When the registration system finally decided to accept my e-mail address, I managed to get into the multiplayer mode of the Battlefield 2 demo today. Now I’m convinced- its a classic.

Performance
Given that I have half the recommended amount of RAM, I was seriously worried that the game wouldn’t run at all. However, it has set itself to ‘Low’ settings by default (still looks better than BF1942) and runs absolutely fine. My main concern- the loading times- was unnecessary. The game actually loads faster on my machine than either of its predecessors.

Singleplayer
The bots are much better. Not that they’ve become impossible-to-beat super soldiers, but they’ve just become more believable. In one of my first few attempts at the singleplayer mode I chose the Sniper class and climbed to the roof of a single-floor building (by the way, the problem of going down ladders has also been solved, although its quicker to use a parachute). Apart from the fact that the MEC (think politically correct generic Arab army) sniper rifle no longer has a crosshair (its the ‘three arrows’ thing you see in some games, but the US rifle is just a crosshair), the main thing I noticed was that the bots responded to me. Rather than standing still when their mate’s head had just been detached from his shoulders, they actually fought back. Then, after I managed to take out the two who were shooting at me (one of whom was in an APC turret), I suddenly got blown up. One of them had sneaked up to the building I was sniping from, and tossed a hand grenade on to the roof. Since when did Battlefield bots even use hand grenades, never mind sneaky human-esque tactics like that? The one disappointing thing in the singleplayer is simply caused by the fact that this is the demo: you only get the 16-player cropped version of the map, which excludes you from the better vehicles (jets, helicopters, the new Zodiac boats and that MEC dune buggy-type jeep from the preview video), and also completely alters the dynamics of the map (for the worse). That crane that serves as the MEC’s spawnpoint in the singleplayer is actually supposed to be the middle of the map. It is often fought over fiercely so that the conquering team has the best observation point for their snipers and commander. The cropping just screws it up. It seemed like a nice idea in concept, but it just hasn’t been done well at all. Luckily in the full game I think you can over-ride it (e.g. have 16 bots playing on the full-size map rather than the ’16 player’ cropped version)

Vehicles
As I said in the previous section, the 16-player cropped version removes most of the decent vehicles, so make sure you play on a server that is using the 32-player version. The tanks (the only vehicles, apart from humvees and BTRs, in the 16-player crop) seem… strange… in some way. I accept that balancing the power of a tank is a fine art to keep the experience fun for infantry, but why exactly does it take me more shots with my M1’s 120mm cannon to destroy an enemy tank than it takes a grunt’s rocket launcher?

The first thing you’ll probably notice with the aircraft is that (unlike in every other game on the planet), mouse inversion is not turned on by default. In other words the ‘move mouse up, nose points down’ logic used in all flight sims doesn’t hold true in Battlefield unless you go in to the options and set it. I found this out to my cost in an unfortunate incident involving an MEC Mig29 and a hill at the end of the runway. While we’re on the subject of plane crashes, I still haven’t worked out how you are suppose to use the bloody Harrier- the ‘Press S to turn on hover’ voice message that handily pops up doesn’t actually work- you can press S (even along with W as in Desert Combat) to your heart’s content but I have yet to see anyone (myself included) manage to take off in one of those things

The helicopters are a completely new experience. They have the auto-hover from BFV and some of the instability/maneouverability of the Desert Combat helis. No surprises there then. Given the attraction to n00bs of flying off in a helicopter without waiting for all the positions in it to be filled, I haven’t had a chance at the TV-Guided missiles (seen in one of the videos) that the gunner gets along with his minigun.

Infantry
With the exception of the anti-tank class’ submachine gun, all the infantry weapons are fun to use. The assault rifles are suitably powerful- I’m just loving the three round burst on the M16- and most of the other hand weapons serve a specific purpose. In other words, the MP5 carried by US anti-tank soldiers is enough for killing any crew who jump out of the tank you’re blowing up, but don’t expect it to be any use for even short-to-medium range fights. However this tends to spoil the fun of playing the class- are EA seriously telling me that an MP5 can’t hit someone on the other side of the street? The sniper rifles have not been nerfed with a ‘breathing shake’ as in America’s Army et al. However the MEC sniper scope is not a simple crosshair, but the ‘three chevrons’ design used on the scope in other games (the MEC use the SVD rifle, often used by ‘bad guys’ in singeplayer games such as Delta Force). Although it is not as intuitive to use, it would probably end up being a lot more accurate if you had the time to learn it.

