A Bridge Too Far
So, we know the new maps have a lot going for them, but how does the game look? In a word, it’s stunning. Imagine Half Life 2 and the detail in the environments there and you’ve got a pretty good idea of how Battlefield 2 looks. Everything from the ground, the buildings, vehicles, players, weapons and explosions have been rendered in eye watering detail. Telegraph wires criss-cross streets, rockets drop off helicopters and leave impressive smoke trails as the streak towards their target and explosions light up the surrounding area…. all in real time and all looking superbly impressive.
The level of detail is amazing with the textures on buildings giving a real sense of being a particular location. Water streaks down the side of a building, rust and oil patches on tanks… and the modelling is excellent too. Whereas the original’s models looked good enough and did the job well enough, Battlefield 2’s models are superbly detailed. Helicopter gunships bristle with weaponry, tanks have all the associated bits and bobs dangling off them and the individual soldier’s look the biz too with, depending on the side you’re playing, webbing kits, headscarves, helmets and side arms all nicely modelled and detailed.
Sadly, all this detail comes at a price. You need some serious power in your rig to run the game. My AMD Sempron 2800 and ATI RADEON 9800XT were having some serious trouble achieving anything near a decent frame rate. The first time I loaded up BF2, I was unceremoniously dumped back to the desktop with not such much as an error message to give me a clue as why. My PC which has no trouble with Half Life 2 or Doom 3 without any tinkering from it’s normal Windows XP load-up had to have everything shut down from the system tray and then a good going through the Task Manager to clear out any unwanted background processes. Even then I had to turn off most of the graphical bells and whistles to get a playable framerate.
When things get busy on screen, and especially if you’re hosting, you’d better make sure that you’ve got some CPU oomph under the bonnet or players will soon be dropping out due to lag. If ever there was a game that all but demanded being run as a dedicated server, Battlefield 2 is it. It’s seems clear that EA knew this would be a problem as the single player campaign, one of Battlefield 1942’s weak points, is limited to just 16 players here. It soon becomes clear that a meaty PC is the order of the day for smooth play as the game tries to figure out the AI for 15 bots and you. It won’t be uncommon to see bots standing there doing nothing or running off in the wrong direction as your PC struggles to keep up with everything being asked of it. This is most likely why the single player experience is limited to just the 16 player maps…. Which is a real bind as you can’t practise any of the larger maps which have more in the way of vehicles on them. Of course, if you’re lucky enough to have two meaty PCs in your home then you’re laughing, but the rest of us will have to go online and act like n00bs until we’ve learnt the maps… Or forked out a small fortune for upgrades. If ever there was a game crying out for an AMD FX-57 and SLI 7800’s, this is it.