How stupid are you LilPickle? Did you forget how the Special Forces review went?

Since they’ve released Special Forces, I haven’t wanted to play any more of this messed up game. What good are new maps, new vehicles, and special guns when all on-foot combat sucks, controls are glitchy and laggy, and no one is willing to play the new maps with the new vehicles? Then their European Forces booster came out… *yawn*. Then Armored Fury was next, and I couldn’t help but wonder if people cared at all? I know I didn’t, that is until I saw a picture with my all time favorite AH-6 Littlebird from 1942’s Desertcombat mod! After putting on some new pants, I immediately purchased this booster pack and haven’t stopped playing since.

Boonsion/Expanster pack

Booster packs make so much more sense than expansion packs, because expansion packs will only divide the players. The only difference between them in this case is the expansion pack provided new exclusive guns. Sure, Special Forces also claims to provide new gameplay, but I recall giving that a 1 out of 5. And considering the $20 price difference between Armored Fury and Special Forces, it’s like EA and DICE are acknowledging all you’re paying for are the exclusive guns when you buy Special Forces–which I want to make perfectly clear once again, NO ONE SHOULD EVER DO.

The re-introduction of reason

So ten dollars for new maps and new vehicles? That sounds perfectly reasonable. I still think it should be free, but at least this way more people are willing to purchase it. That means the new maps and vehicles are actually played! All of the maps take place in America this time, bringing a fresh breath of air to the tired old environments we’re used to playing in. You’ll be fighting in the mountains in Alaska at night, or around an interstate intersection with truckstops, or right through a Quaker’s living room in Pennsylvannia. It puts a smile on my face! I just wish there was a Honolulu map…

I gonna need some orange, yellow, and brown paint, Tom Selleck, and a tropical island

The new vehicles are the A-10, the Littlebird, the SU-39, the Chinese Fantan Q-5, and two other helis that only wish they were as cool as the Littlebird. Oh, and there are also tractor-trailers on the Operation Road Rage map. No mounted guns on those, sadly. Zipping around in the Littlebird is all I could have asked of this booster pack though, and it is such sweet bliss! It feels great to be behind the stick on that thing, and I laugh at you people that can’t fly the helis. You are SO missing out on bunches of fun. They gave the thing miniguns, thankfully, but also the unique ability to function as a UAV all the time! The Littlebird alone adds more unique tactics and teamwork than all of Special Forces claimed to do. But leave it to DICE to try and “balance” everything. I completely understand they didn’t want the Littlebird to be too powerful (because I’d end every round with 200 points otherwise), but they could’ve treated the miniguns differently. Rather than slightly dropping the power of each bullet, they dropped the firing rate so you only shoot like 4 rounds a second… that’s 2 bullets from each minigun per second and the two guns alternate. I want that thing to be spraying hot lead so fast that I’ll empty them if I’m not careful! And I want the sound that would accompany that! This is always the one most disappointing thing about BF2–the sound design.

4th time’s the charm, right?

As I’ve mentioned, on-foot combat never will be as good as other games, but those games don’t allow for vehicles on the scale this game does. I think it’s a great idea to have such a complete battlefield, but DICE needs to rethink all of their balancing that goes with it. I really enjoy this booster pack, and the name explains why. It emphasizes vehicle combat instead of troop combat. And the new maps are a welcome change from Karkand all the time. Armored Fury heroically revives BF2 till the next installment is released. Being their 4th package to come out, it’s about time one of them receive a 4 out of 5. Now I have to go buzz around in my Littlebird while I crank the Magnum P.I. theme song.

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