Battlefield 2 is an online war simulation game, based on modern combat. It is actually a pretty old game, but that doesn't stop it being good. Here is the review.

Battlefield 2 is more of a family of games, as there are about 4 "expansion packs" (special ops, euro fighters... i forget the rest, the only one worth having is special ops, the rest, I literally have not played once as there are never any servers up).

This game is an online game, with no real 1p mode (except playing against bots, but that becomes quickly boring. The real meat in this game is the number of vehicles you can drive (each side has tanks, helicopters, jet fighters, bomber etc, but there are problems with this, see later).

Ok, first off:
The graphics are ok, nothing that is going to blow you away, but good enough (i am comparing them to todays standard of graphics). The game runs smoothly (once you have a good PC), and you do really get absorbed into the game. There are checkpoints you have got to capture, and you win by killing everyone, capturing all the points, or a variety of the two.

With the expansion packs, you can get more levels, and more maps, and more weapons. But honestly, as said previously, special ops is the only one worth getting. All the others have "dead servers", i never once got to use any of the new "cool" aircraft, simply because everyone plays either the base game of ops version. I will not review the ops version here, as I plan to write a separate review on that.

BF2 advantages are the fact the sheer number of vehicles, weapons, classes and map size is pretty awesome. I havben't play a game like this, or since with this number (except maybe BF2142, but that's essentially the same game but set in the future). Also the map sizes are very nice and big.

However, this game has a few problems. Firstly, because of the number of vehicles on some maps, it becomes more like some tank battle. and it can get frustrating to play when everyone is just in a tank. Sometimes it feels like there are just too many vehicles...

Which brings to problem 2. There are often "queues" of people waiting for the vehicles to spawn. So often when you need some back up, at least 4-5 people on your team will just be waiting to take the vehicles. This is annoying 2 fold, because not only are you suddenly without 5 people, but you often do not get the chance to drive some vehicles unless you either a, wait for it, or b, join a game with just a ridiculous amount of vehicles. Its just a little thing that got on my nerves. personally I would love it if they somehow made it so the vehicles were computer controlled or something. That way people wouldn't just take them and camp in spots to get high k/d ratios... but thats one of the problems with online play I am afraid.


Thirdly is due to ammo. The support class (other classes are assualt, anti tank, engineer, medic, sniper, spec. ops) can resupply people with ammo kits. So in tight corners of maps, you end up with just grenades being thrown over walls constantly. It just makes the guns in the game feel pointless. Especially with Spec. op class, as his weapons are more close combat style weapons. In this game, there seems to be a bit of an unfair bias towards long range weapons due to map size, and building density, as well as the fact that any tight spots just get naded.

Overall, its a very good game, and I give it 4 minus stars (its better than 3 stars, but out of ten, i would give is 6.5). I haven't played the newer incarnations of this game, and I would really be interested to see if they rectified the problems with this game. However, overall, this is a very good game for the money (I got mine, and all expansions for around 8 pounds).

Thanks for reading