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Battlefield 2

This review of Digital Illusions CE’s Battlefield 2 is late. Very late. It’s so late, in fact, that at the time of publication Electronic Arts has already sold over a million copies of the game, sealing its success as one of the top PC games of the year. But I have an excuse, one that should please both the developers and readers of Digital Entertainment News greatly:

I couldn’t stop playing it long enough to write.

Battlefield 2, the misnamed third game in the Battlefield series, takes the mega-popular Battlefield 1942 into the modern era, borrowing a few innovations from last year’s Battlefield Vietnam and winding them up tight into a stunning accomplishment of online gaming. When it works, it’s the most engrossing experience I’ve had on my PC for years. I’ll get to the parts that don’t work in a bit, but first, let’s take a closer look at the things this game does well.

Players of the Desert Combat Mod for Battlefield 1942 will feel at home with the setting: a modern U.S. Marine Corps takes on a fictional Middle East Coalition. A third party, the Chinese People’s Army, spreads the conflict across the globe. Current-day tech outfits the soldiers of these three sides, creating an atmosphere of actual world war.

Realism, however, is not the goal. DICE have done the gamer right by focusing not on the simulation of the battles, but on the straight action entertainment – twisting real-life considerations into an arcade version of their former selves.

An example is in order: people get shot in battles. Shot persons are in need of medics, most of the time. Battlefield 2’s solution is to offer two levels of dead: “severely wounded” troops can call for a medic. Their cries are seen by medics on the HUD, who can then rush to their aid. Troops that are killed in action… well, they can wait for the clock to tick down to their inevitable respawn.

The medic is one of the seven “kits” or classes of characters. Each serves a specific purpose on the battlefield, and, unlike previous incarnations of the game, have been tweaked to near perfection in their balance. Never is one class useless, nor is one class so overbearingly powerful as to rule the field the moment they appear. Each serves a primary combat role and a secondary support role. The Special Ops (my favorite) soldier can use shaped charges to take out enemy installations like radar, bridges, and artillery support. The engineer is there to build those things back up again, as well as repairing vehicles. The heavy support troop lugs around the serious firepower, but also restocks nearby comrades with ammunition clips. A well-balanced team helps each other out of habit, merely by the presence of the others. Such is the way with the kits.

There is an eighth kit, one that is new to the series. The Battlefield Commander has a top-down view of the action, and can order their subordinates to particular areas on the map, “ping” areas with a satellite view, alerting their troops to enemy positions, and call in artillery strikes if those positions are packed with viable targets.

Commanders lead troops in an indirect fashion. They can assign squad leaders that command groups of six via voice chat. Orders are handed down from the Commander to the squad leaders without the grunts’ knowledge, and then passed along from there to all the troops. This is an absolutely ingenious method of handling the difficulties of voice chat in a 64 player game. Not only does it eliminate the hassle of 64 people trying to squawk into their headset microphones at once, but it also allows the squad leaders some bit of autonomy – if they don’t like their Commander’s orders, they can tell their men to do something else. Treason, to be sure, but “not all leaders can be truly followed,” as a wise traitor once said. Commanders can also be elected out of their position by popular vote, should they be behaving in less-than-commanderly ways.

Sixty-four players on a map at one time: it’s a wonderful thing. Whether you’re hoofing your sniper rifle through the underbrush of a godforsaken swamp or laughing hysterically over a desert gulf as the F-16 in your sights tosses flares at the first sign of danger, so many people make for an interesting experience, no matter what corner of the map you’re in. Make no mistake, these maps are big. They’re so big, in fact, that smaller games, say 32 or 16 players constrict the boundaries of the area to contain the action and keep it hot and fast. DICE and EA didn’t want someone wandering aimlessly through the mountains when there was a crucial battle going on in the valley. Get too far and it’s game over, chum. Again, realism takes a hit, but this is only a game.

I keep going on and on about the bells and whistles of the game without actually describing what the game is. Allow me to explain. There is one mode of gameplay to Battlefield 2. Conquest is the game of the day, a sort of cross between capture-the-flag and Domination that has been the hallmark of the series since its inception. Basically, you capture an enemy outpost by standing near their flag for a period of time. Once freed from their control, enemies cannot spawn nearby (the number of spawns a team is allowed is limited by the number of “tickets” they have. The number of tickets used in one game is set at the time of game hosting). Capture all the flags and kill off all enemies and the game is over. Kill all the enemies and make them spend all their respawn tickets before you capture the map, and you win, regardless of how many flags you control. Sure, more modes of gameplay could have been included, but with Conquest working as well as it does, there’s really no need.

