- Hotswapping is a great innovative
feature during single-player mode
- One of the best Xbox Live online soldier games
- Great controls enhance a superb selection of weaponry and war
vehicles
- Single-player A.I. is anything
but intelligent
- Arcade-style gameplay may be a disappointment to the Rainbow
Six/Ghost Recon gaming faction
- Controlling helicopters takes much practice
- Vehicle aiming while in third-person perspective hard to
control
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Battlefield 2: Modern Combat
Score: 9.0 / 10
Battlefield 1942 stormed the PC massively
multiplayer online beaches, becoming a huge success. Its mix of
first-person shooter war action that included the use of a plethora of
vehicles proved to be an instant hit. Its recent follow-up, Battlefield
2, moved the war theater into the modern age, and has again met with
success.
Now, the Battlefield franchise has marched onto the console frontline
with Battlefield 2: Modern Combat. The arcade-style FPS wargame features
both single-player and online play, and while the single-player side is
fragged by a weak enemy A.I., it’s online via Xbox Live where
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat really wages a
winning campaign to be one of the best Xbox
Live games today.
The single-player campaign follows the exploits of a near-future world
enraged in war, and at the epicenter is the Russian region of
Kazakhstan. The story sends you all around not only Kazakhstan, but the
Middle East and Asia. Each locale features a diversity of gaming
environments, from snow-covered Russia to the dust-blanketed
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Middle Eastern deserts. There are five different soldier types: assault,
sniper, special ops, engineer and support. Each type has unique
abilities and also features a different weapons kit. And you’ll get to
fight as an army of one as each of the different soldier types by using
the innovative Hotswap feature.
With Hotswap, you can literally swap places with any other one of your
force’s members simply by looking in their direction using the radar and
pressing the “Y” button to swap places. You’ll be instantaneously
transported and swapped with that particular soldier. And that goes for
those operating vehicles. If the need is for a tank to burst through
enemy forces, you can look into the direction of a tank your force
controls, hit the “Y” button, and you’ll be Hotswapped into controlling
the tank on its destructive path of carnage.
Yet another great gameplay element in Battlefield 2: Modern Combat is
the ability to use 30 war vehicles, from helicopters to boats to tanks
to amphibious crafts and swift assault vehicles. Using vehicles is
incredibly fun and adds a whole new level of gameplay that just isn’t
possible in your standard FPS solider game such as Rainbow Six or Ghost
Recon. The brilliant 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.
