Battlefield 2
Battlefield 2
Battlefield 2 Reviews
I used to furrow my brow at the site of each new model of S-Class Mercedes, usually redone every 5 years or so. I can remember my father telling me that Mercedes designs cars to look good tomorrow, not today. He was right. With every model, like clockwork, after a year or so they’d start looking good, then great. My bet is Battlefield will be much like that. As truly fun as it is to play today, it’ll be much better in a year or so.
Few quick reasons to love this game:
1. When you run it on a great machine the graphics/game physics are mindblowing.
2. The game encourages teamplay. I know, it’s hard to imagine quake trained gamers playing medics, but over the past months since its release, the game is conditioning its players to team up. It’s working, and it’s really really fun to work with a good squad.
3. The game/network is very intelligent. Scarily intelligent. Everything you do on a ranked server is tracked forever. Everything. Gaining rank gets you new weapons and status you can leverage into a Commander position.
4. This game not only supports VOIP, but encourages it. Commanders can talk to squad leaders, squad leaders talk to their members, very good order.
5. Online play will frequently (i’m talking multiple times an hour) give you “one of those gaming moments”. You know, when your pulse quickens, and you feel like you’re really in the game. My girlfriend can hear me screaming from my downstairs (things that would make a pornstar blush). I’m not even cognizant of it.
6. Helicopters with TV guided rockets. Nuf said.
7. Command and control. If a side plays without a commander, odds are they’ll lose. If one plays with few (if any) experienced squad leaders, they’ll lose. Very cool and unique feature.
Reasons you might not want this game:
1. This is the most insane system-hog of a game I’ve ever encountered…very frustrating for even relatively good systems.
I’ve had high hopes for games of all genres over the past 2-3 years, I’ve reviewed many of them, some favorably, but I think BF2 is the best action First Person Shooter on the market (and probably will be for a few years). One reason for that belief is the extraordinary hardware requirements it demands to truly perform. I started playing it on a 3.3MHZ w/ best Geforce card, and 1Meg of RAM. It lumbered, and the graphics were subpar compared to other FPS’s. I now have a freakin super-computer (dual cards, 4Megs RAM) and it runs like a different game. When hardware catches up, the underlying value of this game will get more appreciation vs. present-day frustration.
I’ve logged at least 70 hours on this game, and I learn something new every night. So many layers to uncover, then combine. I think this game still has allot to show people. And, like each redesigned model of Mercedes, will prove its true beauty over time.
The Battlefield series has been a gaming powerhouse, well known for its wildly intense and exhilerating multiplayer experience. Battlefield 2 and its expansion, Special Forces, are no exceptions. That much everyone knows.
However, I want you to know about something that isn’t widely examined in reviews. Multiplayer games are dependent on servers. For MMORPG’s, the game publisher handles the operation of the servers. For just about everyone else, it’s a free for all, and the gaming software includes the software to run a dedicated server. Install BF1942, hunt down a certain shortcut, double click, and you’ve got a dedicated server that 32 players can connect to. Sounds great, works great.
This produced a phenomenon in the web hosting business of people who would pay a monthly fee to have a game server hosted for them. For say $50 a month, you could run your dream server 24/7. Players jumped at the opportunity, and this developed into a pretty lucrative business.
Enter Electronic Arts.
They saw the business opportunity and thought “how can we maximize our profits on the game by taking advantage of this?” Their answer was the marketing angle of the ranking system. When you play Battlefield 2, you use an account tied to your CD key, and that account tracks and rewards your score over time. Higher ranked players take precedence when requesting the Commander slot, they have weapons unlocked, they receive general recognition as veteran players, it’s all very nice and fun.
But one of those MBA chimpanzees at EA, who no doubt will be fired in 14 months after this all shakes out, put together two synapses and realized that this system would require game servers to somehow be authenticated as ranked. Otherwise, I could set up my dedicated server and start whoring points any way I could manage to, and easily inflate the ranking system. The chimpanzee’s thought was to have EA charge hosting companies a preset fee per player per month for ranked servers, in addition to having some preset requirements.
So, rather than $50 a month for that great server, we’re now looking at $8 per player per month for servers, in a game where maps are best played at the 64 player level. That churns out to over $6000 per year for a game server. Well beyond the means of normal players. What you’re left with are servers run by hosting companies for advertising, and servers run by very dedicated and very large clans.
There aren’t many of either, so at this moment in time, there are exactly 14 servers that, in DFW, I ping well enough to to play, that have over 15 players on them. That’s a serious problem for a top-selling multiplayer game. It means that you’re playing king of the hill just to jockey for a spot on a server you like, on the team you want. Usually an uphill battle against clans who can systematically monopolize a team’s assets.
Throw in two absolutely malicious players, invariably on the two best servers (best for map rotation, ping, player count, stability, etc.), and the experience is totally ruined. You fight to get in to the game, you fight to find any player who cares about teamwork, you fight against clans who’ve monopolized the team assets, and you fight against malicious players on your own team who abuse your own assets such that your team can’t possibly win. At the end of the day, you’ve spent more time fighting the players over the ability to play, than you’ve spent actually playing.
EA’s business decision makes any good experience in Battlefield 2 an unlikely outcome. Their best game is ruined by their inability to empathize with the needs of their customers. This is a common thread throughout the history of Electronic Arts, and one which destroys the value of Battlefield 2.
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