If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then there are many production houses that should be honoured by DICE's pot-luck of assembled themes, gameplay styles, level designs, and even plot elements from other games.

In DICE's second attempt at a standalone singleplayer experience they hit the nail at about the same slightly crooked angle as their first whack at it with BC1. Don't get me wrong, it's fun as shit to play, i'm on my second playthrough already and the game isn't even out yet. And it definately beats the tits out of the earlier SP offerings: "mp maps with bots".

These are %100 true SP crafted levels, complete with many varying gameplay elements mixed in for good measure, taking cues from Modern Warfare, World at War, Crysis, GTA3/4, Crysis Warhead, Half Life 2, Dragon Rising, COD1 and even Dirt 2 just to name a few shameless cribbed examples. 

It seemed with BF2 that the game was meant to be taken seriously, at least the themes of impending world war with china and the middle east. Today in 2010, the reality is alot more volatile than in 2005 so DICE has chosen to omit any references to anyone that we're really at war with. Which is tactfully done in making every bad guy a Russian, as the US and Russia are now more closely allied than they ever have been before, and have alot more to lose together if shit gets out of control. 

Also, if you're a Muslim kid growing up in the middle east, you've got enough fucking problems as it is. Let alone say a super popular mass media video game captures the attention of millions where the objective is to kill your people, that doesn't help. DICE seems to recognize this  with their titles, no different than any media on a global scale can help shape minds, opinions, and really the world. 

The elephant in the rooms is that this game is about MP not SP. But as an extra feature of the game, only adds to it's value, and it's good to see this developer wading in untested waters. It bodes well for the future of the franchise giving a well-rounded game experience for all kinds of players.  

The campaign opens very strongly with a great emphasis on squadplay, through tightly coreographed cutscenes or ingame scripted sequences mixed with top notch voice acting. Unfortunately, this emphasis suffers in later levels as you realize that your squad AI isn't as dynamic as you'd like. AI is hard to program realistically at all to begin with, add all the elements of dynamically altered levels through destruction 2.0 and you've got a recipie for some very glitchy NPC behaviours. This being said, they have put a lot of work into it, and the more scripted sequences shine more brightly than the dynamic ones. 

For instance, you'll learn early on that if you decide to go into a building to take cover from a bunch of bad guys, your squad will actually follow you in, and take up position in various windows through multiple levels. This wasn't present in BC1, and a definite improvement on the overall feel of the implied theme of squad cohesion. However if you get too far ahead of your squad, or say they're too busy to engage the enemy because they've just found a shiny rock to get stuck on... they'll magically teleport to your side in you advance more than 50 feet. 

The levels themselves are big and wonderful with lots of baddies to shoot, and lots of red barrels to explode. The texture work is about as good as i've ever seen from a battlefield game, about par for the course with BC1 for those of you that got in on that, but really shine when you can see them on "high" with a PC (consoles only get the *medium options as their default highest, just like the beta). 

Vehicles handle very very well, almost makes me wish that they added a handbrake to the road vehicles as the physics remind me of alot of GTA-style handling. Not much else can be said for them that hasn't been experienced in the beta, the jeeps are new to the beta players and will offer a better alternative for squads looking to insert quickly and for flanking options with firepower from the 40mm grenade turret. 

The version i played was the shipped one which went gold about a month ago, so it still had the input lag problems of the early beta builds, but still highly enjoyable. The hit detection is spot on, as i have said multiple times about MP, the hit detection works fine. If you're experiencing problems, it's caused by a multitude of different factors associated with playing online. alot of links in that chain which could fail. 

