PC Gaming has been getting a lot of flak lately. As the consoles edge ever more into what has traditionally been PC space developers will have to take steps to re-imagine what makes PC Gaming special. Battlefield 2 is a title that hard-core enthusiasts can point to if they want a great example of what separates console gaming from PC gaming. Pitched, high tension battles fought street to street and house-to-house are experiences that consoles just can't offer up yet. Read on for my impressions of Battlefield 1942's sibling.
- Title: Battlefield 2
- Developer: Digital Illusions
- Publisher: Electronic Arts
- System: PC (only)
- Reviewer: Zonk
- Score: 8
Battlefield 1942 has been one of the most popular First Person Shooters on the market since it was released three years ago. The solid graphics and wide open gameplay field of that title ensured that it was regularly in the mix with Counter-Strike and Unreal Tournament on lists of most played online titles. Combining the vehicular combat of Tribes and the team play of Halo, wrapped up inside a WWII packaging that had yet to lose its luster, Digital Illusions scored a sales coup. Their latest title, Battlefield 2, takes place in the near future. Instead of a historical setting, modern weaponry and level design is the order of the day. Helicopters, Jet Fighters, and sidearms familiar to anyone who has watched CNN make the battlefield an exciting place to be. CNN coverage, in fact, was likely an inspiration for the developers during the game's creation. The game pits American forces against vaguely terrorist middle-eastern stereotypes, in a topical tie-in to today's headlines.
So how do you improve on an already great title? The sequel to Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield Vietnam stays very close to the source material. So close, in fact, that it's hard to point to any fundamental change in the gameplay mechanics. The changes, instead, are quality of life improvements. The game's engine allows for lagless infantry combat and accurate vehicular strikes. A fantastic audio environment places you directly in the action, raising the heart rate as bullets whiz by your head. Graphical improvements allow for a beautiful setting to slay your enemies, and tight level design makes for surprisingly tense house-to-house fighting. Stripping away options in favor of enjoyment, BF2 only ships with the Conquest game type, which pits armies of varying size against each other in a bid to control a set of nodes scattered across a map. Though there aren't that many maps each of them scales from 16 to 64 players. This allows for each map to evoke a different feel, from squad on squad to army vs. army, depending on the battle's size.
The additions they've made to the Battlefield series instead changes the framework of the tried and true gameplay they're offering up. Players have several different kits they can outfit themselves with, as in the original titles, but new kits such as the special forces soldier add in some variety. Support characters, like medics and engineers, can also increase their effectiveness by entering vehicles. These vehicles become mobile support bases, with medics inside vehicles healing fellow players that stand near the unit. Players can form themselves into small squads, each of which has a dedicated voice chat channel. Squad leaders can issue orders via a push-button system or voice, and have their group act in unison. The squads on a particular side are in turn directed by a commander. The commander of a side has a very different perspective on the game, a top down map interface giving him a birds-eye view of the proceedings. The commander has several tools at his disposal, including a kind of enemy detecting radar and the ability to call down artillery strikes. When the entire system is working in unison, players acting in concert within their squads and in league with other units directed by a commander, the experience is something akin to poetry in motion.
Unfortunately, that frission of so many different players working together rarely happens. While gamers have adopted voice chat for everything from Massive games to UT Tourneys, they generally do so with people they already know. In playing online, very few individuals seemed willing to make their voices heard to strangers. The in-game text commands are easy to access and informative, but they're still no match up for a quickly uttered statement. While cohesion within squads does seem to be generally good, as there are only a few people to coordinate, the level of effectiveness is entirely dictated by the squad leader. One suicidal or absent-minded guy at the reins can meant that you and your comrades are in for one messy death after another. In the overall picture, the commander's role ends up less utilized than it could be. Armchair generals abound in the FPS world, but in practice few are anything approaching a virtual Colin Powell. The experiences I've had lead me to believe that overwhelming force will almost always win the day. Beyond the game itself, the frustration involved in getting into combat is often off-putting. It may seem like picking nits, but the glacial slowness and murky obscurity of the server browser is extremely frustrating to have to deal with when compared to the user interfaces offered by other games.
