Battlefield 2 Special Forces
Of the things that are inevitable, a Battlefield expansion ranks right up there with death, taxes and the end of the world. Thankfully, Special Forces is more fun than the others on the list, although it does have its own aggravations. The inclusion of elite military groups is more cosmetic than anything else, and there are still problems with the server browser, but the new vehicles and new maps are a welcome inclusion to what is already quite a solid multiplayer shooter. And the Brits should be pleased to have their own SAS shouting British things like "Oi!" and "Cheers, mate!"
And the maps actually having a pleasing variety to them -- no small feat, since there's only eight to go around. They are mostly urban and always densely arranged, with more building interiors than before, some of them quite extensive. Some of them don't feel much different from their BF2 counterparts, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, and others are quite different. You'll defend the Iron Gator as Navy SEALs, aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier with an impressively detailed and expansive interior. The SEALs have no permanent spawn point, so it can get pretty intense. Meanwhile, the enemy can keep on flowing out of their shore base. Granted, it's tough to force your way aboard an aircraft carrier, but the enemy has boats, APCs, and jetskis to get them over, as well as several helicopters.
You'll find that the Special Forces maps have generally fewer jets, and tanks for that matter. I can understand why. It's nearly impossible to take down a jet, and tanks aren't far behind. If you aren't within spitting distance and carrying either a mine or a package of C4, infantry is toast. Grenades don't do it, shoulder-mounted rockets are slow and weak, and bullets will only scratch the paint. The average tank has so much armor, in fact, and the -mounted shoulder rocket launcher or RPG is so slow to reload and does so little damage, that it's possible for an engineer to repair a tank faster than it's getting damaged. Even a direct hit from an artillery strike won't do the job. You need high-grade explosives. As for jets… those are just a pain in the butt. I don't think I've ever actually downed one of those, and believe me, I've tried. You're better off using surface-to-air armaments as ground defense.
At any rate, I like the new maps. With a more concentrated battlefield, it's much more difficult for some power jerk to flank your forces and steal a spawn point way in the back. On some maps, you'll be faced with quite a gauntlet if you try that. The four-wheeler allows you to cross lots of space in short amount of time, and it's less noticeable than the buggy, but it also leaves you quite vulnerable and doesn't take much damage. New vehicles also include the technical (a pickup truck with a machine gun mounted on the bed), a six-wheeled buggy with multiple gun turrets, some new helicopters, and another APC, this one with a tank cannon. However, the turret has very limited vertical movement (as a tradeoff for its power). I prefer the original APC because a passenger can see out the windows and shoot at people. In the new one, I feel like a guy in a barrel tumbling down a hill, unless I'm driving, that is.
Visually, the game is pretty much the same as BF2, which isn't bad at all. If you have the horsepower, it's pretty easy on the eyes. One of our test rigs has a 7800GTX, so we kinda decided to go with that. The videos we took today were all recorded from that rig, which is also equipped with a P4 3.4GHz, 2GB of PC3200 RAM, and a fat hard drive, among other niceties. 2 gigs of RAM doesn't appear to make much more difference than 1GB when it comes to load times, but the matches themselves will run a lot smoother.
PC Game Battlefield 2 Special Forces Video Review
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