The best multiplayer game for the PC. It delivers everything the Americas Army game didn't.
Alright, first off I was a bit on the negative side against Battlefield 2 becuase all I've heard about it was the "omg it pwns"-reaction from everybody I've talked to and from forums ect, and that never sounds good, the same thing with Half Life 2 which I found rather dissapointing. However, during this time I did also play Americas Army alot while it ran fairly good on my veteran PC and took references from footage of Battlefield 2 and the Americas Army in terms of the realism, graphical stuff and the general reaction to both and I saw that BF2 obviously had better graphics but I thought it still wouldn't stand up to the tactical and realisic gameplay of the Americas Army game. But after all I suppose I was pretty wrong, Battlefield 2 delivers everything that the Americas Army games didn't, such as fast-paced action, vechicles, ect. and it still does so in a good, balanced way.
But I'm not going into a Americas Army VS Battlefield 2 topic, they focuses on different things but I must say Americas Army is awesome for it's price-tag.
Battlefield 2 offers a beatiful graphical engine that will probably make a not-too-top-notch computer to spin around as well as the great sound that will also need a relativitly new sound-card to work properly on maxed settings, but for those who are running on rather accessable stuff there's ofcourse some 'normal' settings allowing about all sound-cards to play the sounds in a way that works well enough. The graphics in the game pays out a really important deal to make you believe that you're on this huge, epic battlefield trying to push the enemy off your back, but even on lowest settings you'll have a good time becuase of the great mechanism in the game, though you will not have that much too stare your eyes off at.
The whole game is focused on the Infanty side, you can still hop into vehicles but you'll soon see that there needs to be good balance between the team-members kits or classes to gain victory. So, there's about 7 different classes, there's Special Forces which are armed with red-dot aiming capacity on their fully-automatic rifles as well as they're capable of delivering C4 charges on enemy vehicles or put them on the ground and wait until enemy forces pass by, there's the Sniper kit which will have your charather camoflouged and armed with two anti-personell mines and a scoped sniper rifle to take out enemy on a distance, both the Snipers and Special Forces comes with silenced M9 pistol. The Assult kit gives you a burst-firing rifle with a grenade launcher to take out infantry or light vehicles. And now for the most interesting kits or classes, the Support kit, Engineer kit, Medic kit and Anti-Tank Kit. All those, except for the Anti-Tank Kit allows you to help your team-mates with ammo (Support), revive or healing players (Medic) and reparing and deploying Anti-Tank Mines (Engineer) to gain special assists and make your team even more succesful against the enemy. All these three classes/kits also allows you to turn some vehicles into mobile repair, medic or supply wagons so you'll be able to heal and support players in a smaller erea around the vehicle as they still treat their main purposses. But as for me, I like the Medic class the best becuase there's nothing better than running through the epic Battlefield to revive a fallen comrad either if you succeed or get killed, you'll also have this revenge-feeling after a comrad revive you and then suddenly he gets killed and you'll probably go all mad and shoot that guy who did it and all his pals around (you'll do that all the time but it's never that satisfying as the revenge-kills are). The classes are important but having a poor leader would probably turn victory into defeat in few minutes. Players in a team can split into different Squads with each one their own leader to make the communication and assults easier between the players, all players in a squad may also respawn from the Squad Leaders positions. But what the Squad leader(s) is really doing is not only laying stradegies for the Squad Members but also communicating with the Commander of the whole team to launch an artillery barrage at a specific location or giving supplies, orders for the team and requesting Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to surround a smaller area to spot enemy troop movements and so on. So the communication and having a good leader is probably one of the most important thing in this game if you want to gain victory.
The vehicles in the game is pretty well balanced, there's fast-moving FATV's such as Buggies and Humvees as well as the M1A2 and T95 Main Battle Tanks and more. And those vehicles is looking and feeling really great and the controls are rather simple to get into, escpecially if you've played the previous games in the Battlefield-Series but the learning curve of the vehicle controls would come really natural to new players as well. And talking about the balance of the vehicles I could take some rather obvious examples just to get it over with, there's fast moving FATVs with poor armor but will allow players to take on infantry in a very effective way just as dropping off soldiers to take out tanks or general transport in the middle of the battlefield, but look out for enemy tanks, one shot and you're history. There's also Armored Personell Carriers (APC) with many slots for soldiers to fill in and it's rather fast and well-armed with a chain-gun with explosive rounds and TOW missiles to take on other tanks or successfully roll through infantry possitions. And ofcourse, the heart of any ground-battlefield, the Main Battle Tank, well-armored and heavily armed with a machinegun next to the main heavy 120mm canon which allows you to take out infantry or other matters while you reload the main canon which could take some time, the disadvantage with the Main Battle Tank is that it's canon cannot engage enemy aircraft or helicopters all too good and it's slow speed make it a easy target for the Aircraft and groups of Anti-Tank Infantry to take out. I can't describe all the different vehicles becuase I haven't seen or played with all yet nor would anyone be interested to read about it, you'll have to play it and understand it yourself.
And as for the Aircraft vehicles there's basicly two types or airborne vehicles, the Helicopters and Jets, both focuses on different things. The Helicopters are ideal for taking out the Tanks and infantry running on open field and giving support to the ground troops but is a easy target for enemy Jets and Anti-Tank Infantry when the Heli is on low attitude. The Jets on the other side is primed for taking out enemy aircraft and also static vehicles or groups of enemy units with their heavy bomb-capacity, but their low ammo capacity is making them unable to engage enemy units during a longer period of time. Their fast speed is making them hard to manuver and is making them rather impossible to hit with ground troops Anti-Tank Missiles or Heat-Seeking missile TOWs but when you get a hit they'll probably go down for good due to their poor armor. Still, Jet VS Jet is the most succesful way.
This might not be really topic for this specific review but only for this game I'm going to upgrade my PC so I can play it with higher details and so I feel that it would be worth the price to buy it. The software is still rather expensive thinking about it's been in the mix for almost a year but it's sure worth it in the end. And once again, this review was done from what I've played for a really long time in the DEMO of the game, not the retail game but I've only gotten a climpse of what this game is capable to do.
I would recommend this game to everyone who are playing First Person Shooters on the PC. (Sorry if this review might gotten a bit blurry, I'm pretty tired and might not have payed too much attention)