Battlefield 2, then, is an extremely competent first person shooter with a strong pedigree and a vision to improve the way in which the genre is played. It is hampered by the vagaries of online play with strangers, poor user interface decisions. On top of these issues, bugs have been a problem since the game was released. Numerous patches, some even more devastating than the bugs they were meant to fix, have not endeared the game to players. Despite all these problems, when a group of players clicks in a Battlefield 2 game it is unlike any other team-based FPS on the market. Fans of the previous games will be happy to get back into the game they love, no questions asked. Veteran FPS players should definitely consider picking up a copy, as it's highly likely that you're going to run across this title at your next LAN party ... but you'll probably want to save it for LAN parties. Players new to the PC FPS experience will find things to enjoy here, but may be intimidated by the amount of knowledge the game assumes on the part of the player. Overall, while not a disappointment, Battlefield 2 falls short of a dramatic reprisal of the Battlefield series.
But it *is* a console game! (Score:5, Interesting)
I am a PC gamer and while I own most of the consoles, I never turn them on because I prefer the PC experience and my high-resolution cutting-edge graphics to playing on a "tee vee".
But Battlefield 2 was clearly designed from day one TO BE A CONSOLE GAME! Just look at the user interface. It's designed to be operated by a console-style game controller without any need for a keyboard, mouse, or any of the rest of the PC user interface.
The primary communication interface consists of a button-triggered popup menu of canned messages, and keyboard-based chat looks like an afterthought.
The user experience for this game will be identical in its console ports, and not because the consoles will be made to behave like PCs, but because the designers of this game went to a fair amount of trouble to make the PC behave just like a console.
The game may look better on today's PCs when compared to today's consoles, but this is simply due to the more modern (and several times more expensive) hardware in a current gaming PC. There may be other reasons why PC gaming is better than console gaming, but BF2 presents no examples (that I can see) of why this might be the case.
BF2 *is* a great game though, and is the first game of its type that actually convinced me to buy it.
G.
Terrain/building damage? (Score:2, Interesting)
If you bump a tank into a building, the building should suffer from some sort of damage. Games like those in the GTA series do at least include rudimentary support for broken lamp posts, trees, fire hydrants, etc. But besides shattering some glass windows, you can't really cause true damage to your surroundings.
Today's games lack such realism. But perhaps we will see such things in the very near future.
Re:My Impressions (Score:2, Interesting)
I found the best part of the game the commander interface. The abilities to call in artillery, support troops, and at least attempt to organize teammates with squad commands were amazing improvements over the original game.
The drawback, and the reason I didn't buy it, was the 'mutiny' feature. While I understand the reason behind it, my experince was less than fun.
To wit: I was voted in as commander, a bunch of new guys show up, all mutiny against me, and then lurk in the commander position doing nothing. Nothing I can do about it but switch sides. This happened so often I got tired of playing, and certainly won't blow $50 on a game that I technically won't be allowed to play fully.
I still had a good time, but it was frustrating to play half a map, helping my team to win, then be ousted by some smaktard and his buddies only to watch the other side take over.
Question - how good IS this for small LAN parties? (Score:1, Interesting)
I often run small-scale LAN parties with a few friends (think: half-a-dozen people at most, plus lots of pizza, curry and monosodium glutamate). We play several games that seem to suit those numbers.. Age of Mythology, MOHAA:Spearhead botmaps (yay OpCenter!), FarCry (ChemLab is a blast) - and, recently - BF1942 in Co-op mode, us vs. the bots. As a rule, we prefer to play cooperatively rather than FFA, so co-op BF1942 works nicely for us.
With that in mind, can anyone answer me a question - are my friends and I likely to like BF2? The official EA site is completely crap (as always), and makes no mention that I can find of LAN play. (ObMoan: why do so many developers now seem to assume that everyone wants to play online games against complete strangers? That doesn't appeal to me at all!)
How well does BF2 scale to small numbers of players on a LAN? I've read TFA and it seems to imply it only "works" when you have 20+ people playing? Does it support bots and co-op gameplay, or must it always be a free-for-all? Any comments?
Thanks in advance..