Teamplay
I couldn’t think of any better heading for the new stuff that BF2 brings in- namely squads and commanders. Now the former has been done before- most notably by Enemy Territory- however Battlefield 2 improves on it significantly. Squad leaders can now give specific orders (e.g. attack/defend this location, plant explosives etc.) and a coloured smoke marker appears (automatically, not fired as a weapon) to mark that objective for the squad. When killed, squad members can also use their squad leader as a mobile spawn point (including if he is in a vehicle). However this is not particularly useful. Anything that kills members of a squad (e.g. a particularly well-placed grenade) will probably kill the squad leader. As for vehicles, I doubt if any squad leader is going to be stupid enough to drive around in a six-seat truck by himself, so there probably won’t be enough seats for the whole squad to use this, and if you’re going to have 2 or 3 people go off on their own in a tank then what’s the point of the squad system in the first place. Again, anything that killed the squad members in the vehicle probably destroyed the vehicle and therefore the squad leader.

The Commander is much more useful. At the beginning of each round, you can apply to be the commander for that team, and other members of the team can vote Yes or No in the same way as the Enemy Territory voting system (although it’s Page Up=Yes, Page Down=No this time because BF uses the F- buttons for vehicles) . If you’re successful, you become the commander for that round- although EA have included a system to vote out a commander if he is particularly useless, at the moment these ‘mutiny votes’ are generally called by spoilt n00bs who want to be the commander and didn’t get it, and generally only get one or two votes (out of the 16-20 needed). Whereas squad leaders are largely irrelevant, a good commander can make the difference between stalemate and victory.

He has three ‘powers’ at his disposal:

  • Sending a UAV to observe an area. These could be used to try and stop enemies sneaking up on a control point (or your hiding place), or to ‘spot’ for artillery (see next bullet point)

  • Calling artillery. The artillery units (in both BF games and in Desert Combat) were something that nobody really wanted to use. They were difficult to use (driver and gunner separated, so you either needed a non-n00b to come along with you or switch positions every time you wanted to turn the damn thing round), and even more difficult to hit anything with. In BF2 (in a more realistic representation of how artillery actually works), the commander (from his overhead map) can call in an artillery strike on an area. Artillery guns then fire at the target, often with devastating effects if used properly.
  • Drop supplies. Unlike in the previous games, BF2 does not have supply boxes lying around. Unless you have a medic and a ‘support’ with you (both useless offensively) then it can be difficult to hold a control point long enough to take it over. The commander can send in crate (dropped by parachute from an unseen aircraft) that will resupply and heal in much the same way that the old ammo boxes and medical cabinets did

Interestingly, all these depend on objects that are on the map (usually at the side’s main base). The UAV, radar and artillery guns all depend on their respective control objects (UAV hut, radar dish, artillery guns) to function. If a Spec Ops can plant satchel charges on them, the commander will not have access to that particular function. I’m not sure if engineers can repair them, but I suspect that they probably can otherwise it would unbalance the game.

As well as acting on your own initiative (e.g. calling in artillery if a lot of enemy soldiers are congregating in one place), other people in your team can send you specific requests (e.g. for a supply drop) and then all you have to do is click the exclamation mark that appears on the satellite map, and choose either ‘Accept’ or ‘Refuse’. As more people learn how to make these requests, the commander function will become even more effective.

Not in the demo
The demo itself is fantastic, but here are (some of) the things you can look forward to in the full game:

  • Full control over the map settings (e.g. difficulty of bots)
  • More maps- including the Gulf of Oman map featured in the demo- in cropped, semi-cropped and normal versions

  • Experience system, functioning in much the same way to its counterpart in Enemy Territory, except that it will be permanent. As well as giving you higher priority for squad leader and commander positions, this will give you permanent ‘unlockables’ that you can take with you from server to server (e.g. if you gain a lot of experience as a sniper you could unlock the M82 Barret sniper rifle)

  • People’s Liberation Army. It will be interesting to see how the Chinese differ from the MEC- since the MEC use Soviet/Russian-built equipment (the original publicity said they would use European stuff) and China uses a lot of home-built copies of Soviet equipment.

Download locations
I’ve listed most of the ‘major sites’ that offer the BF2 demo download- because if it’s anything like yesterday, you’ll probably get a lot of ‘Too many connections’ errors before you get to start downloading.