Battlefield 2 – PC
Nick Haywood has seen Black Hawk Down twice and knows a bloke who’s mate’s brother knows a guy who’s in the army… so that makes him well placed to review Battlefield 2, doesn’t it?
A few years ago, back when we were all wishing Team Fortress was a good as we’d been promised it would be, Battlefield 1942 popped up and knocked the majority of the online shooting community off their feet. Sure, it was buggy and had its flaws, and who cared if the planes flew like more like an arcade game than sim? Who cared that some of the weapons were horrendously unbalanced meaning a lone sniper could hold an entire army at bay? No one, that’s who. And why? Because Battlefield 1942 was just too much damn fun to play, that’s why.
The vast open maps, though sparse and devoid of anything interesting in many places, offered up an attractive alternative to Counter Strikes claustrophobic twitch shooting and unlike even the CTF mode in many online shooters, Battlefield 1942 demanded teamwork to succeed. Deservedly so, it found a permanent place on many hard drives and at any LAN you would always find a game going on somewhere. A little while later Battlefield: Vietnam was released, and while not being a bad game to play, it just didn’t come up to the expectations of a community expecting a more polished, balanced game to take the series forward. Even though it completely revised the maps and weapons, moving the conflict into the jungles of Asia, Battlefield: Vietnam was always seen as more of an expansion than a sequel… which brings us very nicely to Battlefield 2, which, as the name implies, is a sequel and promises a completely new game, written afresh from the ground up… So, has Battlefield 2 scored a direct hit or is it a blue on blue? Form up and follow me….