Battlefield 2 Multiplayer Demo "Gulf of Oman"

[Big_John]

in case anyone is interested, the battlefield 2 demo was released yesterday. i had a chance to play it a bit last night.. no real impressions yet, except that the menu interface is annoying.. and, as always, shooting people is fun. the vehicles seem to be underpowered, but i never really played the other battlefield games, so maybe that's nothing new. minimum specs are ~1.7ghz proc, 512mb ram, 128mb vid card (geforce 5700/ati8500, or above).

here are some links:

http://www.gamedaily.com/gp/dlexe.as...rcelist=&cid=5 (fastest for me)
http://www.gamershell.com/download_9576.shtml
ftp://largedownloads.ea.com/pub/demo...field2demo.exe
http://www.gamespot.com/promos/bf2demo.html

[Thoros of Myr]

Won't run on my video card. Only game I know of that won't. Time for a whole new comp anyway but I'm not doing it till the tech is out that will compete with the PS3 which probably won't be till Christmas or early 06.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

What card are you using?

I got the demo, seems pretty good, but nothing revolutionary. A bit mediocre compared to the hype IMO...

[Efrem]

It doesn't even seem to try to run on my comp.... Pretty f*cked up when you consider that I can play HL2 and Doom 3 on their second best settings.

[Thoros of Myr]

Yes the compatibility is horrible compared to just about every game out there. I've heard it won't work with a lot of laptops also.
No worries though. I much prefer the Operation Flashpoint series anyway.

I have a GeForce4 TI 4200 128MB BTW.

[Efrem]

From reading the read me I have discovered that the game doesn't support the G Force 4 series...

A seemingly bizzarre decision as Was under the impression that still held a considerable market share, Hell, I can only think of one or two people from my grade of 180 nerds with comps that could handle this game..

[Divine Wind]

Ive got a Geforce FX5200 and it works great. Ok the settings i had on the demo were low/medium but my frame rates were very good.

I enjoyed the game a lot, but got a little frustated with the inaccuracy of the rifles even while prone. I found the only way i could really kill was in a tank, or lying prone with a support machine gun such as the SAW, and that was a pretty close ranges too! I also didnt like time limits on taking enemy flags, seems like you have to wait forever now, allowing enemy units to spawn all over you!

Has anyone tried the helicopters? I managed to jump in a jet but they were pretty tricky to get used too. A lot faster than our WW2 and BFV counterparts...yes i managed to crash quite a number of times

[Efrem]

Faster than BFV!!!

What you have 30 secs before having to turn.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

I have not played the mp version of the map yet... The singleplayer half doesn't have any helicopters or jets.

BTW a tip for shooting the rifles; give a short burst and wait a second then again and so on. Vastly improves accuracy.

Oh what ticks me off is it needs new drivers to run any nVidia card with best results, otherwise the AA doesn't work properly or something. I refuse to upgrade for them.

[The Tuffen]

I have not played the mp version of the map yet... The singleplayer half doesn't have any helicopters or jets.

BTW a tip for shooting the rifles; give a short burst and wait a second then again and so on. Vastly improves accuracy.

Oh what ticks me off is it needs new drivers to run any nVidia card with best results, otherwise the AA doesn't work properly or something. I refuse to upgrade for them.

If you want to practice flying jets on your own, go to the multiplayer tab, then click on create local.

Set up a 32 player map game and you're able to practice flying for as long as you want

[UglyandHasty]

Its pretty much what i was expecting. A revamp BFV... There's some new cool feature though that might add some spice into the team gameplay, like the team leader and the command that goes with the position, and the ability to have and create squad. The ability to sprint is nice. But my bet is that this game will really flourish when the mods like RisingConflict and the such will come out...

[Uesugi Kenshin]

I did some of that today before I checkled the Org, I don't like the jets. They try to add jets when they fly much higher than you can in the game. The closest support America has is probably the A-10 and it flys substantially higher than you can (and fight) in the game so the JSF makes no sense to me...

[Fragony]

From reading the read me I have discovered that the game doesn't support the G Force 4 series...

Madness! I have a geforce 4, it is a good card. God I hate pc games.

[Kraxis]

Don't like it very much...

