Ready to 
Battlefield 2: Four years later
Bobby Miller
September 16, 2009 7:49 PM ET in Gaming
Move up!
Recently I reported that the 1.5 patch was on the horizon for Battlefield 2 and was bringing with it almost 2 gigabytes worth of content. The patch has since been released, and I’ve spent some time revisiting the game that I loved four years ago. Itching to play the game again, a huge question lingered in my mind: how much had the battlefield changed since my last login?
Upon launching and logging in, the first thing I did was to check out my old stats that once made me so proud. The statistics betrayed the passage of time since my last login: June 19, 2006. Over three years ago. That was a lifetime ago. I had just finished my junior year in college, I didn’t know what Crysis was, I still played FPS with arrow keys, I had never attended SIGGRAPH or E3, and I didn’t even know that Icrontic existed. I spent some time reliving the moments that earned me awards like the Gold Star, Sniper proficiency, and airborne medals. After I took off the nostalgia goggles, I adjusted controls and video settings and found a battle, Strike at Karkand.
My Stats were a time capsule to the carefree days of long ago
I was immediately surprised at how much better the game ran. When I last played it my system was a 2.8ghz Pentium 4 with 768mb of RAMBUS DRAM memory and an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. The game looked great for its time and was one of the first games to truly bring my old system to its knees. Battlefield 2 certainly looks better today thanks to added support for widescreen display resolutions and faster hardware, but I found myself slightly disappointed by the graphics at the highest settings. I’ve no doubt been ruined by graphics in games like Crysis–the BF2 engine is 4 years old after all.
Once I got over the visuals, I died. I died quickly. It wasn’t due to lack of skill, no, it was something else. When I engaged the first enemy I saw, the player did something that just didn’t sit right with me. They ran towards me, jumped into the air and went prone at the same time, all while shooting at me. That player killed me despite my best efforts to return fire. They became a much smaller target and were very difficult to hit. I would soon find out that this exploit, known as ‘Dolphin Diving’ in the community, has become very prevalent in normal BF2 games. I’ve grown to expect Dolphin Diving whenever I engage an enemy in close combat. It’s a very annoying addition to the game that many players consider an advanced technique. Servers attempt to ban players that Dolphin Dive, but I found it to be an exploit that is not easily policed.
This is what BF2 looked like when I played it in 2005
There were other changes in the core gameplay that took me by surprise. Many servers play with vehicles disabled. I’m not sure why this has become such a popular option, but I see this as something that detracts from the game. The Battlefield series was made popular by its massive online games and its inclusion of a vast array of operational vehicles and weapon emplacements. To disable vehicles is to disable a core component of what makes Battlefield great, in my opinion. Fortunately, this modifier can be seen before joining the server, and can be filtered out. Also surprisingly, communication in Battlefield 2 is still atrocious. For a team based conquest game, communication with teammates should be paramount. Voice chat was weak when the game was introduced and still seems like an afterthought today. No one uses the voice chat, even when you join a squad. More surprisingly, the text chat is just as neglected as the voice. It’s a massive game of combat and no one is talking to each other. I feel like players don’t hold teamwork on a very high level of importance.
For example, while playing a good round on Mashtuur City I joined a 6 man squad. I found our squad leader driving a tank and ran towards him to join him at the machine gunner position. Instead of stopping to let me in, he drove right towards his next objective, running me over in the process. He immediately insulted my intelligence and booted me from the squad. Most players just don’t seem interested in working together with others.
I found quite a few negatives about the game, but I don’t think it’s Battlefield 2’s fault. The FPS playing field has changed significantly over the last four years. I’ve become spoiled by Team Fortress 2. TF2 is a game that demands close cooperation with teammates and class balance. If you don’t work together, you simply will not win. It requires this tight sense of working together while still being one of the most fun examples of online gaming available. Battlefield 2 feels like a team free-for-all on a large scale, and the tight co-op integration isn’t totally necessary to achieve victory.
Though not groundbreaking, the game looks much better today
There is still plenty to love about Battlefield 2, though. The community is still very much alive. Many servers exist with thousands of players populating them. It’s not difficult to find a server that fits your needs for desired settings and maps. Many of the players never stopped playing, and you’ll see gamers sitting on the top of the leader boards with epic stats and rankings. Also, the new content from the included booster packs are a very welcome addition. The new maps are fun and refreshing. Great Wall and Operation Harvest are two particularly enjoyable maps from the booster packs, and I welcome the addition of Wake Island 2007, a revisiting of one of the most classic maps from Battlefield 1942.
There is no better time to reinstall Battlefield 2. The community is still vibrant and willing to fight. With all the free additional content and adjustments to the core engine, the time is ripe to revisit this game. It may not be a forgiving game to players new to the franchise as it does certainly show its age in some aspects. If you loved the game back in 2005 however, you’ll find that your love is still intact as soon as you settle down on a rooftop, line the crosshairs over an enemies head, and click the mouse.
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