Is Battlefield 2 As Good As You Remember?

no

Look, I get that this is an opinion piece, but you honestly lost me the moment you called Goldeneye 'clumsy'.

Literally everything you praised about bf2 outside of squads and the commander mode had been done before and on a bigger scale in Battlefield 1942. Want to know what the Battlefield series -including bf2- had lost? For a start- naval warfare. BF1942 had destroyers, battleships, aircraft carriers, even submarines, and ALL of them could be captained. Everything in the game had to be manually aimed, which brought it back to skill. Dogfighting in particular was never better than in '42, because you couldn't let a missile do your job for you. Maps were both huge and significant. When you're holed up in Stalingrad fighting off the Germans, you feel like you're fighting a battle that MATTERED. Bf2's skirmishes would barely even make the newspapers outside the US if they really happened.

Finally, the vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to infantry balance was perfect in '42. in BF2 it's a mess. A vehicle could brush by without insta-killing you in '42 as well. MUCH better for smooth gameplay.

One thing good I remember about BF2 was the reload system. You just can't fire one live bullet and then reload without losing a whole mag.

BF2 and Bad Company were absolutely superb!

BF3/BF4 give "Battlefield" a bad name!

The bots were fantastic since it allowed you to play and learn the levels so when you dropped into multiplayer were instantly destroyed by human players.

But as for you question, yes, BF2 was as good as I remember.

But the first BF1942 was amazing, stunning, incredible, in particular for its time.

nice video you made here, BF2 FOR ALL THE WINS

Even though the bots sucked I miss being able to play with them and I am very disappointed that DICE can't be bothered with them now.

Battlefield 2 was great, but the amount of fun you had was highly dependent on the maturity of the people you played with. This is the same with Battlefield 3 and 4. There is a lot of good gameplay to be had in all of them, but otherwise good games could be ruined by stupid teammates, etc. I think probably the biggest thing, and this could all be in my head, was that the player base of Battlefield 2 was either older/more mature as a result of it being a PC only game. Sure people play BF3 and 4 on the PC, but the player base just seems younger and less mature these days. You have people running around trying their best not to drop ammo or health, people running away while you're trying to repair their vehicle, people taking vehicles and driving them off without any passengers, etc.

Honestly, I don't remember a whole lot about Battlefield 2. I remember that it was great fun, but I can't think of any particularly memorable moments. While I am aware of the teamwork-oriented elements such as:

- Vehicles acting as mobile healing stations or ammo resupply points based on who is driving them.

- Commander mode

etc.

I don't remember too many times where I was in a match where all of these things were used to their full advantage. Maybe these sort of things were best experienced as part of a clan, I don't know. As for commander mode, I remember there being one, but I don't ever remember getting to play as one except for maybe once or twice.

Yes, there are terrible, annoying-as-hell gameplay problems with Battlefield 3 and 4:

Mobile AA being anti-everything

Lock-on spam

Increased use of vehicles as disposable fast transport, abandoning the crew to certain death

Active protection, active radar

Dying behind cover, etc.

Sniper spam, large part in due to high power, relatively low recoil DMRs; bolt-actions not too bad on normal in most cases but bolt-actions and DMRs alike can easily ruin matches in hardcore mode ('which is a half-baked mode where some gadgets no longer even work)

- One thing that I seem to recall is that the majority of the Battlefield 2 maps were designed in such a way that didn't immediately put someone using a specific class at a disadvantage. Either the map had rolling hills, ample vehicles (none of this sitting around waiting for a jeep like BF4), different types of cover such as buildings or foliage, or better balance between the infantry weapon classes. In BF3 and BF4 it seems like if you aren't a sniper or assault on some maps you are basically going to get your ass handed to you unless you spend the whole time in a tank or APC.

However, I think a lot of people are forgetting some of the most infuriating/annoying parts of Battlefield 2:

- Helicopters, especially transport helicopters could carry engineers and repair the thing faster than it could take damage.

- The infantry gunplay was irritating. Hit detection was poor, none of the weapons seemed to have any kick or recoil to them, and they had the most ridiculous weapon spread/inaccuracy problems of any game I can remember. There was no bipod for the support class for example and you couldn't hit something the size of a tank from 25 feet away using an LMG.. the bullets shot out at like 45 degree angles.. something that only happened in BF3 close-range with suppression.

- While the lack of a hardcore mode wasn't necessarily bad, the game had the bad balance of requiring a good amount of bullets to kill someone (low bullet damage) but also terrible rage-inducing uncontrollable random bullet spread. Either the bullet damage from infantry weapons needed to be higher or the spread on the weapons needed to be lower. I guess this all basically comes down to time-to-kill that was too high. Personally, the hardcore modes on BF3 and BF4 were much more tolerable in this regard.

