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availability
and usage of vehicles in Battlefield 2: Modern Combat puts the vehicle
availability and usage of Halo 2 to shame. It’s easier to control any
vehicle using the third-person view, but the control over the vehicle
weaponry is much better while in first-person perspective. Targeting is
just too unreliable in third-person, but once in first-person you can
strike with deadly accuracy. FPS control while you’re on foot is
completely responsive, providing exceptional ease of movement and also
for both targeting and shooting enemies with precision.
Online is where Battlefield 2: Modern Combat hits its A-list status.
With support for up to 24 gamers at one time, the competition is as
intense as any Xbox Live title, including Halo 2. There are a dozen or
so online maps, and each is expansive enough to wage a long-lasting
battle. Early on, there were some major lagging issues when Battlefield
2: Modern Combat was first released, by EA was aware of the problems,
informed the Battlefield 2: Modern Combat online community on the
servers that they where aware of and working on the issue, and at this
point has seemingly rectified the situation successfully.
No matter if you’re playing single-player campaign or online,
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat has a definite arcade-style gameplay. It
won’t reach the same level of war spectrum authenticity as a Full
Spectrum Warrior or any Tom Clancy title, but instead focuses on earning
medals and ribbons that allow you to “level up” to higher soldier
ranks, from private to general, with plenty of health, weapon and repair
kits lying around. You can “power-up” in the single-player campaign
by performing multiple quick kills, increasing and refilling your
health, making it that much harder for you to be killed. Also in
single-player, you will unlock new weaponry (there are over 50 available
instruments of war) and weapon upgrades (such as night vision for a
sniper rifle). There’s definitely a need for sound military strategy
to be successful on the battlefield, but shooting weapons isn’t
affected by authentic-type recoil as much as in other games. Battlefield
2: Modern Combat shares more in common with the gameplay of
Counter-Strike than it does with any tactical shooter.
And that’s one of the primary reasons that, especially online,
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat is an incendiary blast to play. There will
be the need for stealth and proper squad-based strategies to be
employed, just not on the dedicated level of a Tom Clancy game. You can
solely focus on the reward-earning or winning objective with the
more-forgiving weapons targeting of Battlefield 2: Modern Combat,
knowing that if you get shot up full of lead , your health meter’s
emptying and the ammo clip’s almost out, there’s a power-up right
around the bend to replenish you, keeping you in the game.
The
online play has two types of games: Capture the Flag and Conquest.
Conquest is the more frenetic mode, where your army must control as many
of the flag points on the map as possible. Going to a flag point and
waiting for the required time will raise the flag for your side at that
particular flag point, as you and your team attempt to conquer the entire
map’s worth of flag points. But there are always fierce battles for the
control of each flag point, and during the course of clashes there will be
plenty of taking, losing and re-taking of flag points. With furious
“turf wars,” very good made-for-multiplayer maps, and extensive use of
vehicles to turn the tides of war to your team’s favor, Battlefield 2:
Modern Combat is a great Xbox Live game.
Hitting its target square in the bull’s eye is Battlefield 2: Modern
Combat’s visual performance. Weapons, vehicles and character models are
all rendered with a fine level of graphical detail. The game’s
environments are also impressive. Clouds of dust fill the sky in desert
regions, providing not only a realistic environmental effect, but also a
condition that must be accounted for strategically when flying helicopters
into battle. In order to see your enemy, you must fly low enough to be
below the dust clouds, but flying at a lower altitude puts you at a higher
risk for being shot down by a ground-based rocket attack.
Flaming wreckage with pluming black smoke is another gameplay-affecting
environmental feature. If you can’t see through the heavy smoke, you
can’t see your enemy clearly. But he can’t see you either, so there
are times when you’re using stealth to sneak up on somebody that that
same smoke will come in handy. All of the game’s environments are
sharply rendered with a realism that immerses you deep into the theater of
war.
Even more impressive than the game’s graphics is Battlefield 2: modern
Combat’s amazing sound. Weapons fire, especially from vehicles carrying
heavy ammo loads, sounds great. The first time you experience the firing
of a heavy-duty tank cannon while driving one, you’ll practically feel
your bones rattling from the recoil. Rocket fire also has a hair-raising
quality in the audio department. There’s nothing to get your adrenaline
rushing as when you hear the gunfire increasing in volume as it gets
closer and closer to your position, signaling a possible impending doom if
you don’t hightail it ASAP to the closest cover.
The biggest disappointment of Battlefield 2: Modern Combat is its
single-player campaign. It isn’t the campaign itself that’s the
disappointment, because the single-player campaign shares the same basic
gameplay as its online counterpart using the same environments, weapons
and vehicles. But the big letdown is in the weak enemy A.I. which shows
very little intelligence at all. It’s easy to pick off the single-player
enemies that oppose you. Another frustration is that just when you think
that an area is clear of all opposition, the game spawns out of thin air a
new batch of soldiers intent on your demise. The lack of good A.I.
collapses a lot of the single-player campaign enjoyment.
But despite a disappointing single-player A.I. challenge, Battlefield 2:
Modern Combat more than atones with a magnificent online experience, one
of the best FPS soldier wargames on Xbox Live at the moment. Jumping into
an up-to-24-person fray on well-designed levels, with a vast array or
weapons and war vehicles, and responsive controls gives Battlefield 2:
Modern Combat the winning edge for console online supremacy today.
- Lee Cieniawa
lcieniawa@armchairempire.com
(December
1, 2005)
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