Hérna eru nokkrir gaurar (held að þeir hafi verið með í að búa til leikin) sem fjalla um bf 2.

Our day with BF2 #2
For 4 BT admins/writers Thursday 7 April were all about BF2. To give us all a little teaser about how it was like, each of them has written an individual review of their experience with Battlefield 2.



BF2 @ Kenny, Wolfdog & GoaSpirit
As I wasn’t the only Boomtown writer/admin who had the pleasure of a BF2 test drive, Thursday 7 April, I chose to get hold of the 3 others and get their thoughts and opinions about the game. As I did with my own preview, I asked them to split up their opinions into the 5 groups: The Gameplay, The classes (Assault, medic, antitank etc.), The vehicles (including tanks) and planes/choppers, The sound, The graphics. And of course they all round off with a final conclusion on the game and its potential.


Gameplay
Kenny: It seems promising. I think it is obvious that they have done a lot to enhance teamplay when considering new features such as Squads and the Commander role. You were able to spawn at your squad leader’s position on the battlefield so you are quickly assembled instead of having to regroup at a flag. Unfortunately I didn’t get get to spend much time with the Commander role, but 2 guys from the DC clan SAD tried a few things like e.g. requesting artillery strikes, but in the beginning it caused a lot of team kills. Besides the action we know of, BF2 has a lot more to offer. I hope to see the BF2 clans make the most of it.

Wolfdog: The gameplay is cool, but I look forward to when the loads of mods are released.

GoaSpirit: It is really awesome. The speed of the gameplay has increased a lot, the squad feature and the commander role have also giving it all a boost. For all us clan players I can only say that this part will be better than anything you’ve ever experienced before. The gameplay is much more teamplay focused which demands more cooperation and tactic skills because of the many attacking options and features like the squads where you are able to spawn at the position of your squad leader on the battlefield. It can only increase the speed of the attacks. The sprinting feature is also a really cool invention. I still sit at home pressing the shift button to sprint away from tanks when they spot me.

The Commander role was really cool as you were able to get a general view and the option request artillery strikes and much more. You are, however, still able to run around without having any significant influence on the teamplay. The squad feature is top notch – especially being able to communicate with your teammates via VoIP and I think people will quickly learn to make the most of this feature.


The classes (assault, medic, antitank etc.)
Kenny: I focused on 2 classes because they had some gear I wanted to try out. One of these was the antitank and a cool feature was that after you had fired a rocket with the rocket launcher, you were able to control the rocket with your crosshair. It wasn’t easy to do this though and it will definitely require some training to master this. The medic class was my second class of focus. The feature of being able to revive dead people was really funny and i’m sure the defibrillator will become the ultimate kill, like we know it with knife kills today, as you are able to kill enemies with it as well.

Wolfdog: They remind me a lot about the ones in DC, but I don’t use them as much.

GoaSpirit: I really love the classes in BF2. They are well balanced and demand more of your aim than ever before. It took some time to get use to, but I think they have made a nice mix of weapons all around where everyone has an influence on the battle regardless of the class. The weapons also seem well balanced between the armies we tried out, the MEC and the US, and I think we’re going to see a lot of people using the different classes in their own way.


The vehicles (including tanks) and planes/choppers
Kenny: The tanks remind me a lot of DC except for a few details. I didn’t like the fact that your tank were rather quickly damaged if your driving was a bit sloppy/rotten. The planes seem really cool with missile lock and bomb cam and some skill was needed here as well, in order to hit anything with the heat seeking missiles. Not just aim, fire and hit. I wasn’t so fond of the chopper steering though – it was a mix between BFV and DC.

Wolfdog: The chopper steering is too much like the one in BFV and I didn’t really like that. But other than that they were easy to fly. If you are able to play DC, you are also able to play BF2.

GoaSpirit: The planes are awesome and I quickly fell in love with them. There are different weapon modes like e.g. in one of the MEC planes I were able change to ”bomb-mode” or ”dogfight-mode” where you had a machine gun and heat-seeking missiles in one mode and bombs and a machine canon in the other one. The tanks have really gotten a boost regarding the crosshair and the precision. They are way more precise and I think the speed is suitable as well. Their shots are also much more direct and damage towards other vehicles seems like something they have taken into account as well. I didn’t find any small bugs like there are in BFV where you can hit different places and shoot them with one shot. The sandbuggies are really funny to race around in. With the crazy spring suspension they have you are able to drive it over the wildest cliffs and still be able to control it, more or less.

I was a bit more skeptical towards the choppers at first when I had my virgin BF2 chopper flight. Their steering isn’t very flexible and forget about sharp turns and quick reaction time. On the other hand that will ensure less chopper raping of the infantry. It seems like the tasks of the choppers are now to be found in air battles and as an antitank unit which I think is cool.


The sound
Kenny: The sound is really good and there are great details like e.g. when a plane flew right over your head – damn that sounded real!

Wolfdog: The sound was also good – a lot like the new sound package for DC.

GoaSpirit: It has really improved a lot and the sound effects from all the weapons were really great. It has been tweaked just right and you get a lot of pleasant details like when hiding behind stuff and boats sailing in the water and so on.


The Graphics
Kenny: The graphics could have been better, but the computers were not able to run with more than medium settings so I guess that tells you a lot about the demands for your hardware. I hope they tweak a bit so it won’t demand quite as much. The game was played on a 3.0 Ghz Pentium IV.

Wolfdog: It was amazing – really cool graphics. There were a lot of details in the game.

GoaSpirit: I think it was cool with lots of cool details in the grass, the bushes and the water – all having gotten a notch up. However, it didn’t look at its best, but the machines weren’t able to run any higher than medium settings.


Final conclusion
Kenny: All in all it is a cool game which you will easily pick up on if you are an old fan of BF1942 or/and DC. But if you want to get familiar with all the features that the game has to offer, you’ll need a lot of training. Like a little boy at Christmas eve, I look forward to playing the game when it’s released. But the version we played clearly isn’t ready for release so I would rather give them the time needed to finish it than having to go through another BFV release where the game isn’t playable until after 2-3 patches. There is one minus in having played the game already. Now you really want the game and you don’t feel like playing DC anymore. So I really hope they release a demo before 30 June.

Wolfdog: It has a little of the previous BF games/mods, but I really don’t like the chopper steering, but I guess a DC mod for BF2 would save my day on that area. I look forward to the game hits the shelves and if a demo is released before that then i’m sure to give that a go as well.

GoaSpirit: It’s a whole different game than what we are used to, but it’s still Battlefield and that’s what’s cool about it. I think it’s a game we will enjoy for many years to come because of the loads of stuff and possibilities to use and explore. I definitely believe that BF2 will be able to unite the different Battlefield communities, but with the overall improved quality I believe we will see a lot of virgin Battlefield players in the future as well.