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 ...]]> 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.

What do you get when you throw together a giant gaming company like EA, a developer like Dice, and tons of money and manpower? A whole mess of ruined expectations is what. Being the most anticipated first person shooter of 2005 on pc, it really knows how to piss me off. But it provides a good example of how people will continue to play a game when there are better ones out there. So let the hate mail pour in and cover the children’s ears and eyes! EA’s ugly ...]]> Stupid monkeys…

What do you get when you throw together a giant gaming company like EA, a developer like Dice, and tons of money and manpower? A whole mess of ruined expectations is what. Being the most anticipated first person shooter of 2005 on pc, it really knows how to piss me off. But it provides a good example of how people will continue to play a game when there are better ones out there. So let the hate mail pour in and cover the children’s ears and eyes! EA’s ugly baby isn’t going to be spared any embarrasment.

To start this off, I’ll cover the good points. The award and ranking system is great and keeps you playing. Unlocking new kits for multiplayer should be done in more games. Expanding maps for a different number of players works well. The graphics are amazing and run smoothly. Once the initial bugs were worked out of the vehicles, they were entertaining and felt solid. And there is no inherent problem causing consistent connection problems. I guess another bonus is I can stop playing it any time I want.

With that (short) paragraph out of the way, I will proceed to spank EA. What use is a crappy control system in an intense battle scene like this? Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want anything other than WASD. What I’m getting at is mouse movements represented on screen, sprinting, jumping, etc. The point of a game’s interface is to make you not even notice its existence, but when I play Battlefield 2, all I can think about is how terrible the movements are compared to what I wanted it to do. What’s the point of even having the stamina bar if it never prevents people from bunny hopping relentlessly? Have you ever tried jumping with that much gear on, Dice? Even sprinting over little curbs occasionally stops up your movement completely. Trying to use the scope on some weapons is just asking for trouble, as it will either bounce your reticle around the screen initially or will decide you really didn’t mean to zoom in at all. Instead of being a soldier in a modern battlefield, I end up feeling like I’m driving a soap box car down a bumpy hill using only 2 thin strands of twine to steer… with no brakes… and a screaming monkey on my back flinging poo into my eyes. I can’t express how much movements piss me off.

Next up on my list is audio, as it was a problem in 1942 as well. A truly skilled player should just by the sound of a gun be able to identify the location of the shooter. And this game would allow that but for some reason the only thing you hear is the bullet whizzing by your head (you rarely hear the gunshot as it should be heard). Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but unless the gun is silenced, the loudest part of the process is THE GUN! I know people will say I’m just complaining, but listen closer next time. I believe you should be able to hear gunshots much further away than you already do. Other audio problems like crackling in turret movement just don’t keep me immersed in the game. AND NO, IT’S NOT A HARDWARE PROBLEM!

When it comes to first person shooters, I also expect a singleplayer capability. I’m not always able to be online, but I might still want to be able to shoot the never ending supply of Nazis running rampant in the video game world. This is yet another problem with Battlefield 2, and I don’t mean because there aren’t actually any Nazis. You aren’t allowed to play all of the maps, and the ones you can play are restricted to the smallest 16 player boundaries. They may argue that this is because running so many bots alongside you is too taxing on the computer, but the AI isn’t that good to begin with. And the only difficulty increase arises from enemy AI shooting skill, not tactics.

Perhaps the most important flaw is the shooting characteristics of guns. Again this isn’t my personal skill at first person shooters talking, it’s my personal skill differing in this specific game from all the others. I realize “realism” is being portrayed, but when sniper rifles can’t even hit a guy standing still at 100 yards away, that is just ridiculous. I have a better chance of hitting him with the AK-101. Leading the target and drop used to be my speciality in previous Battlefield games, but this one I can’t seem to figure out. It is so drastically different and never seems to follow a pattern. Power is another concern. A fifty caliber sniper rifle won’t give the target a second chance, even in non-vital hit zones. Two shotgun blasts point blank to someone’s back should at least prevent them from turning on you immediately (unless of course his monkey created a magic shield composed of poo).

I understand the hardest aspect of creating multiplayer games is balancing weapons’ power, accuracy, and speed. But I have to say Dice could have done a much better job. I am extremely disappointed that movement feels weak, guns don’t function as expected, and people still think this is a good game. I can imagine how solid this game should have been, but what I see is too far from it. To throw salt into the wound, EA is pushing more expansion packs on us rather than selling one complete game to begin with. I can’t recommend to anyone to buy the expansion packs until they fix the existing gameplay issues that keep this game from being all that it can be. Altogether, I’m forced to give Battlefield 2 2 screaming monkeys of 5

UPDATE:

Well it figures that as soon as I get my first game review out, there would be some drastic change to the game. On February 14, 2006, a new patch for Battlefield 2 came out and sent the screaming monkeys a’packin’. From what I’ve seen so far, many of the issues I had with the game have been addressed quite splendidly causing me to re-score the game. But I cautiously keep my dancing to myself. I’m positive there are still going to be issues, and as everyone knows, patches have at least 10 bugs themselves. This is just disappointing when the game industry continues to release buggy and incomplete software. I guess it’s equally disappointing when games are delayed months on end, so I guess gamers are just stuck in the middle until the industry gets its act together.

Of all the reasons for keeping Battlefield 2’s rating down, the only major one that remains deals with singleplayer gameplay. If even just a campaign mode was given with plenty of options, this game would recieve the perfect 5 out of 5. Still, jumping from a 2 to the new 4 rating is quite a feat with a single patch. Even the screaming monkeys have considered directing their antics elsewhere.  4 not quite so rampant monkeys out of 5

FUCK THIS GAME:

I grow tired of their fuckups at Dice, and I’m tired of EA altogether. So many patches that “fix” one thing but introduce so many more problems. Weapons are still not balanced, and the controls never feel any better. But they certainly are happy to push more expansions on us and completely rework all the award requirements. You’ve had a whole year to do it right guys; you’ve lost it. I don’t even care that you want to release a new map without asking for money in return.  3 out of 5, now go make 2142 balanced DICE