The game maps are strewn with interesting little things to climb into, drive off in, shoot wildly into the air, or simply admire for their beautifully-rendered construction. Tank warfare hasn’t been this fun since Combat on the Atari 2600. Taking down a transport chopper from a stationary anti-aircraft gun is such a visceral experience, you’ll find yourself jumping into the seat of one at the first available opportunity. Storming the decks of an enemy aircraft carrier from a tiny, inflatable boat must not be missed by the discerning gamer. The stories that can be generated by every single run in the game are things you’ll brag about to friends later. It truly is an engrossing experience.

EA has capitalized on this with a new element to the online game: persistence. Your stats are tracked as you play on ranked servers, your kills and time logged building into a single character file. That file is then rewarded with awards, ribbons, medals, ranks, and soforth. As you play, your persona gains virtual rank, unlocking awards for spending a particular amount of time in-game, shooting down a particular number of enemy aircraft, repairing a particular number of vehicles, or just getting a particular number of kills in one game. By gathering this experience and winning these awards, new weapons and items are unlocked for use – new toys for your chosen class. These toys give a minor edge to the experienced players – longer-ranged or more stable firearms, for example – but not to the point of unbalancing the play or making a new player feel unable to keep up. Still, a lot of time is needed to unlock the goodies. You’re going to have to log a few hours before you start to see the spoils of war.

It pains me to stray from my knee-jerk praise of this spectacular display of gameplay, but there are a few areas that detract from Battlefield 2’s overall performance. Let’s all put on our hypercritical hats, shall we? Ready? Let’s review:

Those unlockables sound all well and good (and are), but they are really only something that the online gamer will be able to take advantage of. Here is one crux of criticism of the overall Battlefield 2 experience: it’s only good online. I know this might sound trite in reflection of the New Online Order of Worlds Of Warcraft, but for the offline or single-player-oriented PC gamer, Battlefield 2 does not offer the works to your ancient tastes. If, for some reason, you are unable to connect to the EA accounts server (it happens, believe me) you are left to play with an offline shadow of the online game’s true glory.

First off, the 64 player ubercombat is reduced to a paltry 16 AI players. This wouldn’t be such a big deal, but limiting the maps in this manner does not exactly prepare a player for the true online experience, and it’s difficult to practice on a particular map without being able to play outside the compressed game areas of a 16 player game. Furthermore, this limits you from being able to get any real experience in piloting the aircraft, one of the more difficult areas of the game, outside of a live-fire situation. It would have been nice if EA had provided us with the full benefits of ranks, awards, unlockable weapons, and full-scale battles offline, even if those things didn’t transfer to the online account. The long and short of it is that a more engrossing offline experience would have been preferred, even if it were only a training seminar for the online game. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

Second, the load times of Battlefield 2 can be horrendous. There is a shader optimization routine (whatever the hell that means) that can extend your map load times to three, four, or five minutes depending on the specs of your PC. This process runs every time you load a new map or change your video settings. Now, I like to boast about the performance of my beastly rig, but Battlefield 2 made my PC feel shamefully inadequate when those load screens rolled around. This is not a game that you simply pop into your Xbox and start playing in 30 seconds or less (though an Xbox version is coming, and if the demo disc EA sent along is any indicator, will be awesome). The time it took for me to install the game, register it, and get into my first offline experience was literally 34 minutes. Load times are a real pain.

Make no mistake about it: Battlefield 2 is not a game for the PC “n00b.” Anyone not belonging to the “old skool” caste of gamers familiar with the shortcomings of online PC gaming will find themselves frustrated with the process of getting online and getting their frag on. The full cadre of problem cases face the online gamer: the timeouts connecting to a server, lag (which has more of an effect on your own movement here than just the location of your targets, leading to frustration in the most basic of actions on a slow connection), server hacks, lamers, spawn campers, team killers, etc. The online PC world is still the wild west as far as lawful, consistent gameplay is concerned, and even EA’s official servers don’t offer a lot of reprieve from the haggles of this chaotic realm. There’s not even a friends list to find the mates you like to play against, only the old standard of low-ping servers you frequent. If you’re new to the scene, I welcome you to the frustration that is online gaming, the kink even mighty EA hasn’t been able to iron out.

On the other side of the coin is the persistent hardcore gamer, at least a million strong by EA’s recent announcements. They’re sure to supply you with all your tournament, clan, and mod scene needs, pouring extra life into this already fantastic game. EA is also doing their part as well, plugging up some of the holes with patches. If we’re lucky, maybe one of them will expand on the offline experience for when the accounts server or your local network is down. So long as they leave the online play as is, it’s all good.

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Tags: Battlefield 2

Posted by Brad on Aug 19th, 2005 and is filed under PC Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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