“Battlefield 2” started its rampage in July 2005, and was fashioned by Swedish developer Digital Illusions. It was a highly successful video game – and had sales of over 2,250,000 copies worldwide, as of July 2006. It’s quite a good feeling to launch up a game that is nearly four years and still see hundreds of servers utterly full of players.

You can choose to play one of three factions: United States Marine Corps (USMC), People's Liberation Army (PLA), and the fictional "Middle East Coalition" (MEC). However, there are other factions that you can play as, if you install further expansion packs, such as “Battlefield 2: Special Forces.”

Battlefield 2 is an online video game, in which you pick a faction to join, and then proceed to capture certain strategic points in each map – the more control points you occupy, the quicker the other team’s tickets go down.

Sadly, there is no real single player campaign to Battlefield 2 – in place of a single player game, is the opportunity to play an offline match, against computer controlled characters. Even on hard, however, it can be considered comparatively effortless to win by veteran FPS fans, and it does not match the rivalry thrown at you by other equally-skilled gamers on multiplayer mode. The gameplay mode is identical to that of online play – so there is no real benefit to playing offline, as compared to online. This is a rotten shame, as a single player campaign would make a very nice addition to the game, so that left us feeling a little disappointed.

During online play, you earn points by butchering members of the opposite team, or capturing control points – these points add up into experience, which is used in a rather extensive ranking system to determine your level. It takes an awful lot of loyalty, or a word that’s even better, devotion to getting maxed out and reaching the top rank, we have played over 250 hours, and we are not even halfway to getting to the top. Some people may find this frustrating – but I feel that it adds a real sense of accomplishment to gaining a new rank or medal, and it allows you to play for much longer than you would do normally, don’t get us wrong, we thoroughly enjoyed playing Battlefield 2, but for those who are used to a bit of variety of things to do in their video games, may get tired of Battlefield 2 quickly.

Throughout the game, you can earn numerous medals and ribbons to show off how good

you are at the game – the medals range from bronze (basic) to gold, some of the more impressive medals, such as 100 knife kills, are very hard to get – and are prone to being goals set by stat-padders.

Stat-padding is a relatively small issue in a game as large as Battlefield 2 – Statpadders (as coined by the community) are players who team up with a user on another team, and repeatedly kill each other in order to benefit themselves with certain weapon stats, or medals. Thankfully, EA keeps a stern watch on the troublesome players of the community – and their stats will be wiped within a month of being caught. It’s good to see that the game is still being monitored – even after four years.

There is great selection of modifications that allow you to play online with new weapons, different maps, as well as new gameplay types. Sadly, modification-enabled servers are prohibited from being ranked, due to the ability to create ‘stat padding’ servers, or ‘hacked servers’. The idea of unranked modification servers prohibits these servers from being able to be ranked on the main score board.

Each team has certain utilities that are used by the team commander (whom has access to a special screen with options to drop artillery, supplies, or UAV scans, as well as a very nice live aerial view of the entire battlefield), they are all directly tied to the commander abilities in the game – there are artillery, which can be destroyed with C4 (Special ops), as well as a bunker and a radar. If all of your utilities are destroyed, you can only drop supplies.

There are several classes to choose from:

Assault – the default kit comes with a light machine gun, not favoured by many due to the low-fire rate, and weakness of each weapon. The only real point that stands out, is the grenade launcher attached to some guns – although, along with other online games, the use of this is frowned about by the community.
Medic – Comes with either a machine gun, or a burst rifle. Comes with shock-paddles and med-kits, used to revive or heal teammates, this is a favourite for players who want to safely get as many points as possible to reach each level, as whenever you heal or revive someone, you get a nice little bonus in points.
Support – uses heavy weaponry, comes with ammo kits, used to replenish your team’s ammunition, normally used by players who want to stay back and just cover their teammates as their enter new areas, the weapons are inaccurate, but their power makes up for that.
Sniper – the lone wolf of the game, as it would appear, this kit comes with claymores, to protect your hiding place, seems to be a favourite of some players who are going to raise their KDR, but a ‘lone wolf’ sniper is a bad choice, if you’re playing for the interaction with other people.
Engineer – always comes with a shotgun of some description, also has a wrench which is used to repair friendly vehicles or utilities, this class is only useful on a vehicles server, and is next to useless as EA added a very dumb feature which allows supply crates to heal utilities (Seriously, why nullify a whole class?)
Special Ops – comes with a machine gun, and C4, which can be used to destroy enemy utilities, or lay a trap for approaching vehicles or soldiers. This is the most popular class, at least from our experiences, as the C4 is a valuable asset on vehicle servers, as well as no vehicle servers.

Each class is vital in the game if you wish to successfully complete a match. Your

engineers camp back and protect your utilities and vehicles from attack, while somewhere else in the battlefield, assault storm an area, with support and snipers covering fire, while during all the chaos, the medics heal the wounded.

The graphics are imposing, even by today’s standards – and run well on most machines. There is, however, a huge problem with online play – you need an awful lot of RAM to be able to play it effectively, 2GB of RAM is recommended if you are interested in playing multiplayer matches, this is a bit of a shame, as the minimum specs are actually quite low – but a lack of a considerable amount of RAM leaves online play in an unplayable state.

The sound effects – aside from a very catchy introduction theme, are simplistic but they do the job well. There is nothing amazing to expect in this department, aside from the constant spam of the phrase “MEDIC!”, said in the same tone, hundreds upon hundreds of time. Honestly, who would of designed it, so when you die, you more or less involuntarily shout for a medic? With a click of your mouse, there you are, up on the medic’s screen as a causality in need of reviving.

The gameplay varies from match to match – on whether your fellow teammates are willing to work together or not. Many times, we have launched up the game, and played a really good match with a few guys we had never met – using VOIP (Think of Teamspeak or Ventrillo, but with a ton of glitches and built into the game), storming control points and dominating the battlefield as a squadron of five soldiers. There’s a lot of fun to be had with this game.

We’d highly recommend getting a few of your friends to purchase this game as well – to truly complete the experience. It’s a lot more fun when you’re playing with people you actually know – covering their backs as they storm through a building to capture a control point.

Music/Sound: 7/10 – A catchy introduction theme, but the rest of the sounds are pretty uninteresting.
Graphics: 5/10 – by today’s standards, the graphics are mediocre, but it does not impact the game negatively.
Replay Factor: 6/10 - can easily be played again and again, but once you have unlocked all the weapons and badges, the game quickly loses its charm.
Overall Score: 7/10 – A must have, for any PC gamer, even if you just play it once.