Battlefield2, The Amateur Review
semipsychotic
Join Date: 2003-07-09 Member: 18061Members
Join Date: 2003-07-09 Member: 18061Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Not a screenie or clan-forming thread</div> I figured that I would start a new thread to handle opinions on the game's quality, because there aren't any threads that would serve that purpose save possibly the "download spam" thread seven or so pages back.
Here goes...
<b>The good</b>
There's a very cool feeling when you're a vital support class in a squad, namely the engineer and medical classes. Also, being in a squad seems to help filter out the morons. It seems that those who want to work together are nearly the only ones in squads (except the idiot "clans" who set up private squads to harass enemies to no tactical advantage rather than do something that helps our team), meaning that it's easy to find players that work together, instead of server-hopping until you find working teams like in Mechwarrior.
The VOIP works fairly well, but the fact that it's squad only is a blessing and a curse. The bad thing is that it's hard to make requests to the commander- the text-chat channels are usually fairly full, and it's easy for the commander to miss something like "Lots of armor near the airstrip." The good thing is that the VOIP is saved for situations where it's really needed; VOIP's main use is to take care of small things, like "throw a grenade in that house," or "I'm going to parachute out, take care," and you need that the most in your squad.
Shift gears...
Jets are sort of a pain to keep within the boundaries, because I always feel the need to keep my finger hammered on the W key. I'm used to hardcore simulations like Falcon 4.0, where the throttle is realistic: you have full control over fuel flow and RPMs, not the on-or-off deal in these aircraft. The other problems associated with being brought up on simulations is that the flight model is totally different. I appreciate the fact that since the targeted player base is large and the maps are small, the aircraft need to be made arcade-ish to really fit in the game, it's just that it will take me time to get used to them.
Helicopters are beautiful, beautiful things. Good pilots can put them anywhere they need to be, while bad pilots still have the chance to learn to handle them. I find myself to be better at flying a Black Hawk than anything else, and there's nothing more satisfying than landing near the MEC airstrip to let Special Forces cripple the commander's tools with their C4.
<b>The Bad</b>
<i>Menu screens should never, EVER, have loading times. </i>
I'm sure you've noticed that, but it doesn't annoy anybody more than me. I have played enough games and have enough programming experience to change the way I look at some things in games, and this is one of them. Being forced to wait for your menu to load (even if it really isn't all that long) strikes me as really bad form. That said, the interface is nice and all, but if you want to put a video in the background of the menu, you better be able to do it without sacrificing time on the user's part. A well-executed counterpart for comparison is HAL's menu in Super Smash Brothers: extremely quick, and they follow the classic "keeping it simple" mantra.
Another annoying thing pertaining to the menu system is the clunky server browser. Granted, it's not as bad as some others, but it still gets in the way. A better browser is the server browser incorporated into Steam for HL1 and Source games.
Shifting gears again.
I've said it before, but it bears repitition: if you're going to exclude lower end systems, it better be for a good reason. Now, I won't talk much about CPU and RAM, because I can understand tighter restrictions for a game like this. However, there's little excuse for narrowing the video card choice down to a number that can be <i>listed in a readme</i>. That's pretty bad. I've seen games with comparable low-end graphics that are open to far more cards. Heck, even HALO for the PC with its rapacious specular-mapping frenzy was open to my old GeforceMX420, and it doesn't look much less intense on low settings than BF2.
Because of the extreme strain that BF2 puts on your system, it has a few other effects. According to the BF2 readme, they <i>don't support alt-tabbing</i>. Okay, okay, I've seen a lot of games that did ugly stuff when you tried to alt-tab out of them. Notable was Half-life, which, for the longest time would totally kill your sound (though it was fixed in one of the first Steam-delivered bugfixes). However, I've found that in Guild Wars it becomes useful to alt-tab out occasionally to look up an online resource, because RPG's give you that downtime and they're complex enough to warrant online resources. Guild Wars alt-tabs cleanly and without struggly. Battlefield2, while not an RPG, would probably try to eat my RAM and CPU cycles for breakfast if I wanted to alt-tab to close something in the backround or look something up quickly between rounds. In all, this just strikes me as a thing that a lazy or tight-budgeted programming team would do, despite its trivial nature.
And now, for something completely different.
