Battlefield 2

[yoshi]

From what I'm seeing this could really be the $hit I've been waiting for. Not a huge leap from BF1942 but definitely a jump.

Here's what I got from reviews:

Commander feature:
- Not a character in the game.
- Orders all players on his team and views entire map in real-time from a top-down perspective.
- Can call in artillery strikes (not air strike AFAIK).
- View based on presence of Radar--area goes dark if Radar is knoked out.
- Chosen based on profile information (online).
- Can paradrop ammo boxes at desired locations so players on the ground can re-supply.
- Cons: Tendency towards Commander vs. Commander slugfests (i.e. each tries to bombard the other's radar at game start)--radar re-spawns after a while though.

Squad feature:
- Players on each team are divided into squads.
- Leader chosen same way Commander is.
- Only leader can receive orders (which he may decline, accept or request) from the Commander.

'Deformable' Objects:
- Bullets can penetrate (and supposedly rip to shreds) certain light materials.
- Bullets may ricochet of walls and hit players adjacent.
- Cons: No general deformation of objects (so no walls collapsing after being hit by a heavy round a la MOHAA).

Infantry:
- New kits:
Support - drop supply boxes so other players can re-supply.
Heavy MG - only good in prone (been done in BF1942/BFV mods).
Special Forces - can laser-target (i.e. guides bombs to their targets).
- Can easily signal a threat by simply hitting one key and clicking on the enemy (enemy will appear on mini-map for all to see; no more F- crap).
- Better control (e.g. no sliding).
- All types can now sprint but vary in duration (i.e. based on weapon load).
- Voice com for online play...so you can scream and spit and know that someone will be listening--regrettably.

Vehicles:
- Missile Lock mechanism (i.e. crosshairs must remain on target to maintain lock).

General Changes:
- No more pre-placed ammo boxes.

General Improvements:
- Textures are constant at any distance (e.g. BFV had grass disappearing at certain distances).

Comments:
- Very little said about the AI (bots). Not a good sign for singleplayer.
- High requirements. (The fact that they are still having trouble working out the frame-rate at this stage seems to imply that many of us could be looking at a significant upgrade just to play this thing.) The screen shots speak for themselves.


Good review:

http://www.northernbrigade.com/bf2.php


There are plenty of other things but I'm too lazy to do a detailed review. For the record, when I said that BF2 would just be like the DC mod with some added bells and whistles...I take it back...mostly.

 

[Hakim]

Those Northern Brigade videos are great!

"To make it a bit more worth while to play as a support or medic or engy character you now score points for a lot of stuff. You get points for heals, for supplying ammo , repairing etc. In fact the points system has been totally revamped. If you do a lot of damage to an enemy but another player finish him off, you still get a point (That´s right, no more yelling “FRAG STEALER!”). The driver of a vehicle will score points when the gunner gets a kill etc.."

And scores are useful:

Everything you do in the game on a ranked server is tracked and stored in a stats database. Depending on how good you are you will increase in rank over time. Right now higher rank basically means you get more weapons to choose from in each kit.

 

[yoshi]

Yeah, the scoring will be a nice change although it won't really affect me much since, as you know, I like to camp and one-shot kills don't allow for frag-jacking.

Speaking of sniping, among the many things I didn't mention in the openning post was that hits will be less effective at a distance. So, if you snipe someone from halfway across the map, your target may no keel over as they do now. The reason for this change is no doubt for the purposes of game-balance--to make what is meant to be an arcade-like game less deadly to those unprepared to spend much of their time ducking behind stuff.

This is too artificial a solution IMO. Instead, they should have incorperated the delay factor (i.e. bullet takes time to get to target and travels in an arch just like heavy rounds do) so as to make it much more difficult to hit a moving target at long range.

A question raised in one of the reviews was that, considering the competition (namely Ghost Recon 2), will BF2 be able to get the same amount of success BF1942 did?

 

[Hakim]

Oh sniping can get you lot of kills, depending on the map. Once, in Desert Combat mod, I climbed the roof of the factory on the Al Khafji Docks map and got myself the M82 sniper kit placed there. I totally owned them, or perhaps I should say pwned.

