Today (yesterday) Battlefield 2: The Complete Collection arrived in the post.
I have been wanting to get this game for a long time, and a nice voucher from Zavvi helped bring the price to a lovely £3.56.
I have mentioned full games not living up to their demos before. The demo for UT2004 used the best maps from each of the game modes, this meant the full game was somewhat of a disappointment. I was slightly worried that Battlefield 2 would be the same, I’ll be sure to write something once I have had a chance to try the other maps.
In the mean time I thought I’d write a little about the map that came with the demo, and which was the first map I played once I got the full game, Gulf of Oman.
Battlefield 2 has a pretty good balance between vehicles and soldiers on foot, at least when it comes to playing with larger numbers. Other games that have done vehicles have often neglected to give them the room to operate, the Gulf of Oman is very big. It is also very open making it a challenge to survive the helicopters and planes, there are also just enough buildings to provide a challenge to the pilots.
The two sides on this map are the MEC (Middle Eastern Coalition) and the USMC (United States Marine Corps), not exactly the most tactful sides but that’s not a big issue. 
The USMC are based from an Aircraft Carrier operating off the coast (wouldn’t make much sense if it was inland…) and are invading\landing, the MEC have to stop them from taking the airbase. The USMC start off with a point or points along the coast, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be pushed back. Several times I have played this map and we’ve been trapped at the Aircraft Carrier. Boats can play quite a big role, although they are extremely easy to stop, the most common insertion method is usually the Blackhawks.
The aim of Battlefield 2 is to reduce your opponents tickets to zero, every time someone is killed their side loses a ticket. Also, at each of the points on the map is a flag, if you stand next to a flag when there are no opposing players around it, control is slowly transferred to your team. All of the points are capturable except for the Aircraft Carrier and Airbase. Once captured your side can spawn there.
Despite the openness there is a lot of cover to be found, as well as the walls scattered around the place, there are outposts at some of the beach points that are good for hiding in. I usually play medic and hide inside there with a load of medkits on the ground when capturing. 
There isn’t much cover at the Hotel point, but the other main MEC point has a large scaffolded building that can be great for hiding in.
Each map is divided into three sub-maps, for 16, 32 and 64 players. The 16 player version of the Gulf of Oman feels very different to the other two, even though it is the same map, it’s just confined to a smaller area. It is focused on a spine in the middle, presenting a simple, linear route in which the battle takes place. 
This results in a greater chance of running into the enemy, sometimes on the larger maps you can travel quite a distance without getting close to the enemy, if you’re careful. The aircraft are only available on the larger maps.
I played several rounds on the 64 player Gulf of Oman, since it was not possible to play on this one in the demo. I actually did pretty well considering it’s been a while since I last played. 
Second round didn’t go quite as well.
Sadly all the servers I played on were pretty poor, especially when I think back to the two major ones that were running demo servers. Practically every one said ‘Don’t attack the bases’, whilst I obviously don’t like it when the base is constantly under attack I still think it should generally be allowed, this is war after all. I’m sure I’ll find somewhere good after a bit of searching.
I also had a quick go with the bots, unfortunately this was limited to 16 players on the 16 player maps. I know there is a way to run with more bots, but I’ll have to have a look around to see if they can handle helicopters and so on. If they can then that means the larger maps might be useable This should give me several more good articles, I particularly want to give Project Reality a go.
Another thing I like about this game are the medals, they seem to fit much better than standard achievements do in other games. Only the one so far, but after only a short play I’m past halfway through the Private rank.
Getting the Game setup
I had no trouble with the installation, just the occasional Next button to click and two CD-keys. However to unlock the Euro Force and Armoured Fury packs you have to go into the game once to create a player profile. Then you go to this page on the EA website, enter your third CD-key and put in your soldier name, you also need an EA account. It wasn’t too bad but it was more than I would have liked. The big trouble came with Punkbuster, firstly if your in Vista and using UAC you have to run the game as administrator, secondly you have to manually update Punkbuster. After trying two things on the Punkbuster website that didn’t work I remembered seeing a link someone posted on the Overclockers Forums, it pointed to this application.
Download it, add Battlefield 2, then check for updates. I found it a little slow but it got the job done. It also means you don’t have to run the game as administrator any more.
Next up the graphics. Battlefield 2 is several years old now, that means no support for higher resolutions. It also doesn’t allow widescreen, but that’s because of it being an unfair advantage. I don’t really see how it could be that much of an advantage, but at least there is a reason. You can still have it run at a higher resolution though, just with a bit of streching.
Right click the Desktop icon (or the .exe) and go to properties, at the end of the location there should already be some options change it to look like this:
…2\BF2.exe” +menu 1 +fullscreen 1 +szx 1680 +szy 1050
Change the resolution to whatever your preferences are. There are meant to be a few ways to get proper widescreen, but Punkbuster doesn’t like some of them (if any).
Last tip, unskippable cutscenes are an abomination and should be put out of their misery where possible. To get rid of them in Battlefield 2 simply navigate to:
*program location*/Battlefield 2/mods/bf2/Movies
Delete EA.bik, Dice.bik, Legal.bik, Intro.bik and welcome.bik. This results in a much quicker startup. Rename them if you want, rather than delete, but I’ve never had any trouble.
M_the_C 