Yes, I'm going to get yelled at for this one, but is it so hard to support joysticks that connect to the soundcard? The readme brought me this little gem: <i>Battlefield 2 does not support using a joystick connected to your computer via a joystick port built-in to your sound card. We recommend you use a joystick that connects to your computer via a USB port.</i>
Well, lots of games still use 'em, as far as I know. All I know is that I'm going to be flying my Helicopters around with a mouse, because I am NOT shelling out extra money for a USB stick that I don't need.
*sniff* <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
...
<b>The Ugly</b>
A user ranking system and UNLOCKABLE WEAPONS? That idea is so exceedingly stupid for a game like BF2 that it sounds like a bandwagon scheme that EA cooked up to draw in a few team-ignoring, stat-boosting morons and some more money.
<b>The Verdict...</b>
In the end, it seems like the lazy development decisions under <b>The Bad</b> and then the unspeakable atrocities under <b>The Ugly</b> will keep me out of Battlefield2, despite the decent gameplay. The seemingly lazy programming just undercuts my faith in the developers supporting the game with any patches or content after the game is released, while <b>The Ugly</b>...
*Shudder*
... That's all I have to say. Flame on!
Here goes...
<b>The good</b>
There's a very cool feeling when you're a vital support class in a squad, namely the engineer and medical classes. Also, being in a squad seems to help filter out the morons. It seems that those who want to work together are nearly the only ones in squads (except the idiot "clans" who set up private squads to harass enemies to no tactical advantage rather than do something that helps our team), meaning that it's easy to find players that work together, instead of server-hopping until you find working teams like in Mechwarrior.
The VOIP works fairly well, but the fact that it's squad only is a blessing and a curse. The bad thing is that it's hard to make requests to the commander- the text-chat channels are usually fairly full, and it's easy for the commander to miss something like "Lots of armor near the airstrip." The good thing is that the VOIP is saved for situations where it's really needed; VOIP's main use is to take care of small things, like "throw a grenade in that house," or "I'm going to parachute out, take care," and you need that the most in your squad.
Shift gears...
Jets are sort of a pain to keep within the boundaries, because I always feel the need to keep my finger hammered on the W key. I'm used to hardcore simulations like Falcon 4.0, where the throttle is realistic: you have full control over fuel flow and RPMs, not the on-or-off deal in these aircraft. The other problems associated with being brought up on simulations is that the flight model is totally different. I appreciate the fact that since the targeted player base is large and the maps are small, the aircraft need to be made arcade-ish to really fit in the game, it's just that it will take me time to get used to them.
Helicopters are beautiful, beautiful things. Good pilots can put them anywhere they need to be, while bad pilots still have the chance to learn to handle them. I find myself to be better at flying a Black Hawk than anything else, and there's nothing more satisfying than landing near the MEC airstrip to let Special Forces cripple the commander's tools with their C4.
<b>The Bad</b>
<i>Menu screens should never, EVER, have loading times. </i>
I'm sure you've noticed that, but it doesn't annoy anybody more than me. I have played enough games and have enough programming experience to change the way I look at some things in games, and this is one of them. Being forced to wait for your menu to load (even if it really isn't all that long) strikes me as really bad form. That said, the interface is nice and all, but if you want to put a video in the background of the menu, you better be able to do it without sacrificing time on the user's part. A well-executed counterpart for comparison is HAL's menu in Super Smash Brothers: extremely quick, and they follow the classic "keeping it simple" mantra.
Another annoying thing pertaining to the menu system is the clunky server browser. Granted, it's not as bad as some others, but it still gets in the way. A better browser is the server browser incorporated into Steam for HL1 and Source games.
Shifting gears again.
I've said it before, but it bears repitition: if you're going to exclude lower end systems, it better be for a good reason. Now, I won't talk much about CPU and RAM, because I can understand tighter restrictions for a game like this. However, there's little excuse for narrowing the video card choice down to a number that can be <i>listed in a readme</i>. That's pretty bad. I've seen games with comparable low-end graphics that are open to far more cards. Heck, even HALO for the PC with its rapacious specular-mapping frenzy was open to my old GeforceMX420, and it doesn't look much less intense on low settings than BF2.
Because of the extreme strain that BF2 puts on your system, it has a few other effects. According to the BF2 readme, they <i>don't support alt-tabbing</i>. Okay, okay, I've seen a lot of games that did ugly stuff when you tried to alt-tab out of them. Notable was Half-life, which, for the longest time would totally kill your sound (though it was fixed in one of the first Steam-delivered bugfixes). However, I've found that in Guild Wars it becomes useful to alt-tab out occasionally to look up an online resource, because RPG's give you that downtime and they're complex enough to warrant online resources. Guild Wars alt-tabs cleanly and without struggly. Battlefield2, while not an RPG, would probably try to eat my RAM and CPU cycles for breakfast if I wanted to alt-tab to close something in the backround or look something up quickly between rounds. In all, this just strikes me as a thing that a lazy or tight-budgeted programming team would do, despite its trivial nature.
