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If first person shooters are your bag, be sure to peel this banana and taste its sweet bounty.

It's here! The Counter-Strike killer has arrived. As of this moment, Battlefield 2 has more players than Half-life 2, and more players than Counter-strike 1.6. I've waited a long time to say that.

Battlefield 2 comes from an increasingly long line of games which feature huge maps, tactical gameplay and the ever-popular vehicles. But we've come a long way since Tribes, and the bar has been raised.

Most of Battlefield's features have been done before, so it is hardly revolutionary. What makes it good is that it wraps up the revolutionary ideas of other games into one package. Commander mode was a core feature of the Half-life mod Natural Selection. Squad based tactics are the core tactical shooters like SWAT and Rainbow 6. Large maps and air vehicles were first made popular by Tribes. So in a sense, it has all been done before. But it has never been done this well.

Battlefield 2 ships with just one gametype: the familiar capture-and-hold style ‘conquest’. The reason for this is most likely to avoid what happened to Unreal Tournament 2004. Too many gametypes divides player numbers, and usually one gametype dominates all others anyway. Why waste time on content only a minority will actually see?

Maps are scalable with player numbers, and there are three versions of each map (16, 32 and 64). The small map size allows for intimate battles with only a few capture points with 8 players a side. Then you have the 64 player version which opens up a huge area with many capture points. Map size is no longer static, resulting in the old “the whole world is exploding” feeling on small maps with 64 players.

Graphics are excellent, but nothing revolutionary. Sound and music are good. The gameplay is where the juicy bits reside.

Infantry combat is much the same as any class-based shooter. There are the assault classes, support classes and the infamous sniper class. Luckily the sniper rifles are horrendously inaccurate.

The balance between the classes is about as good as I’ve seen, and I haven’t seen any class being excessively used. This allows everyone to use the class that is needed the most. If you run around as a Spec Ops for the whole round, you will probably be dying a whole lot more.

A good player will switch between roles whenever they are needed. For example, if you’re playing as Assault and a tank rolls into the capture zone (and subsequently over your head), you would want to respawn as an Anti-Tank or Spec Ops, to deal with the tank. No one class can do everything.

Because the classes are well balanced, squad play is extremely effective. Each squad consists of a squad leader and up to 5 squad members. The squad leader has some of the same options as the commander. They can order the members around by using a tactical map, and they can request artillery and supplies from the commander.

Squad members can also spawn beside their squad leader instead of at a capture point. This makes squad composition even more important. If a medic is in the squad, he can bring the leader back to life with the shock paddles, and dead members can respawn right back into the action. A squad leader should therefore hang back a little, directing the fight and reporting enemy movements to the commander.

The commander has the power to change the course of a battle if the enemy is not quick to destroy his equipment. Artillery lasts for about 8 seconds, and can kill every living thing (friend or foe) around a capture point. Used wisely, it can win the game. If not, it can get the commander quickly banned for teamkilling. The commander can also drop ammo supplies (which also magically heal and repair), scan the map for enemies and deploy a spy drone over a small area.

Vehicles are fairly balanced, and weaker vehicles can usually take out a battle tank if the user knows their stuff. Unfortunately there are still people who camp the air vehicle spawn points, and even teamkill people who try to ‘steal’ their precious helicopter. The jets are fast and furious, and a load of fun.

Battlefield 2 is one of those games that you can talk about for hours, sharing battle stories with your friends, one after another. Like the time I saw a capture point being overrun by the enemy, so I put my jet fighter into a vertical climb and bailed out.

On the way down I deployed my parachute and started firing away at enemies on the ground. Of course they promptly turned and shot me out of the sky, however I had the last laugh when my jet stalled at the top of its climb and plunged straight past my still mid-air corpse, landing on two of my attackers.

So that’s the good stuff out of the way. Here’s the bad news. Battlefield 2 is like a banana. You have to strip away the leathery, often rotten exterior to get to the good stuff. That rotten exterior is the server browser. It is ‘powered by Gamespy’ which is the first sign that you’re in trouble. If it works at all, it takes forever to refresh the servers, frequently crashes and will randomly decide not to apply the filters you’ve selected. Its one good feature is that it (sometimes) lets you filter servers by server name. There are no favourites. There is no searching by player name.

Crashes and disconnects are common. Many can’t run the game at all, or get kicked from servers after a couple minutes. I usually detract 1% from a game’s score for every crash that can’t be easily avoided, however that would mean giving the game about 75%, which is a bit harsh. Changing the controls is a chore, and there is no guarantee that the game will save them.

Putting aside the problems, Battlefield 2 is still the best (and certainly the most popular) multiplayer shooter of the last few years. Clan competition should be an incredible experience. If first person shooters are your bag, be sure to peel this banana and taste its sweet bounty. Beware the slippery peel.


Review by Gavin Manley.