Breathing life into Ranked servers, this expansion delivers much-needed new content.
Unfortunately the expansion does little to enhance the single-player playability of the game, with a decent singleplayer mode including more than 16 players on a map and the use of aircraft still nowhere in sight. Similarly, support for co-op mode (multiplayer with bots filling out the teams) is still noticably absent.
What is included, however, is certainly worth the expansion's price tag. DICE Canada have done a fantastic job with the new maps, which are even more realistic than those from the original BF2. The addition of burned out vehicles makes you feel that you're in a war zone, rather than a carefully laid out military training area. Time has been wisely spent on the map details, rather than dotting a few buildings around a heightmap built in a few minutes with randomly generated undergrowth dotted around.
The new maps are thankfully free of planes, which were the bane of the infantry player in the original BF2 maps. Although the heavy backup of artillery, armor, and helicopters are still present every player can now feel they are making a valuable contribution to their team. While on the subject of teams, teamplay is now encouraged even more as crossing the map is a lot easier if you have access to both a grappling hook and zip line - and as these are exclusive items you'll need at least two people to make full use of them. Squads are now encouraged even more to take a good mix of classes instead of the preponderance of spec ops personnel that plaged many BF2 games.
The new zip line and grappling hook provide new ways to move around, the former consisting of a crossbow that shoots a line to any point vertically beneath your current position, allowing you to slide down. The grappling hook meanwhile lets you climb walls to get to higher positions. Curiously, the developers chose to give the sniper kit the zip line rather than the grappling hook, so snipers may well want a partner carrying the grappling hook to help them attain better positions.
The new maps are mostly urban, with plenty of buildings to hide inside and around. There's also an airport with a very Rainbow Six-like-feel to it and an interesting assault on the USS Essex (which seems to get around quite a bit in the BF2 game world) by MEC special forces that takes place on and beneath the deck. Some of the maps take place at night, which brings into play a new piece of kit carried by all classes in Special Forces - the night vision goggles. These goggles can be toggled on and off to give you a green-tinted light-enhanced view, but are limited in battery life (recharging while not in use) to about 2-3 minutes of use. You'll not want them on permanently, though, as in lighted areas (such as inside lit buildings or outside with street lights) they actually make it more difficult to see. Driving around a night map usually requires constant toggling of your night vision goggles as you pass through lit and unlit areas. These maps use a number of new protaganists, including US Navy Seals, British SAS, Russian Spetznas, MEC Special Forces, Rebels and Insurgents.
New vehicles available on the maps include the desert raider (with driver sitting in the middle with a gunner to each side plus one on top), civilian cars and pickup trucks, jet skis, and quad bikes. Theres even a drivable forklift in some of the warehouses...
Another nice addition is the use of map triggers - a number of maps have elevators and doors that can be controlled with switches, the most impressive of which is the aircraft elevator platform on the side of the USS Essex which is used in reality for moving aircraft from the interior hangar to the flight deck (although not in-game as the planes on deck are for decoration only). The addition of compounds with locked gates is another use for the grappling hook/zipline combination to gain access and open the gates for your comrades.
On the technical side, the latest BF2 dedicated server contains the original and Special Forces maps, meaning that most server providers will be making the SF option available on their servers immediately and probably at no extra charge. Special Forces is constructed as a BF2 mod, which means you're either running BF2 or BF2:SF when you start the game - however a lot of the new weapons from BF2:SF (including the new unlockable weapons) are available to use in standard BF2. You wont however be seeing the grappling hook and zipline on BF2 maps, unless added in a patch at a later date. On vanilla maps such as Mashtuur City you'll now notice flashbangs around every corner and clouds of tear gas filling the streets - these options are only available to those players who have bought Special Forces, of course, making it a must-have even for those players who don't want to play on the new maps.
Logging into Special Forces you'll also gain a number of free unlocks (if this doesnt happen immediately for you don't worry, you usually have to play two or three times before they become available) which can be used on either new or original unlocks. While this does smell a little of "paid unlocks", it does add another reason to buy this expansion but also makes you question how much input the marketing people at EA had into the game content.
Finally, the 1.13 BF2 engine does appear to have had some graphics tweaks, with the game becoming even more detailed on high-end graphics cards.