Battlefield 2: Modern Combat

Written by Troy Matsumiya  on December 08, 2005

Review: A great game Ц for Xbox Live subscribers only, that is.

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If there was ever a game that was made for online multiplayer, Battlefield certainly ranks near the top of the list. Forget the single player campaign; multiplayer is where the fun is at, baby.

Oh, and one other thing: you absolutely, positively need Xbox Live to play multiplayer. There is no split screen and no System Link support. Sorry, offliners.

For those you lucky enough to be online, picture heated battles with up to 24 players on huge maps providing lots of cover for sniping, flanking and ambushing. The maps are so big and so well designed that they actually encourage teamwork since taking the typical FPS Уlone wolfФ run and gun approach will likely get you killed by several enemies lurking in the foliage. Attacking objective points, covering teammates, using all of the tools in your kit and communication are all keys to success, and when you click with a bunch of players with the same mindset, it can be a thing of beauty. There is nothing more enjoyable than fighting side by side with teammates, saving their lives from an enemy hunkered down behind cover, winning objective points and defeating a fierce enemy.

You can choose from four factions to play: NATO, the European Union, the People's Republic of China, and the Middle Eastern Coalition. The two opposing teams are pre-selected depending on the map, but the cool thing is that if you are on the Chinese or MEC team, you hear key game messages in Chinese or Arabic Ц a small but nice touch.

There are only two multiplayer modes and none of them are deathmatch. Naturally, the classic Conquest mode returns, where you have to capture and hold flag points; when they are yours, they become your new spawn points. The more flags you hold, the slower your ticket count is drained; conversely, if the enemy has more flags than you, your ticket count will start to drop at an alarming rate. The round ends when one side depletes their tickets. Needless to say, the most intense (and fun!) battles occur in and around flag points since these are vital to victory. Since flag points are generally out in the open, it can be quite tense sitting there like a lame duck as you wait for what seems like eternity for the capture timer to wind down so you can claim the flag as your own. And you pretty much need to stay by the flag to capture it because if you move away to, say, repel an attack, when you return the timer starts all over from the beginning again. Doh!

New to the series is a Capture the Flag mode where the maps are scaled down to create more tighter and intimate gameplay. The trick is that you need your flag at home to score, so defense is just as important as offense; so once again, that teamwork thing is needed to win. The downside is that the CTF flag points aren't very well marked so until you familiarize yourself with the maps, you can easily find yourself wandering around aimlessly trying to find the damn flag, all the while taking bullets up your butt.

The same classes in single player are available in multiplayer, but there is no Hot Swapping and no bots. Instead, you can choose your class whenever you spawn, allowing you to make tactical adjustments when needed. Smart teams will have a good mix of all classes since each has their tactical advantages. For example, the Sniper has a GPS that highlights enemy locations on everyone's radar for a few seconds, an extremely useful tool that is perhaps more valuable than his rifle. The Engineer can lay mines at key choke points to take out enemy infantry and vehicles alike. However, the least useful class is Support; despite carrying a light machinegun, it is horribly inaccurate and you cannot look down the sights for more precise aiming (all other classes benefit from a slight zoom by looking down the sights of their weapons, which increases accuracy). As well, while the health injector he carries can save teammate lives, in practice it is rarely used since most battles occur at flag points which all have health and ammo boosting stations nearby anyway.

Vehicles are also available to use, including APCs, tanks, boats and helicopters. Any class can control a vehicle (though Engineers are the best choice since they can repair any damage) and a good player can lay some devastating firepower on the enemy. To keep things fair, you only need one or two well-placed RPG shots to take out vehicles, so rolling out the heavy iron doesn't necessarily give either side a big tactical advantage.

As in single player, your performance earns you points and medals that move you up in rank. The ranking system is a great way to encourage repeated gameplay and motivation to improve your skills, but at the same time it also encourages stat whoring as people try to cheat their way to earning medals. And speaking of stats, the game tracks an enormous wealth of incredibly detailed statistics, down to the number of shots, hits and kills from a specific weapon. Cool!

As fun as multiplayer is, however, there are a lot of things that need improving. For example, the universally hated Уpush to talkФ function rears its ugly head for some inexplicable reason. When will developers learn that gamers DO NOT want to have to push a freaking button when they want to talk to their teammates? Having that feature actually discourages crucial team communications because it means you are unable to look or aim for a precious few seconds while talking. It will be a joyous day when developers finally trash this idiotic feature forever.

I was also surprised to find that you cannot set up your own game. Instead, you have to search for an EA server to play on, and after the round is over, the players can vote on which map to play next. Theoretically, this wouldn't be so bad since having dedicated servers should result in higher performance over the standard Xbox Live peer-to-peer networking setup. However, in actuality, performance is quite disappointing. All online games experience lag, but the lag in Modern Combat can be quite bad: I've sniped at people centered in my crosshairs only to watch as they walked away mysteriously unscathed; I've been killed by УinvisibleФ people; and I've run down the street only to be instantaneously and repeatedly УteleportedФ back ten feet. The lag is intermittent and can appear in any game, whether it is filled to capacity or has as little as six players. To their credit, EA is working hard to fix the problems but it is something that should have been caught in QA.

Another annoyance, albeit minor in comparison to the lag, is the way the game handles the Xbox Live Friend's List. Um, hello, but would it have been too much to ask to have the Friend's List in alphabetical order like it is in every other Live game? Instead, the Friend's List is a random jumble of names that is very inconvenient to scroll through.

Despite the flaws, multiplayer is extremely fun Ц although if you can only find a game with a small handful of people, you usually end up running from one flag point to another and never see anyone, which isn't very exciting at all. But if you join a full room, the multiplayer mayhem is online fun at its best.