his little map.


Bugs/Bad Stuff

Wow. The in game browser is, as mentioned, a horror show unto it's own. It lags your machine, it's hard to find servers, it's slow, difficult to scroll in and frequently it crashes. I can't believe it actually got into the game, and if I were Gamespy I'd hang my head in shame to have my name associated with this thing. (I know it's DICE's implementation, but still.) As of this moment there's no external game browser support. I can't wait until my beloved All Seeing Eye works with it. I keep a pad of paper near my computer down, and I have a list of the IPs of good servers and just type them in manually rather than subjecting myself to the browser when I want to play. Amusingly the game installs Gamespy Arcade....Which isn't supported yet. That just made me smile inside.

If you connect to a server, and the map changes just as you are almost loaded in, it sometimes seems to crash the game. It will continue to load the next map..... Forever. You have to CTRL-ALT-DEL and end the task. We've actually had frequent CTDs and lock ups. Some of them so severe you have to resort to hitting ye olde reset button. And this isn't just on our test machines, quite a number of other people have been reporting them to us as well.

We've had multiple and annoying problems with creating accounts. Quite often you'll have to make up a weird email address and logon name to get one to work. I tried !FT!Marauder (can't use !'s :( ) FTMarauder FT_Marauder FT_Marauder1 and a bunch of others, only to get told each time that "Unique Nickname is in use." Riiiite. Quite clearly they aren't. You also frequently have to log in twice before it will accept your password. Something is just not right with their logon server. Luckily you only have to create an account once.

One of the most annoying things is that there's no way to tell what server you're on for your buddies to join you as near as I can tell. In later versions of BF1942 it showed it on the map screen. Apparently someone at DICE forgot that this was a good idea and didn't include it for BF2.

Vehicles stall on the slightest hills. I'm not sure why a 1,500 horsepower M1A1 tank can't handle a gentle incline, but I'm sure DICE could fill me in. Vehicles also seem to kill people no matter how fast they're going. This is a little annoying when you have a teammate who won't move and you try to nudge past him in the heat of battle. Bump, dead, teamkill, grrr. I've accidentally killed many, many engineers. (Sorry guys.) You sometimes even see guys deliberately jumping in front of vehicles to get people kicked from servers. If you're really moving it should kill them. A gentle bump? Not.

Heat seeking missiles seem to have a really, really hard time locking onto helicopters. I'm not sure if this is deliberate, but it's quite irritating when you get clean tone on a chopper and suddenly loose it for no apparent reason.

Sounds vanish. Sometime's you'll be shooting and suddenly you've got no weapons sounds. Or a vehicle suddenly goes silent. It's very odd and more than a little disconcerting. Happens most often when audio quality is set to high. Then it's constant.

Accuracy issues. I was watching Protocal the other day, laying down shooting down at an enemy at probably 25' with a Squad Automatic Weapon. He dumped a magazine, never registering a hit. The enemy then ran in close and pistoled him to death..... Ummmm... Not good. Likewise with the sniper rifle. I've never talked to anyone who can use it consistently. Even on targets standing still you frequently somehow miss. Oddly enough the pistols seem to be quite accurate at extreme ranges. The accuracy issues could just be inexperience with the game, I'm not really sure yet.

DICE recently posted information on the upcoming patch, you can read all about it here. It addresses some of our concerns, and I'm glad to see they're doing something about the browser. Mind you, it should have never shipped like it is. Obviously they realized there was problems with it. Thanks to !FT!Killer for the heads up on the patch news.

Conclusion

It takes some getting used to, especially if you've been playing BF1942 and Desert Combat for years, but it's worth taking the time. The squad based shooter genre has truly taken a huge step forward. Mind you there was really never any game to compete with the original Battlefield which has always surprised me, given the gaming industry's habit of jumping on any bandwagon going. The only game that comes close is Unreal Tourney 2004 but I found it got boring pretty quickly. Battlefield's unique style of play seems to be very popular, but I guess it's quicker to make another standard World War 2 shooter than to make something of this scale. The new ranking system is very addictive as you're always trying to get higher rank and more new toys, and it's sweet to have a running total of your kills and other stats.

Even after all the bugs and bad stuff listed above, Battlefield 2 is a good game. When it's running and everything is going smoothly BF2 is truly a remarkable experience but when it's crashing and you can't locate servers it's very frustrating. I'm hoping that DICE gets off their nordic asses and patch everything quickly. And maybe get rid of the cheap commander arty.

Thanks to all my Team Forever Twisted buddies for playing with me, and helping with their comments (and curses) on Teamspeak. Without them this wouldn't have gotten written.

** Editors Note: As of July 7/05, the first patch for BF2 fixed the browser, allows you to see server IP and name in game, allows external browser (ex. All Seeing Eye) and a few of the crashes that were mentioned in this review. You can download the patch here.