- Air vehicles. There were Stinger emplacements and other vehicles, but my god... good pilots in any of the air vehicles could destroy the mobile AA emplacements or have their locations memorized making it extremely dangerous to try to use one. The result of this is that the air vehicles would completely dominate some matches, way worse than what happened in BF3.

- Grenade/explosive spam was just as prevalent as the modern games.

This video is so relevant to me. As someone with also sooooo many fond BF2 memories, I found I never really thought about going back to play it after all these years.

I really liked the thoroughness of this video, delving into all the positive and negative. It really does make me consider buying it all over again just to play Strike at Karkand all over again in all its muddy dusty detail.

Enjoyed this and BF 2142 so much more than BF3. Haven't even tried BF4 since BF3 left such a bad taste in my mouth.

i once snuck up behind 4 enemy soldiers and killed them all with my defibrillator. 10/10

Ive played the very first BF game like 15 years ago+ then havent touched one until BF3 on PC. Was BF2 as much of a cheatfest as the new games?

BF2 is a HOF game. It was the best game of its time. It does not live up to the hype and is not the best game TODAY. Almost everything you said about Squads, Medics, Maps, Jets, Artillery strikes etc. could be done in latter games. The only reason you had such a good experience when you started the game up was that the player base was so mature. If you played with a bunch of kids and hacks your frustrations would be the same.

Besides some of what you said wasn't true. Maps where smaller than the largest of BF3 and BF4 and avenues of attacks were more predictable and the change of scenery has been there too even more, Noshahr canals, Operation Metro (Rush), Lancing Dam.

Latter games just built on the winning formula and gave you more, more Maps, More guns, More game modes, More vehicles, More gadgets, More graphics, More story, More personalization, more freedom. And of course more glitches and lag but, please try to play BF2 on 06' specs and see if 1/2G ram and 2.8Ghz Pentium processor and 128mb video is enough.

The games have gotten better, it is the companies that have gotten worse and put bad taste in our mouths, microtransactions, short development, release while not complete etc.

Battlefield 2 had the shittiest of hit detection, and it was still fun

i was so bummed i missed this game. played the sh.t out of BF1942 desert combat before it.

Very good times...

I'm kinda annoyed I didn't play this when it first came out. The first Battlefield game I played was Bad Company 2, and I really loved it. It's the only online mulitplayer shooter I've ever spent a good amount of time on. I got BF3 expecting to love that game as well, but I really didn't like it. Probably only played less than 10 hours of the multiplayer, compared to over 150 on BC2.

I suppose I could go and play BF2 now, but it's just not the same as when the game first came out. That's what's annoying about getting into serious gaming slightly later in life. I've missed out on loads of classics, that i'll never properly appreciate.

BF2142 was the pinnacle of the series personally, But I do agree BF2 still holds up today and still a better game than BF3 & BF4.

Battlefield 2 is what got me into Battlefield Series Sad that I didn't get to enjoy the multiplayer in BF2 and BF 2142 because both games I owned were pirated version.

I love Battlefield 3, but disappointed that it didn't feature bot practice and LAN game solely because they're going Origin.

I skipped BF4 because the game felt too experimental and feels like they're just testing things out and launch it. I experienced a horrible beta like never before, even Crysis 2 beta was better.

Now... onto Battlefront 3

@falboe041 Is it trusted? b/c some of the prices looks bit too low. I mean CoD MW3 for 17$? Activision would never sell games so cheap. So the keys are from some non legit source I guess?

This and Bad Company 2 are my fav Battlefield games.

About 85% of DICE who created the older battlefield games have now left the company, dont expect a remake or a game coming even close to this pinnacle of military FPS.

I hope you like this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3p2TtqF_Vk

Just like every BF game, BF2's launch was a train wreck. I still enjoy the modern Battlefields.

this whole video you could say the same thing about BF1942 . YOU didnt have squads exactly in BF1942, but people pretty much stuck together if everyone knew each other. The maps in BF1942 were also extremely open.

This franchise has really lost the plot for me now. Like im even feeling anti DICE when it comes to the new Star Wars Battlefront games coming out soon.

Only class that is OP are snipers. Rest of the game is perfect

BF1942 Desert Combat, BF2, and Counter Strike are the best MP shooters I have ever played, period.

That game was awesome. But I prefer Battlefield 1942 with Desert Combat MOD.

Tribes/ Tribes 2, Bf1942/2 was 90% of all my MP experience. But overall Tribes was it for me.
The new battlefields excluding BC2 suck. Big time.

Battlefield 2? Nah. I could play Wake Island on Battlefield 1942 or Battlefield Vietnam all day, though.