Battlefield 2: How it Could Be Better

Battlefield 2 is a PC first person shooter, and it is a very good game. But, could it be better? In my opinion, I think it could be a lot better. While there are thousands of people who play this daily, even though it's a couple years old, I'm sure there could be more fans if certain things were addressed. I don't want to call them issues, some of them are, but some of them could be considered improvements.

To begin, I wrote a review on Battlefield 2 not too long ago, giving the game high praise, which it really deserves. But if you take a careful look at the game, you'll notice it is missing a few things. The most important is a good single player campaign. Battlefield 2 is one of those games that you buy strictly for multiplayer; it does have a single player mode, but you only play the different levels against "bots" (computer controlled characters). What Battlefield 2 needs is an actual story; something that will help motivate you to play the single player. There are three things that could be done to improve single player: have maybe a dozen or so levels, have it so in each level you need to do something different, and give some kind of story behind it. The first detail simply gives an estimate of how long the campaign could be. The second is something that adds variety. Let's say one level you would have to be a gunner for a tank, and you make your way through a city filled with insurgents. Another level would make you infiltrate a base and capture important intelligence. Having this ensures the missions are not repetitive. The third detail is simple. The story could be almost anything; terrorists have threatened to attack the U.S. and the Marines are sent to invade the enemies' country and help protect America. If you combine all of these you have at least an average single player. But this is already leaps and bounds better than what we have now.

If you are not interested in the offline single player portion of the game, I also have many suggestions for multiplayer. A huge thing that I've noticed (and I'm sure others have too) is that there is only one game type for online play. Why did EA choose to put only one mode in if they were trying to focus the most on multiplayer? And while this may seem like it would get repetitive quickly, it actually doesn't. It provides for countless hours of fun because there is a big variety of maps, each map has three sizes, and there is plenty to do in each level. But what if there were more game types? I've played, and still play, other tactical online shooters, and they have multiple game types. There are a couple I can think of right off the top of my head that would be a good fit for Battlefield 2. Some people will like them, others might not.

The first, and probably the one that would work really well with the re-spawn element of the game, would be "Breach." One team would have to defend a certain area (be it a building or whatever else) and the other team would have to breach inside, and possibly plant a bomb to demolish their base. Another could be "Demolition." The objective here is to plant a bomb at the opposing team's base. Although here, both teams have bases, unlike Breach. This explosive would be placed in the middle of the map, and any player could pick it up. Once someone has it in their possession, they'd have to make their way to the other team's base and destroy it.

Besides these two, which could work pretty well, there is also a game type that might be good, but would work better with a round-based game (like Counter Strike for example). "Extract" is this game type, and one of the sides would have to travel into enemy territory to rescue hostages and extract them to a safe zone. I'm almost certain Counter Strike has a game type like this, but it would be interesting to see how it would work with Battlefield 2. There are many questions that can be raised when thinking about this. For example, would one side be heavily favored to win because of the re-spawn factor? Would the side that has to rescue ever get remotely close to the hostages because of the re-spawn factor? Would vehicles be used as to give one team a big advantage? For "Extract," it seems unlikely that it would work with a game like Battlefield 2, but it would definitely be interesting to try.

Besides the issue of game types, there are also technical problems that need to be addressed. I know I am not alone in this either. Constant disconnects from servers, lag (internet connection problems), many bugs and other game play issues like long loading times really hurt this game. After visiting forums dedicated to Battlefield 2, you get a sense of how many people experience trouble when playing. Besides the technical issues, there is also a concern, at least for me, about the patches. 600 megabytes for an update is unheard of. Maybe it is just me, but I don't see why a patch would need more than half a gigabyte.

Overall, if you look at Battlefield 2 you will notice many problems that could have been fixed and there also seems to be a few things missing. Yes, it's a great game, but it could be a lot better.