Promised so much but still hasn't managed to create a real team playing atmosphere.
User Rating: 8 | Battlefield 2 PC
Im not going to start describing what this game is all about, I'm just going to give my views on the games strengths and weaknesses. Before Battlefield 2 came out I thought this is going to be a totally superb game, the graphics looked stunning, the squad based gameplay, commander mode, VOIP and leaderboards/stats also sounded brilliant. From what EA was saying and showing I thought this was going to be the best game ever. But I am a bit disppointed now that I have played the game considerably. First of all, the graphics they showed in all those screenshots looked unbeleivable-and so it is, they must have asked NASA to borrow one of their comps for the day so they could make the game look that good. The fact is the graphics as almost evrybody will experience them are not much better than battlefield 1942 and thats not great. The squad based system is good but its far from perfect, although its a good idea very few players actually use it fully. Only about have the players (in a 64 player server) will ever be in a squad at any one time and those that are in squads very often dont attempt to play as a squad. i think most people join the squads just to have another availabale spawnpoint on the map.(squadmembers being able to spawn beside the leaders) But the squads are sometimes used fully and when that happens the game can be really great. Commander mode is a very good idea, it is the single biggest improvement that there is in battlefield 2 compared to the previous games. It is good because it gives the game a far greater team focus than before, you now feel that you must try and win the battle, its us against them. The new identification system is aso a big improvement, it allows much more of a team kind of atmosphere than before because its so much easier to inform your teamates about enemy threats. Being able to thank teamates and say sorry very quickly is also a nice touch. I hear a lot talk about VOIP but I dont hear a lot of talk through VOIP when I'm playing BF2, its quite ironic really. I dont know why everybody seems to think VOIP is so great because the simple fact is very few use it, at least in the public servers. Maybe Voip would be useful for clan matches or whatever but on the public servers its use is practically zero, even when I do hear the ocassional chatter its just far to garbled to make out. The stats and leaderboards and the idea of a consistant character is a very nice addition to BF2. It allows you to see how good or bad you are with weapons and kits and how far up the leaderboard you are. There are also badges medals and ribbons you can win which is a really good idea. Altough a word of caution on this, it does encourage "stat whoring" where a player will set out to get as many kills or revives or whatever in order to get medals or to move up in rank. I saw once where a player had something like 140 points overall(the highest Ive ever seen) but had got not one kill. The medals and badges do seem to be rather difficult to come by though, although the first "basic" badges are easy enough to get after that it seems pretty hard. I once got 40 kills in a tank and got a "basic" armoured combat badge, I was really pleased with myself until i read in the "battle commendation" that my conduct had been "satisfactory". The maps in BF2 are a big improvement over BF Vietnam and 1942 although there are some stinkers in there like "operation clean sweep" which dont give enough cover for infantry and allow the vehicles absolute supperiority, which can make gameplay pretty frustrating or even downright awful. There is still the problem of having to cross wide open spaces just to get near the combat, it may take you 2-3 mins just to get near a combat zone when you get struck down by a tank or APC, in some maps this can happen constantly because they are just too open and there is too little transport around. (I often thought some sort of chopper controlled by AI which will ferry troops to the location that the commander selects would be a good idea.) Overall BF2 is very enjoyable (most of the time) at least as enjoyable as the previous BF games but mostly much more so. Im sure dice will find solutions for many of the problems mentioned with upcoming patches so when they do it should be a lot more fun and hopefully as longlasting as BF1942. 