Far too fast (sometimes it looks like everything is going at FF especially destroyed vehicles), weapons too weak (sniping is damn near useless with the speed and weakness of weapons), vehicles too weak (tanks are almost a waste of time to me). And the explosions are actually a step backwards compared to BFV, and the vehicles look somewhat cartoony compared to the previous games.
It seems it has been dumbed down somehow, and yet it has gotten a lot of rather nice features that demand more control and intelligence. Arty pounding an enemy, but with the speed everybody i running around with does take away a lot of its power, best against snipers (but given their weakness it is rather pointless). Cool that you have to protect something at all costs. The increase in weapons and styles is good, though some of them are weak, and a lot feels the same.

Sadly the feel of BFV is gone, when I shoot an AK in BFV it feels like it, now it feels just like any other weapon. And because of the speed I have found handgrenades to be much weaker than before, people simply get out of the way too fast (maybe the blastradius is lowered?).
All this generates a game where it is a rushfest much more than before (rushing should be part of the game but not the all-conquering strategy).

This is going to take for me to like, if at all.

[CBR]

The demo gave me the same frustration and feeling of wasting me time as the two previous titles did, so I think I for once will save my money and not buy this.


CBR

[ShadesWolf]

Nice game, but i am a little disappointed as I was expecting more. (The ability to smash windows, shout walls etc)

I play alot of BF42 and BFV, so the speed does not effect me, weapons are similar and dont really inspire me

some new cool feature though that might add some spice into the team gameplay, like the team leader and the command that goes with the position, and the ability to have and create squad. The ability to sprint is nice

totally agree with what UglyandHasty has to say. I havent tried it yet in a group with mincrophone and speakers I will leave that until friday night.

[The_678]

I'm wondering about one thing for this that is very important to me. Is the draw distance fixed? Also does grass dissappear at long distances?

Those were really the only real problems I had with BFV and I really hope they got it fixes. In BFV bombing stuff was much harder than in BF42 because the draw distance was really crap in BFV and you couldn't see things in time to line up your jet right. And teh grass dissappearing kind of ruins the whole point of grass. Made it a liability because you had to look through grass while the enemy just saw you lying on a hill without any cover.

This is just a demo though and I won't be buying (if I buy it) till September when I upgrade my comp.

[Bob the Insane]

Downloaded and tried the demo, it was fun...

I never bought BF1942 but I did buy BFV and a thoroughly enjoy it... It is great for a quick 20min bash or wasting a lazy Saturday afternoon.

From what I see of BF2 it is basically more of the same, somewhat improved with a few extra features.

If you liked BFV you will like this, if you didn;t like BFV there is nothing here to change your mind (at least in the demo)...

[Marshal Murat]

Does multiplayer cost money to get into???

[UglyandHasty]

no Murat. And The 678, you can actually hide in grass very effectively.

[Spino]

Downloaded the BF2 demo and found it to be horribly addictive. It greatly improves upon the Desert Combat mod for BF1942 and takes gameplay to the next level. I was a bit worried about BF2 as I spent countless hours playing BF1942 and Desert Combat and even though I bought BFV the day it was released I hardly ever played it. In fact, it's safe to say I rather loathe BFV and was worried DICE would make BF2 as simply more of the same. No worries now!


A few things I really love about BF2...

1) Feature wise the single most impressive aspect of BF2 that I can think of is the incorporation of Squads. For once, gamers who are limited to non-clan matches on public servers who play to WIN and want to experience a team oriented atmosphere can do so. No longer are you limited to little slices of teamwork amidst a sea of kill ratio obsessed individuals and selfish n00bs. Now you can either join a squad that seems to know what its doing or form your own squad and invite other players to join. The effect of this feature was immediately noticeable in my very first online BF2 match! I joined a squad and thanks to some sensible gameplay and thoughtful teamwork we were a force to be reckoned with. We not only blitzed through the enemy but worked remarkably well together. Our Commander (who did a damn competent job during that match) kept lauding us for our efforts and were it not for Charlie squad taking care of business our team would have easily lost several matches. Again, by design the Squad feature seriously increases the chances that like minded people can work together in any given match. This is not to say that you'll be all smiles all the time but at least now those magic moments will be much more commonplace than in previous BF games.

