While the game looks good, it’s not next-gen quality. And it doesn’t look good enough to make me want to overlook all its flaws to keep playing. Don’t take my word for it. While you can’t really believe everything you read on forums, there is a poll on EA’s Battlefield 2 forum which asks the question: “Are you satisfied with Battlefield 2?” A resounding 60+% of those who answered said ‘No!’ This answer might have something to do with the horrendous load times. It can take two minutes to get into a game, and sometimes the client simply crashes to the desktop after loading. Or it could have something to do with the laggy gameplay, even on a broadband connection with a high-end machine. Even when a server’s ping is below 100, I experience regular lag and jerkiness. Or, it could have something to do with the huge list of bugs, even though the game has officially been patched to version 1.3: bugs such as regular crashes to desktop, music that keeps playing after you have exited the game, and many more. But personally, I believe it has more to do with the gameplay.

While Battlefield 2 is the spiritual offspring of Battlefield 1942, it is nowhere near as fun. Some of the reasons for this include what EA calls ‘realistic’ weapon ballistics. I learned about this early in my play experience the hard way when I stood no less than six feet from an opponent and fired what must have been half my clip into him with the crosshair dead on center of mass. He then proceeded to turn around and fire at me, dropping me like a bad habit. “What the heck!?” I blurted out. (Heck wasn’t really the word I used.) I figured it was lag, or the fact that I hadn’t played a shooter in many months and moved on. This type of situation began to happen over and over, sometimes against guys who were standing perfectly still or prone even. I began to become very suspicious, so I went to the forums.

Sure enough, many people are complaining about this very thing. Turns out, bullets don’t always go where you aim, even if you are standing still and firing at a guy a few feet away who is also standing still. And if you go prone, your chances of hitting dramatically increase. Because of this fact, you end up seeing everyone running around and jumping through the air to go prone before firing at you. I believe this practice is referred to as ‘dolphin diving’ by those who play. Some weapons are vastly underpowered it would seem as well. I love to play a sniper myself, but it is really frustrating to scope an opponent who isn’t moving, and have to hit him three or four times to kill him. Complete nonsense. Many will say that if the sniper rifles could kill in one shot it wouldn’t be fair, or that then you would have nothing but snipers running around. Nonsense I say. I’ve played plenty of other shooters where sniper rifles were dead on accurate and killed in one shot, yet you didn’t have hoards of snipers running around. And then there are the vehicles. A tank can take out an entire group of infantry in one shot, as it should be able to. The counter for this has always been the anti-tank weapon. It can take three or four shots from an anti-tank weapon to kill a tank. Usually, I’ll fire a shot or two, hitting the tank, and then he’ll end up killing me with a well placed tank round. And away he rolls.

On the positive side of things, Battlefield 2 has some really nicely designed maps, above average graphics, and a new ranking system which allows you to unlock new weapons as you level up. Unfortunately, the issues I listed above make the game unplayable in my opinion.

I tried to give the game one more shot today, telling myself I would play until I unlocked my first unlockable weapon at the rank of Lance Corporal. I put the game in, loaded it up and clicked on a low 90s ping server. Waited almost two minutes for the game to load, only to be greeted by my desktop again. So, I will be shelving the disc and uninstalling the game. This isn’t the first game EA has put out recently that performs this way. You can’t blame the devs, but you can blame EA. They have a terrible habit of rushing games. Give Battlefield 2 a pass. I’ll be reinstalling Battlefield 1942 personally.