As for the plot, i leave this near last because it's really a flimsy pretext for stringing together a series of sequences where you (guess what!?) get to kill people and blow up stuff. Which is totally justified because that's really what most people are looking for, if they wanted plot they'd play an RPG. The comparison that can be drawn is: what if MW2's SP campaign was more tightly held together by strong plot elements? In someways that's accurate, but in some ways MW2's plot was epic for the sake of epicness. It's was going for a Jerry Bruckheimer and Micheal Bay production of an FPS, while BC2 seems to be leaning more towards the "Tropic Thunder" end of the spectrum. While they actually establish a sense of gritty realism early on in the game, it does come apart mid-way with a couple unfortunately under tweaked levels showing off some of the darker sides of how hard is it to get all of these gameplay elements working perfectly in a new engine.

oh well, Half Life 2 when it was released had many many bugs still in it, they were patching it and cleaning it up for almost 2 years after launch actually, so i wouldn't be suprised if future auto-updates (which is amazing btw) will help scrub this rough gem into a less rough gem.

Still, the game seems to be gaining a bit of momentum in the last couple of levels, but is quickly diffused with a short ending. The artwork and atmosphere created on some levels is miles ahead of anything that we've ever seen from a DICE title, and they should be commended on it, but unfortunately they're swimming with alot of sharks when it comes to unbelivably polished singleplayer experiences like HL2, the COD series, and of course the Crysis games (which are referenced a whole lot btw).

So in conclusion, if you're looking for a fun 6 hour romp to get an early foot up on the MP competition by being able to test out all the guns, or are just looking for something to do during a scheduled EA master server maintenance period, this SP will not dissapoint. Those looking for deep social commentary wrapped in layers of war philosophy and Sun Tzu quotes, topped off with well fleshed-out character development, and  layered on a foundation of a solid 3 act structure plot... well, as haggard would say: "tough titty".

But solace can be kept for all of those who know that the true stregnth of the franchise lies in the MP experience, there are alot, and i mean ALOT of areas in the SP levels that if you keep a watchful eye out for, you can tell that they're ripe for being converted into MP maps down the line in DICE's now established FREE DLC approach to extending the longevity of the game. 

See you on the battlefield bitches!

 

 

*see? wasn't that 10 times better than that piece of shit IGN review? i should get that cunt's job

Well written review slick.
Only thing you left out was the Audio. I have 5.1 sound on average speakers and the sound is the best in any video I've ever played, the echoes and explosion reverberations are awesome. You can hear small radios in the distance and rivers flowing around you, it's all very immersive.

In addition to the sound the general ambience of the game, the handling of the guns and game play of the vehicles also stood out to me as better than most video games. It's really enjoyable to fire those weapons as most of you have seen from the beta.

In the end its like playing a battlefield version of FarCry, MW2 and Crysis all rolled in to one, nothing new but looks and feels great.

word, thanks for the read and the kind word, i figure it's too daunting a read for most clannies to tackle. yeah, i knew i didn't mention everything about the game, obviously the sound is amazing, i'm a bit dissapointed that the PC version is gimped to 16-bit depth as opposed to the consoles 24-bit audio. it really does sound alot better on a PS3 if you ahve a good sound system, cause there's a dedicated audio hardware on the console that's easy to code for, cause it'll be identical across the platrofm. that being said, the sound is still great, the wartapes setting is pretty awsome, just gratuitous use of echo and reverb effects, along with EQing the low end a bit higher. unfortunately the in-game dialogue isn't mixed to level the sfx in wartapes mode, so you'll strain to hear the witty banter between your squad when not in a cut-scene.

there was something else i forgot to add to the review that i thought of lastnight too, oh well, when i think of it i'll write it.

and i should clarify that "sound better" on PS3 isn't really sounding better, it just means sounding clearer. the Bit depth of an audio file just tells you how much room, and how many steps there are between 0 dB (as loud as you can get) and minus infinity dB (as quiet as you can get). for every bit there's 6 dB of audio signal, so 16 bit is like 96 dB dynamic range, and 24 bit is 144 dB or something, i'm not using a calculator, but you get the idea.

it's the same as the dynamic range of colour on a monitor, how many shades of grey between white and black. how quiet is quiet, and how loud is loud?

hope that clears things up a bit, the sound samples themselves aren't alrered, just their bit depth, so it's still the same experience, just with a bit less dynamic range than the consoles, a bit less clarity.