Dis Game is Da Bomb!
Graphics:
Well, right from the beginning you have to mention the harsh system requirements. If you want to even start up the game, you are going to need an Nvidia 5700+ or an ATI Radeon 9500+/ATI 8500+. But It’s all worth it fortunately. However, another problem is the 5+ minute loading times which drive you nuts. Not to mention some servers are laggy for no reason. But I’m still not finished, the server browser is also crappy. It’s extremely slow and frustrating to use.
Now, all that aside and you have one of the best-looking games ever made! The character models are highly detailed and have nice, smooth animations. The environments are amazing as well, from the incredible looking water to the grass gently being pushed by the breeze. The guns are also really nice looking, and the tons of vehicles all look great. But it’s not all perfect, because the shadows are pixilated at the edges and look really terrible sometimes. The water up close is sometimes as well. But it’s even more amazing because these nice graphics are put on such a large scale, with 64 people playing online together at once! Overall, it is amazing.
Audio:
What we have here, is brilliance. The Audio is certainly the most perfect thing about the game. Now, all the songs they got in there are awesome. But you only here them in the menu, or during the long loading times. The sound effects are also done extremely well, even on low quality they sound crisp. The voice-overs are done pretty good as well, all 3 of the armies have voice overs done really well, especially the MEC (Middle East Coalition). Now a big brand new part of BF2 is Voice over IP. Now, it’s done well, but the problem is that no one uses it. And you don’t need to blame them either because the radio commands are all you really need. Overall, the audio is fantastic.
Gameplay:
This is easily the best part about the game. Now, in Battlefield 2, you get to chose from 3 different sides. Chinese, Middle East, and the USMC. Besides the guns, their pretty identical. I prefer the Chinese because of the AK-47. Now BF2 is a Online Multi-player game that puts you in 2 teams of up to 32 players. The objective is to capture all of the flags, which on 64 player size maps they have around 10+ so it can get a little hard. But I don’t think I need to waste my time, or yours by explaining this stupid crap. I’d like to talk about some of the improvements over the previous games and new features. Now, one of my hated parts in the previous games was that you never get a feel of killing anyone, but now thanks to the incredible physics you do! So infantry combat is tons more fun than before. The medic now can revive teammates with the new shock paddles. The engineer now can fix bridges that the special ops destroy by planting C4 on them. Which brings me to another thing, the spec ops kit is awesome! It’s hilarious when you put C4 on an enemy vehicle, when they get it BOOM!!
Now, my favorite feature is the new squad system. It makes the game more organized and fun, especially since you can spawn with your squad leader. There is also the commander mode which I never even tried for the couple of days I’ve been playing. Anyway, planes and helicopters are more fun than ever to drive, so are the tanks buggies. Now you also have to mention that the maps scale according to how many players are on. In addition, the maps, most of them are incredibly well designed. My favorite would be Dragon Valley, it’s huge, and most importantly fun as hell to play on.
There is also a new feature called “battlefield recorder” Now in here, the game saves your match, and allows you to view it from any angle at anytime when you are finished. You can also slow things down or speed them up. It is a decent feature but nothing amazing.
The Single player is completely redone in BF2. The bots are actually smart now, but they do stupid things once in a while. They actually respond to your commands and it’s just fun to play with them sometimes, but you can only play on 16 player maps which sucks.
Thankfully, multi-player is outstanding. Working as a team is incredibly fun and satisfying. Playing with 64 players is very chaotic, so most of the time you play with 32 players. Now before, lag was a HUGE issue, now not nearly as much. It does occur time to time, and Linux servers are always laggy because of a code they got in them (thankfully a patch is coming) but it’s pretty smooth online. Also, the people most of the time, people are fun to play with, and work as a team properly. When you get on a good server, when you have people who work together, it just becomes completely…there really isn’t a word to describe the fun to be had….But anyway, there are some faults. It’s very easy to kill your friends with vehicles because a slight push will instantly kill them. And the idiots never forgive you. Also, there are some bugs in the game, and cheating has been known to occur sadly. But like I mentioned, when everything is just right, this game is unbelievably fun.
In previous battlefields, you never had anything to…push yourself to work harder and harder…you just went in a server and got out. In BF2, you have stats. You get awarded with medals, badges, ribbons, higher ranks and just knowing where you stand in the world against others. BF2 encourages you to work hard, and play as a team. But unfortunately, there are too few ranked servers, and some are laggy. You also cannot have favorites for friends or servers, which sucks big time, but it’s not as big of a problem as IGN makes it out to be. The stats are really helpful, and the game overall is really rewarding. Overall, the gameplay and all that stat tracking, with all the new features, is Outstanding.
Overall:
Battlefield has it’s faults, but if you can get passed them, you’ll see that not only is this the best online game ever made, but the most fun you’ll ever have, in any game, period.