2) Sprint mode. Now infantry have a fighting chance against entrenched enemies or vehicles and aircraft looking for easy targets of opportunity. You can't do a damn thing while sprinting (except maybe finish reloading a weapon) but at least you're a much harder target. Sprinting from cover to cover while under fire is just too cool and works perfectly.

3) Commander mode. Finally there is a means to let one competent player call the shots for his team and support them in ways the previous BF games and their mods could not (i.e. artillery support, resupply crates and UAV reconnaisance). On the flip side the Commander mode also grants truly incompetent players with the means to truly blast their teammates into oblivion. However, if your commander turns out to be an idiot you can easily initiate a vote to kick him out (or let the auto kick feature do it for you). Nothing hurts more than some mook calling in artillery on his own troops...

4) 3D Engine - Despite the fact that the new 3D engine won't work with older 3D cards BF2 runs much better on my rig than BFV did. The shader and shadow effects look damn good.

Things I can do without...

1) Helicopters and planes are way too hard to kill with surface to air missiles (a.k.a 'SAMs'). This generally means that the most effective means of bringing down an aircraft, any aircraft, is with a fighter. All aircraft possess anti-missile countermeasures in the form of flares and if deployed in time they are 100% effective. Since there are are no more portable infantry SAMs in the game this means ground forces have to either get lucky with static SAM batteries or overwhelm an aircraft with ground fire in order to bring it down. This is also a huge pain in the ass for people who want to fly because now average pilots in BF2 seemingly have the life expectancy of excellent pilots in Desert Combat. In DC helos used to be the ultimate n00b filter but in BF2 I've seen waaayyy too many n00b pilots leisurely fly over enemy bases and escape unscathed because they kept dropping flares as soon as their threat indicator alarms went off. Such foolishness would rarely be rewarded in DC because sensible flying was absolutely mandatory in the face of a competent enemy. With the exception of the Phalanx/Sparrow AA battery on the Marine assault carrier there isn't an Anti-Aircraft gun battery to be found anywhere on the map! Surface to air missile batteries seem to be the general rule in BF2. I really miss DC's quad 20mm AA gun emplacements because while flares can fool a missile they don't do jack against a large caliber round! I'd also love to see them bring back portable SAM launchers from DC and add them to the Anti-Tank class' arsenal.

2) Squad spawning is a tad too generous. You can spawn near your squad leader even if he's really close to an enemy flag (under 200m). While this does help to retain squad integrity I still think it's a bit gamey to allow an entire squad to spawn so close a neutral or enemy flag. The no-respawn area around enemy flags should be increased considerably.

Pet Peeves....

1) Support Class - What happened to the machine guns in BF2? In DC a machine gunner (SAW or PKM) lying prone was a serious force to be reckoned with. One could not only lay down an impressive field of lead but take enemies out at a considerable distance. However, in BF2 those same machine guns have been nerfed with respect to accuracy and effectiveness at long ranges. I perfectly understand that these weapons should be seriously inaccurate when fired from standing or kneeling positions but they really should be more effective than they are right now.

I'm wondering about one thing for this that is very important to me. Is the draw distance fixed? Also does grass dissappear at long distances?

You can adjust the draw distance in the options menu. I believe the default setting in the demo is 90%. Yes, grass disappears at long distances. I'm playing at Medium visual and noticed that some vegetation is still viewable at distances around 200m.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

Sprinting has been in games since just about forever, the earliest specific example I have is Quake 3, but in that you sprinted the whole match. More recent examples include Doom 3, Far Cry and Half Life 2.

Squads were used in Operation Flashpoint multiplayer and though the online matchmaking is a bit spotty due to the variety of nationalities on it (I met some crazy Russians once) it works quite well if you communicate.

Commander mode is nice, but as with the squads it is implemented IMHO in a somewhat ham-handed fashion.

The 3D engine is just about the most fickle piece of junk ever foisted on any of my computers. Christ I need new drivers just to get shadows to work, I still refuse to install them. If people run around with ten by ten block shadows without new drivers made specifically to address problems with this games 3D engine it is not a well coded engine.

I agree about the aircraft and machine guns, definately badly implemented. As it stands I think BF2 is in heavy need of patching before I could ever reccomend it. But these are all just my opinions, if you find it fun enjoy it.