And now, for something completely different.
Yes, I'm going to get yelled at for this one, but is it so hard to support joysticks that connect to the soundcard? The readme brought me this little gem: <i>Battlefield 2 does not support using a joystick connected to your computer via a joystick port built-in to your sound card. We recommend you use a joystick that connects to your computer via a USB port.</i>
Well, lots of games still use 'em, as far as I know. All I know is that I'm going to be flying my Helicopters around with a mouse, because I am NOT shelling out extra money for a USB stick that I don't need.
*sniff* <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
...
<b>The Ugly</b>
A user ranking system and UNLOCKABLE WEAPONS? That idea is so exceedingly stupid for a game like BF2 that it sounds like a bandwagon scheme that EA cooked up to draw in a few team-ignoring, stat-boosting morons and some more money.
<b>The Verdict...</b>
In the end, it seems like the lazy development decisions under <b>The Bad</b> and then the unspeakable atrocities under <b>The Ugly</b> will keep me out of Battlefield2, despite the decent gameplay. The seemingly lazy programming just undercuts my faith in the developers supporting the game with any patches or content after the game is released, while <b>The Ugly</b>...
*Shudder*
... That's all I have to say. Flame on!
Comments
Now, if only my game would stop crashing every time i tried to do, well, <i>anything</i>.
What crazy things? The browser's a bit slow, and I don't like it much, but it's nowhere near bad enough to mar the gameplay. I also don't get your dislike towards the ranking system. Just play on an unranked server.
I don't notice any loading times, unless you're talking about <i>connecting to the world-wide player database...</i>
Worst problems I've had are LONG loading times for map graphics on the server select screen, like, click the server, 2 minutes later you see everything about it.
Meh, and some servers have really long load times while others don't.
HL2 has better graphics and shorter loading times for maps about the same size...
HL2 has better graphics and shorter loading times for maps about the same size... <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Different engines. That's like comparing a Banana Split to can of Ravioli.
You can bind everything to your joystick, and use the joystick throttle, for a non-on/off thing. I do this.
Many of your points seem to be your preferences not matching. Too bad for you?
Also: The User Ranking system, which they explained how it works, seems to be excellent to me. It doesn't reward you for any one specific thing: Most Helicopter Air time(with players in it, mind you), Most Apache kills, most heals, most revives, most bombings, most sabataging, etc. If you ask me, they have it down perfect with the URS.
Loading times have been pretty good for me, so far.
I can alt tab out fine.
As for the ranking, I think it adds a sort of reward for players who play a lot. And if the thought of a ranking system makes your blood boil and your eyes glaze over in rage, you can always use an unranked server.
HL2 has better graphics and shorter loading times for maps about the same size... <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I doubt HL2 can keep as many players on any one server without burninating the hosting computer...
HL2 has better graphics and shorter loading times for maps about the same size... <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I doubt HL2 can keep as many players on any one server without burninating the hosting computer... <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
64 players on multiplayer servers last I checked.
Oh well, I wasn't saying that BF2 SHOULD be like Source's engine, I'm just saying it's possible to have lower loading times with those sized maps. But oh well.
The game is still 3000601060627608176981660197861896986^2 times better then BF42
The aspects that Quaunaut pointed out sound great. I can definitely live with that. It's this that I can't stand, and it was my fault for not specifying this in my original post:
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Character Persistence and Growth. With in-game success, players increase their rank from recruit all the way to General and unlock new weapons, medals, and more.
<a href='http://www.eagames.com/official/battlefield/battlefield2/us/features.jsp' target='_blank'>http://www.eagames.com/official/battlefiel...us/features.jsp</a><!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's not the scoring system I have problems with, it's the "unlockable weaponry" which invokes images of morons running around servers with armageddon-inducing deathsticks after playing the game for 60 hours straight. I'll edit my post for clarification...
However, I never knew that there was actually potential for unranked servers. That gives me hope, though I guess I should have forseen that.
Unlockable weaponry isn't better than the standard kit, it's only an alternative. A balance is kept.
Aren't better than the defaults
They're just different