Sorry for the typos in advance! I condensed this significantly because no one will read all the way through it!@
Where o where to begin.....
I put in about an hour total on the game between the Nvidia booth and the EA booth.
Let's start off with some facts I received from talking to the numerous EA reps.
Specs.
Min.
1.7ghz, 64MB video(Support chipsets are in
this thread )
256MB of Ram
Recommended.
2.6Ghz, 256MB video
512MB of Ram.
I'm ok, are you? If not, time to upgrade
Reason for the release date push back to June from March. EA wanted to take more time and developed a special team specifically targeting QA. Since previous games have shipped buggy, they wanted to tackle the bugs before shipping.
At that date in time, there were 3 known bugs, none of which I experienced in my gameplay.
The game.....
Levels & Graphix There were only 2 levels being played and I didn't get to note the names. The levels were laid out well allowing segragated fights/battles. The colors were very vibrant. Blues and water were very bright and colorful, the greenry was very green and life like. The game looked very similar to FarCry, only better. The player models, vehicles, and random objects had perfect amount of detail.
The machines we were playing on were top of the line and run GeForce 6600's SLi. There was absolutely no hiccup or lagging whatsoever.
The server was a 32 player server and we were playing with the other machines running BF2 at E3 as well as a number of EALA employees.
The shadowing detail was insane. There was a level where a radar tower was on the hill and the dish on top was rotating, well that projected a shadow down on the base, and the shadow matched the rotation of the dish perfectly and looked very cool.
FPS The FPS has been bumped up a notch or 4 from earlier BF games. I don't thinik it's quite as detailed as say SOF2, but will fill the need for the FPS only type of players. I tried spamming a number of times and that was pointless. It took very controlled shots to get your kills.
They implemented the sprinting function and at first I was hating it, but by thte end of the day I was comfortable on how to use it. You were down staimina and then as you stop sprinting and walk or stop altogether, it builds back up at a decent rate. Using the sprint function was critical in surviving fire fights or tank assaults.
The weapons were fun, and the iron sights make it even more fun. I used a number of the kits and their alt weaponry for both the US and the Middle Eastern Coalition. I don't think either of the maps had the Chinese Army. Weapons moved/drifted wtih fire and felt like other games.
Prone - I miss in being able to prone in games such as CS and SOF2 that I've been able to do in the BF series, I'm glad that they kept that in. Proning in grass or other shrubbery kept you hidden.
Stuned, a couple of times I was stunned, not sure if I was hit with a nade or what. But my vision went blurry on me and I felt disorientated for a few seconds. VERY SIMILAR to CS:S when you get flash banged.
Ground Vehicles
Tanks I spent most of my vehicle time in my tanks. A welcome improvement over DC, is that you can't just run into a base and over take it with a tank. It requires multiple hits to other tanks to kill them,
Patrol Buggy So much fun to drive these guys arounds. Jumping them, running enemies over in them, etc.
LAV25 APC This guy was fun to drive and pretty deadly against infrantry.
I drove many of the Middle Eastern's answer to these vehicles and they performed the same.
Helo/Jet
At home I fly with a joystick, there were no joysticks available at the E3 booths.... so I had some trouble flying....
HeloI flew the cobra and the soviet chopper. They were harder to control than BF:V, that was apparent, but they felt easier than DC still. Since I didn't have a joystick, I didn't spend too much time in these guys.
Jets I had one opportunity to grab a jet when I spawned on the carrier, and I was jet jacked. So I didn't get fly one.
Gameplay
All I can say is wow. The gameplay has been much improved. Example, medics get points for healing people now or reviving them. Engineers get points for repairing vehicles.
Damage Assist points: no more of the you wear someone down to almost death and then a teammate comes in from the side and picks them off with a pistol and kills them, stealing your point. You now are awarded points for that.
Capturing points: Seemed really difficult without teammates. The more teammates are there the quicker the flag drops and your flag is raised.
An example, I charged this one pont with a M1A2 Abram, only opposing infrantry occupied this base, no vehicles. I moved in to the area to start dropping the flag. Troops kept running at me and respawning there to remove me. (None of them were smart enough to get a rocket launcher or lay landmines...anyways), this battle lasted for several minutes before support from my team arrived. My guys quickly circled the based and were able to drop the flag and kill the remaining opposition off before they could respawn. It was a very intense battle. A few of the EA reps were behind me watching and I could hear them commenting about the battle. Yes the headphones they provided didn't work well for that arena. Which is why I can't comment on sound.
You cannot own up the game with a single vehicle as you could before. The maps felt very balanced.
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Most of you didn't play Desert Combat, but I found out the story behind the team(Trauma Studios) and why they disappeared so early into the DC development.
EA/DICE purchased Trauma to build the mod tools and start working on mods for the BF2 engine. Those tools will be available the day after release! The mod community will have instant access to the same tools that EA/DICE had in development. The mod tools took for ever to come out for BF42. A good move on part of EA to sell more product and build a quick community around the BF2 engine.
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I leave you with a few pics. Sorry this review wasn't as detailed.... just take it as this... this game WILL ROCK!
The BF2 keyboard, ugh
I got a demo disc for BF2: Modern Combat for PS2, I don't own a ps2, anyone that wants to disk I will mail it to them....FYI the console version IS NOT THE SAME as the PC version. DO NOT base any opinions of the PC ed. if you see that console game. It sucks IMO.
Waiting in line... at the Nvidia booth.
After a round...of play owning it up!!!
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