Which battlefield do you want me to blow up sir? 2? OK......BOOM!
Then I heard about Battlefield 2. And I felt a tingle. From my brain all the way to my calloused right index finger. Finally, I would be able to experience the same joy as my friends once did with weapons and vehicles I could relate to. I could hardly wait for it to come out.
And now it has. And my verdict? If BF:1942 was anything like this game, I should have beat my friends senseless for not trying harder to convince me to play it. Battlefield 2 is that good, but by no means perfect.
The opening movie gives you a good sense of what you're getting yourself into, finding games to suit your tastes in easy, the BF2HQ page is very informative, and you can customize everything up the wahzoo in the options, which might actually be necessary. But more on that in a minute. As for the game itself, it's surprising how much realism is fit into a supposedly arcadey shooter. Guns behave as they should in the real world, being fairly inaccurate at a distance, and Vehicles drive faily well. Albeit if you decide to fly (via the game's Helicopters or Jets) seriously consider upgrading to a joystick, mousing with the aircraft can be an exercise in frustration to learn, let alone master.
Single player mode is the one dissapointing aspect to the game. Limited to 16-player maps, they play quick and are relatively unfufilling. Good perhaps for the green amoung us who want to pratice without ridicule, but that's about it. DICE might have done better by turning singleplayer into a tutorial to explain how the myriad of interfaces in the game work, but oh well. Multiplayer is what you're really buying this game for anyway.
There's a limited variety to the maps you can play, most being head-on collisions between the armies as they contest various flagpoints. Stratagy can be utilized well; Enemy aircraft giving you trouble? Deny them by taking their airfield flag if you can. Tanks your cup of tea? there's usually one flagpoint that's chock full of armor. I did wish that there were more game modes besides conquest, but what's available works out just fine.
BF2 is a thing of beauty, running high detail and high resolution. Explosions billow, vehicles shimmy while moving, plants sway in the breeze, so it's definately worth the upgrade.
Sound-wise the game is also good. Vehicles rumble and roar to life, Jets boom when they pass overhead, and guns have a meaty, rich sound when firing. In a nice touch, voices for the individual armies are country specific: English for the marines, Persian for the MEC, and What sounds like Mandarin for the PLA. Good for suspending your disbelief and immersing you in the feel of the gameplay.
Speaking of gameplay, it's rock-solid in BF2, with just one caveat. Weapons are inaccurate, so it behooves you to work with your squad to take down targets. And since the game rewards you for teamwork and things other than frags you won't feel left out on the leaderboard when the round ends. I've had the joy of playing with my friends, where Squadmates would call out requests and targets, the squadleader would call out for support and artillery, and the commander would dish supplies and artillery out to the various squads under his command, call for airstrikes from jets in the air, and direct his squads around like an orchestra Maestro. Played the way it was ment to be played, any virtual army will run like a well-oil machine.
Oh yeah, time for that caveat I told you about. If your army DOESN'T work together, prepare for a bit of frustration. In public games people who have no intention of leading well will abuse the commander feature. TK'ing is rampant and idiots will punish you for their own blatant stupidity. One exmple: I played an engineer, and my squadleader told me to mine a particular road into a flagpoint we just captured, in order to hold off the enemy armor our sniper had spotted inbound, while we waited for supplies from our commander. I did so, and called out on radio and text that the road was mined. Another non-squad member spawned at the flag, hopped into a nearby jeep, and proceeded to blow himself up on my mines. Plural. As in repeatedly respawn and drive a vehicle to oblivion on my carefully laid mines. I understand that once might be an accident, but after four, your just plain retarted. What's worse he punished me every single time he died, and eventually the server booted me for "excessive team killing". That's just one example, but others abound, so prepare to be shot, shelled, run over, blown up, and otherwise made dead by people on your own side who don't play as a team.
But even with the quibbles I've mentioned, Battlefield 2 is still a wonderful experience that rewards you for your persistance. Definately pick it up, and prepare to waste your free time away.