Game Review: Battlefield 2

Eric Daniel - Military.com

Feb 23, 2006

Battlefield 2, PC CD, 2004 $49.99
Battlefield 2: Special Forces, PC CD, 2005 $29.99

The BF2 Special Forces expansion pack is an add-on expansion to EA’s established Battlefield 2 modern combat FPS game. The SF pack introduces several new pieces of equipment, specifically night vision goggles for night missions, grappling hooks for accessing rooftops, and crossbow launched ziplines, for running away from those “hard to escape” places, like smokestacks and church steeples. In addition, SF introduces the “flashbang” grenade, which stuns and blinds enemies, and the gas mask, to ward off the effects or tear gas grenades.

Battlefield 2 is essentially a first person shooter oriented towards online team play. In BF2 the missions are essentially “seize and hold” scenarios in which teams accumulate victory points for occupying and holding specific terrain features on the map. There are a number of nationalities available including British, American, Russian, Chinese and Middle Eastern. In addition, when you select your character you will have a choice of one of several “kits”; special forces, sniper, assault, support, engineer, medic, and anti-tank. There is no real distinction between the nationalities beyond language and uniform (no one nationality has an advantage over the others) and the individual kits are pretty standard across the nationalities with only minor differences (in the sniper kit for example, a Russian player gets the semi-automatic SVD sniper rifle which has a 10 round magazine and a higher rate of fire than the American sniper’s bolt action 5 round M24 rifle, but the American rifle has a better accuracy.)

Every kit has advantages and disadvantages; the SF and assault kits are pretty middle of the road, offering good range and defensive capabilities, while others are more max-min arrangements, like the sniper, which excels at long range attacks but is almost worthless in close quarters fighting. In addition, certain kits, specifically the medic, support, and engineer, have team critical skills. The medic can heal wounded players and revive dead players in-place (eliminating the need for a re-spawned player to run from a spawn point to get back into the fight) while the engineer can repair damaged equipment and vehicles, and the support player is a walking ammunition dump, capable of resupplying ammunition to players who are out. Players are not limited to a single kit for the duration of the game; a player can select a different kit when they respawn, and they can “grab” kits off of dead players (both friend and foe) if they want to change their load out.

In addition to playing the game as an infantryman, players have access to a number of vehicles, aircraft, and boats. The vehicles range from unarmored, unarmed quad-runners and pick-up trucks, to amphibious lightly armored and armed personnel carriers, to heavily armored Main Battle Tanks, each with advantages and disadvantages; the ATVs are fast, and are great for getting you from point A to point B in a hurry, while the tanks are neigh unstoppable armored leviathans, difficult to kill, but slow, easy to hit, and armed with a devastating cannon with a very low rate of fire. The helicopters and aircraft are designed along the same lines as the vehicles; all offer unique advantages and disadvantages. In addition, many of the vehicles can carry more than one player, so you can “hop aboard” a passing tank or fast attack dune buggy to man one of the vehicles weapons. There is no single uber-kit in BF2; all have exploitable weaknesses and it is a smart team that equips its members to cover all the bases.

No "I" in "Team"

Team play is the heart of Battlefield 2; while you have the option of playing as an individual in single player mode, you will not accrue experience and you will not be able to unlock advanced weapons kits. To get these you must play on-line. You are not required to have your own team when you play, however, you need only log on and join a game already in progress. In addition, once logged on, you don’t even have to work with the other players on your “side”; you can go “lone wolf” if you want to. This having been said, though, the BF2 system emphasizes “team” play and rewards those players who help their buddies. Players acquire experience and awards for individual kills and assists, as well as supporting other players (as a medic or ammunition support player.) There are also leadership positions available in BF2 which allow access to additional capabilities such as artillery and UAV support, and just like everything else, you get rated and evaluated on your performance in these positions; perform well and you will be rewarded, perform poorly, and your teammates will mutiny. Leadership positions provide players with the ability to coordinate their actions; squad leaders can communicate directly with their squad members utilizing a VoIP (voice over IP) microphone (rather than typing “chat” messages) and the force commander can communicate directly with the squad leaders in the same way. In addition, the squad leader (while he is alive) provides a unique spawn point for his squad members, so it’s in the squad’s best interest to keep him alive. A player can track is “character’s” advancement by visiting the online BFHQ where they can view their current rank, as well as their progression towards the next rank, as well as their standing in comparison with other players.

Overall, the BF2 world is well laid out, both visually and acoustically. The graphics are sharp and well defined, and the sound quality is superb; each weapon has a distinct sound characteristic and you can readily identify who is shooting what just by listening to what is going on around you. One especially nice feature is the “shell shock” effect. Explosions nearby will have a concussive effect on your character; his hearing will be muted, his vision blurry, and his responsiveness slowed, as one might expect if the building you were hiding in were to suddenly come crashing down on you. These effects are recoverable, however, (assuming you are not killed in the meantime), and go a long ways to hammering home the concept of loitering where the enemy can see you. There are about a dozen or so maps to choose from, ranging from cluttered villages and factories to wide open marshes and island atolls. Some maps are dedicated night map, while others are day (the day/night setting is not modifiable.) Players fighting on a night map will have night vision as part of their kit, while day players go without. Game play is fast and furious - BF2 embraces the SAS motto, “Who dares, wins” and those players who cannot keep pace with the activity around them will rapidly find themselves experiencing a virtual “helmet fire” as enemy forces roll up their position. The bottom line here is, to survive and win in the BF2 universe you have to be fast, aggressive, and, I say again, and, coordinated. To this end, character controls are fairly straightforward and do not require a lot of practice to get used to. In addition, all of the vehicles, in addition to being easy to operate, operate in the same way, so once you’ve mastered one vehicle, you’ve mastered them all.

While BF2 is an engaging and relatively straightforward game to play, it is not without its limitations. Foremost is the limited single player playability. While you have access to all the maps and all but the “secret” weapon kits, the only real utility for single player is practicing your moves; you can practice with all the vehicles while playing with AI teammates against an AI opponent, as well as familiarize yourself with all the maps (both activities will pay dividends in the on-line arena) since you will not accrue on-line player experience. In addition, while all the maps are different, and all offer unique challenges, there really is only one mission; seize and hold terrain. There are no campaigns in the BF2 world, just multiple variations on the same theme. In terms of game play, while there are not pools of health and piles or armor scattered across the battlefield, weapon effects are somewhat less than realistic. In most cases, for example, it will take several shots with a scoped sniper rifle to bring down an enemy, while it takes almost an entire box of ammunition to kill someone with a light machine gun. While this is unrealistic and can be frustrating at times (on more than one occasion I found myself yelling “Die already” at my computer screen) at least the effect works both ways (the AI can’t kill you any faster than you can kill him.) Finally, the game is painfully slow to load. Installing it on your computer will take several hours, while changing map servers is a 10-minute affair.

Bottom Line

In the end, BF2 is a relatively simple game to play, and once you get past the load issues (bear in mind that the majority of the on-line servers are free) it is an easy game to spend several hours playing. The action is fast passed and exciting (nothing quite like zipping cross country in a souped up dune buggy dodging enemy fire while your on board, online buddies rip away with machine guns at the folks trying to kill you). Lastly, EA has done a good job promoting the team player concept with BF2, while at the same time not penalizing those players who either choose not to play online, or who are more of the loner mentality. This one is a keeper.

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