War isn’t good for anything except pain, suffering and very good video games. Battle field 2 for the Xbox is a good representation of a good war game. Taking everything we know about modern combat and not only making it apart of the games title, but also making it a key part of the game play. As a franchise, Battlefield has made quite the successful game, now taking the concept of cooperative game play, team management and getting to the overall goal. In this review, I will be as relentless as ever to see if this game holds up as one of the premier titles in a long time for the Xbox.

Game play

The absolutely important concept to the game is how it plays out and feels within the heat of battle. With the concept of most war games to be an ever changing battlefield, it’s kind of hard to expect linear game play with a game of this caliber. In fact the most surprising thing to me is what you are limited too in weaponry. After briefing, you are parachuted into the first level with the standard rifle and hand gun combination. Pretty standard amongst most of the soldiers in the game, thus, making the next few subjects out to be the most important in Battlefield 2.

First, is the teamwork, before, teamwork in most war orientated games was the simple idea of keeping your men alive while a number of unknown soldiers continued on there own path. Most of the time, you could control them, giving them orders of forming an attack or defending and the like. Its quite different this time around in Battlefield 2, you control almost every position in your team. From the heavy gunner, sniper, rifleman, tanker etc. It’s a very interesting concept considering the circumstances for most of the different needs from all the specific jobs that you’re A.I teammates are assigned too.

One good example is having two tanks firing on your squad, with one heavy arms posted on a near by building and armed with a rocket launcher. Its simple to lock onto your teammate, then hit Y and you change ‘hosts’. There is no real limit to how many times you change hosts, as a matter of fact changing as many times in one scenario is rewarded with points.

In the long run, taking on the situation by knowing your team, there abilities and weaponry makes the game run a lot smoother then trying to take on every obstacle by yourself. Thus, lone wolf points would be given accordingly for how and if you survive, but its so much better to fight through as a unit.

Now, teamwork is a great aspect that I feel is fully utilized with the hosts swapping, it’s so very easy but also detrimental to the unit if you leave your last, host in the middle of a gun fight as he will either not pull back or continue to fight until he dies, thus, the importance of proper team management through the game. Second, are the mission objectives, there can be anywhere to one to seven at any given time, so this keeps the pace of the game quite frantic. In a good sense that with every change of environment comes a new objective to take on. Managing your unit during which becomes harder as more enemies will no doubt take up sniping positions, bring in more heavier weaponry and out number you in the long run.

With every mission objective comes a Battlefield Moment, which could be anything from destroying a tank a certain way to knocking out a number of troops or helicopter. With the Battlefield Moment, you can gain more points to upgrading your troops with enhanced equipment, better vehicles and special abilities with the weapons (ex. Night vision). Along with the large amount of focus on teamwork and upgrades, BF2 compromises the single player mode to a very enjoyable experience. The game remains open ended, even dieing will not end your game per-say but will just launch you into the body of another on field soldier. How you adjust yourself to the situation is completely up to you and as mentioned before players are rewarded greatly and not only upgrade weaponry but also rank as they battle through the World War III scenario covered in the game. Of course, the player has all the real decisions to the outcome of the next world war and even the factions they fight for in the end.