Battlefield 2 Multiplayer Demo "Gulf of Oman"

[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.