Battlefield 2 (PC)
War is hell. This game is merely purgatory.

There's an old adage that anticipation for a thing is often better than the thing itself. Sadly, this is very much the case with Battlefield 2. A sequel to Battlefield 1942, still a perennial favourite at LAN parties, the core concept is two armies fight for control of areas of a map, the winner ultimately holding the majority for long enough to reduce the opponents points (or tickets as they're called in the game) to zero.

This fighting is done on land, sea and air in a glorious variety of vehicles, any of which can be jumped into and out-of in a flash. One moment you're fighting on foot with a machine gun, the next you're diving into a tank to provide some heavy artillery cover, then over to a plane to strafe the enemy position. Or more often, ignominiously die face-first in a cliff. The aerial vehicles were always a nightmare to control.

So far the description above covers both Battlefield 1942, it's expansion packs, the semi-sequel Battlefield Vietnam, and the new game, but tweaks to the game play mechanic have been introduced along the way, almost all of them to the benefit of the game. Which is what makes the changes they've effected in Battlefield 2 all the more confusing.

Firstly, and most damningly of all, the game is missing a cooperative multiplayer mode, which for myself and everyone I know who played the older version of Battlefield, is absolute madness. According to comments I've seen online, the rationale for this omission was that "people didn't play the game with a bunch of friends against AI opponents". Their reasoning for this statement being what they'd observed on the official games servers.

It doesn't take a genius to notice the flaw in their logic. The thousands upon thousands of people who were playing the game cooperatively weren't doing it on the official servers. They were playing it over a local network, at their houses (and possibly workplaces). When there's only 4 of you to play, it's just no fun to pile into a map and have to play 2v2. We'd always form a little squad and pit our combined forces against a vast number of computer opponents. This was the beauty of the game and lead to some memorable evenings of carnage.

Still, as the developers didn't realise this was how their game was being played, they removed it in Battlefield 2, which for me rather negates the point of having bought it. They have introduced the concept of a squad, complete with Voice-Over-IP so you can talk in real-time to your squadmates, but with only script-kiddie yank morons* to play against rather than the thankfully silent bots, the appeal of multiplayer is severely diminished. The other new gameplay concept is the commander, which is a player position that one person per team can take and help to direct the battle via the voice communications. They see the overall map and (theoretically) send orders to the various squads about what places they should attack and which they should defend. It's a nice idea, but I can't see anyone in my group of friends wanting to forsake the action of battle for the ability to act as a glorified commentator.

Which brings me to another problem. Whilst the game only includes 12 maps, they come in various sizes depending on how many players you want to have playing on them. In other words, the 16-player version of one map may include the centre of a city, with the 32-player version includes more of the surrounding area and the 64-player version goes all the way to the coast. All very nice. But the single player (little more than a practice mode with bots. The same damn bots missing from the multiplayer) will only let you play a game on the small 16-player map. Which means if you go online and try to play on a 64-player version of the map, you'll have no idea where anything is, having never been allowed to that area of the map before. Cretinous.

Visually, the game is very attractive, although it comes at a hefty price. If you haven't bought or upgraded your PC in the last twelve months or less, I'd really recommend trying out the demo for the game before you even consider finding your wallet.

Lastly, the game appears to have serious stability issues. I've only managed to quit out of it a couple of times and the rest either had it crap out to the desktop, or lock up altogether. I can't help but feel the game was rushed out, although eventually patches will hopefully address these bugs (as well as the irritating gameplay omissions) if you do want to buy a copy, you might as well not bother for the moment until the patches are released (and the price has most likely dropped).

Overall, Battlefield 2 is a really good idea, badly handled. With time (hopefully) the mistakes the game is plagued by will be addressed and the solid and enjoyable concept that we all grew to love will be revealed. In the meantime, I'd go and pick up a copy of Battlefield 1942 and enjoy the original and best.

* - I'm aware that there must be cognitively-capable adults playing the game online. I just don't know where.

Score 5/10

© Barny Russell 2005