However, I can't se how that points-gives-access-to-weapons system is compatible to single player. I do hope BF2 will have some kind of single player mode.

I wouldn't say snipers are too strong (at least not in multiplayer, the bots might be faster at aiming) and the player should be careful for snipers. It's a threat that should be present on the battlefield. I hope they don't nerf it too much.

How successful BF2 will be is a tough one for me, as I don't know very much about the competition. Looking at the videos, I'd say the HL2 graphics are better.

 

[yoshi]

Check out the BF2 trailer (or one of them) and you'll see the graphics are not lacking. What I'm worried about is what will happen to performance when you have 100+ players? If the performance jumpr form BFV to BF2 is too great they will lose part of their audience who will not be willing to make the upgrade (note that BF1942/V already have fairly high requirements).

 

[AceChilla]

I hope it isn't as bad as BF Vietnam, but it will probabaly be better since it's made by the same team that did 42.

And even if it sucks, you still have bf1942 forgotten hope to fall back on.

Any info on when the demo is comming out?

 

[Hakim]

Found some requirements on this site .

 

[SunTzu]

Dead link hakim

 

[Hakim]

Huh? It works for me!

edit: perhaps it's a browser thing. Can you access http://www.totalbf2.com/ ?

 

[Thrawn]

Link works fine for me.

 

[SunTzu]

now i can access the link

 

[Mikoyan]

I'm looking forward as hell to this game. It's going to make my whole next summer.

 

[yoshi]

E3 2004 preview:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/battlefield2/preview_6097730.html


This thing is going to be great when it finally gets released.

 

[Hakim]

Look at this vid:
http://www.gamershell.com/news/20700.html

 

[yoshi]

Nice. Seriously nice.

Noticed choppers don't have flares though--will have to mod that.

I can picture killer WW2 mods using the new engine and features.

"There are two new player classes: a heavy-weapons support class, which carries claymore mines and lots of extra ammo that can be shared by teammates, and a special ops class, which sneaks around and blows stuff up."

Which will you pick? ...Heh, heh.

I have no doubt now that this game will top the charts...when it comes out (whcih should be sometime in June). I've seen the competition: there is none. Where multiplayer arcade-like gameplay is concerned, no game really fits this nitch anywhere nearly as successfully as BF.

BF2 will give players everything they could possibly want in a tactical FPS without the slowness of Operation Flashpoint.

The only unfortunate thing is that aside from rolling over objects with heavies and shooting through thin walls, buildings will remain intact just as they are in BF1942/V. So we're back to invincible bunkers. (And modding shells to ignore outer walls will mean they will explode inside and not create any splash damage outside. But then, features like that consume a lot of system resources and would slow down the game for non-high-end systems so maybe it's for the best. I just figured that since they went for the elaborate object physics, this would keep with the 'physical' effect.)

Let's try the requirements link again:

http://www.totalbf2.com/game/requirements/

Learn how to edit BF2 maps now:

http://www.eagames.com/official/battlefield/battlefield2/us/editorial.jsp?src=communityupdate_022505

 

[yoshi]

Oh BTW, those requirements are for BFV but BF2 will supposedly have only slightly higher requirements.

 

[Hakim]

There will be flares, at least the Gamespot article claims that. Perhaps not on choppers though.

The video is a little bit too good actually . The other vids I've seen are not that good. If it is the truth, then a looot of computing power will be needed.

 

[yoshi]

You see flares being ejected by jets in the vid but not choppers. Probably for balance purposes as you don't want to make choppers too powerful (i.e. unlike jets they are not always targetable as they can hover at ground level, thus making them far less suseptible to missile lock).

Well, that 'scene' is over-doing it: I doubt you would ever have that much action taking place simultaneously.

Addtionally, the scene is probably playing at max resolution so it my not look as good in lower res but it will playe better. Pretty much the same with BFV AFAIK--never bought it (nor plan to) so I only have BF1942 to compare with.

One thing that hasn't really been mentioned much is the AI: if anyone can find a link on BF2 bots, please post it. (If it's like the previous releases...there goes the SP market.)

 

[HAND]

Yes i'm waiting for BF2 before I upgrade to a new graphics card.