It's Still Not America's Army (Score:3, Interesting)
EA has consistently proven they think realism is in the graphics. It's not. It's in the game play. America's Army has much more realistic movement, reactions, lifecycle (coming back from the dead is not something that happens in real life, sorry psychic friends), etc.
When I play BF2 I'm amazed by the realistic water, the great tank graphics, and the wonderful explosions. But I feel like I'm playing an arcade game.
When I play America's Army, I'm amazed by the realism of the GAME itself, and I almost always become so immersed in the game that I need a few seconds after quitting to readjust to reality (scary, but true).
So BF2 is an arcade game, and America's Army feels like a simulation in a game-like environment.
In related news, the next version of AA -- due out this fall or winter, I believe -- will likely add larger maps and vehicles you can command, among other improvements.
Dantelope
Re:PC Gaming... (Score:2, Interesting)
Star Wars Battlefront (based upon BF1942) lets me play my PS2 version against PC and Xbox users. Coming from a strictly PC FPS background, it took some time to get used to aiming; however, that's only because I was so used to the kbd/mouse combo. You just have to be subtle with your finger movements (ladies, back me up here!) and it works great. In fact, it's so easy to use the PS2 controller for aiming, that I absolutely refuse to play on servers with auto-aiming turned on.
Realism is sorely lacking in BF2 (Score:5, Interesting)
Battlefield 2's weapon characteristics are *nothing* like their real-life counterparts. In real life, I can hit a 3-ft. plastic target at 400m with a single round from my M249. I can put five out of seven rounds into a *real* person, much bigger than the target, at the same distance. In Battlefield 2, I'll be lucky to hit a guy with 3 rounds out of an entire 200-rd. box, at about the in-game equivalent of 100m, while laying prone. Hint to DICE: squad support weapons are not innacurate. None of the weapons portrayed in the game have the poor accuracy the game displays. If they did, real militaries wouldn't use them. Please don't artificially retard weapons to balance gameplay; instead, rework the levels. Terrain is often a deciding factor in real combat. Why should your game be different? Besides, the soldiers you're portraying in-game are not truck drivers, pay clerks, or light-wheel mechanics; they are combat arms soldiers. They are trained to move, think, and fight in combat, so how about you let them do that without imposing silly constraints on their ability to fight?
Here's a thought: if you must artificially impose limitations on accuracy, base them on a player's in-game rank. That's quite a bit more realistic - I know I was calmer, steadier, and more accurate at month six in Baghdad than I was on day three.
Here's another thought: one area where most games do not impose artificial constraints is the effect of suppression fire. This is the exception to the rule of arbitrary limits, and America's Army got it right: if someone is shooting at you, your accuracy suffers based on how close they're hitting. This is how it is in real life, and this is how it should be in game. The next time I see some lone wolf jump up and run right into a hail of
All of these bitches seem to be about weapon accuracy, but, hey, that's a core bit of the game. So, next on my list... if I am riding around in a M1 Abrams tank, see somebody hovering over a flag in a Havoc or a Hind, and land a 120mm HEAT round right below their rotor shaft, what happens in real life is this: the chopper explodes, crashes to the ground, and everyone inside dies. It does not drift a little to the side, turn, fire some rockets, and then fly away. Modern HEAT rounds are made to penetrate upwards of 800mm of RHA - they're made to defeat main battle tanks. Modern attack helicopters are made to withstand 20mm cannon fire. Do the math.
Support catastrophic kills on armored targets. If I land a round right on the turret ring of a T-80, the tank is going to explode, spectacularly. It's not going to turn, shoot at me, and then run away.
Tanks are not anti-infantry weapons. They are anti-armor weapons. The coax machine gun, and turret gun, are effective against infantry *at range*, but pretty much useless up close. The main gun on a main battle tank can be used to great effect on infantry when they're hiding in buildings, but if you land a round close to an infantryman in open terrain, you're probably just going to scrape him up or give him a few burns. Sabot rounds don't fragment enough to have a grenade-like effect on infantry, and HEAT rounds dissipate energy too quickly to cause much harm when they strike anything other than a wall, armor, or other such material. And these are likely to be the only two types of rounds a MBT will load. Of course, *hit* someone with a 120mm round, and they're done.
AT-4s, SMAWs, SRAWs, etc. etc. etc. probably w