The full version of Battlefield 2 plays the same as the demo, but now there are more maps, a new faction, and some new vehicles. What I wrote about the demo’s gameplay still holds true. There are a few gameplay design decisions that I don’t like too much — like the magical fix-anything commander crates and that the Special Operations class gets no points for destroying strategic enemy installations, despite the fact that the other Support classes get points for essentially sitting on their asses around other players — but nothing to get hung up about.
Mini review: solid gameplay; decent performance/look; horrendous, sluggish, unfriendly user interface; attrocious server browser; laggy and buggy rank tracking. The meat of the game is good, but the wrapper blows. Sadly, such poor interfaces are — and I feel like I’ve said this, even more sadly, a million times — the norm rather than the exception.
It’s the laggy ranked servers that bug me the most. There are additional weapons that can be unlocked in the game, but to do so you have to play on the global ranked servers. Your global stats are also tracked on these, and only these, servers. Unfortunately, these are also the laggiest piece of shit servers around. There was one good server that I managed to find, but that one had a mere 16 player maximum. There was a 64 player server that was tolerable, and I tore it up there, but it seems as though those stats weren’t even recorded. I was awarded a medal. Now it’s lost somewhere in the great TCP/IP garbage can. ARGH.
It’s been said by some that the Battlefield games are always best after a patch. I do not like this.
Also, I managed to figure out my screenshot woes. It seems as though ingame screenshots work fine, but summary screen shots go to the clipboard instead of to the hard-drive. I have no idea why. It’s weird. But at least I now know how to preserve those ego-inflating scores when they (inevitably) come along. Too bad I already lost so many of them.
I don’t mind the in-game interface all that much, although the server browser is even crappier than BF42. I recommend joining non-ranked servers, they seem to be a lot less laggy. EA actually charges a fee for indie servers to get with their ranking system, so I’m sort of “boycotting” ranked servers. You tend to get a lot more idiocy on those servers anyway. The best game play is found on unranked clan servers — I recommend my clan’s server, Sixgun Dojo [more info: http://www.6gun.net. When clan members are on, tards are kicked.