Battlefield 2 Modern Combat Review (no fat)

Game Description

Following the great success of it’s PC counterpart, the Battlefield series has finally made it on the consoles. Battlefield 2: Modern Combat contrary to it’s name, is the first installment of this franchise on the Xbox. It’s a different game though than the PC Battlefield games, both in quality and gameplay. While it has an interesting single player campaign, the game overall is quite far from the high standards set by the excellent PC game.

Battlefield 2 Modern Combat Gameplay

The single player campaign brings you through many large scale battles between the American and Chinese forces. Although the maps aren’t as massive as in the PC version, they are still more than large enough for intensive battles between a large number of soldiers and many different vehicles. You can control any soldier or vehicle on the battlefield, you can even control units from both sides of the battle.

Battlefield 2 Modern Combat makes this possible with an interesting new feature called Hot Swapping. Basically you can switch to any other soldier or vehicle from your line of sight in a blink of an eye. This provides an excellent means of transportation and you can control the battle more easily. You can instantly go to the most contested areas and switch to the most appropriate type of soldier or vehicle for each situation. This makes the gameplay very dynamic, varied and interesting.

However, this also gives an arcade feeling to the game, along with the somewhat problematic control of the vehicles. You will also be frustrated by the flawed design of enemy spawning. They will sometimes just spawn on top of you, and this can get very annoying after a while.

You will also get scores and points for your kills and this combined with the Hot Swap feature, makes the game fast paced and enjoyable… and it also provides ample motivation to get the most kills possible. On the other hand, it also diminishes realism and transforms Battlefield 2: MC into an arcade style shooter.

Battlefield 2 Modern Combat Multiplayer Modes

Battlefield games are mostly renowned for their superb multiplayer, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat is only a little different. It offers support for 24 player online multiplayer. Unfortunately there are only 2 game modes, Capture the Flag and Conquest.

Hot Swapping is disabled in multiplayer games for balance reasons, so you will have to choose your soldier class before the game starts, from the 5 available classes. Each has different weapons, advantages and weaknesses, and you can also hop into any of the 30 or so available vehicles, so there are plenty of tactical possibilities even after the little restriction is imposed.

Teamwork is needed in order to capture the flag or to capture important points on the map. However the online ranking system puts a lot of emphasis on the number of kills and this encourages many players to just work for themselves and concentrate on getting the most kills possible and this is not always the best course of action for team play.

All in all, even though the multiplayer of Battlefield 2: MC is enjoyable, and much better than the single player offering, it’s still far from the superb experience of Battlefield 2 on PC. The maps are smaller, vehicle controls lack finesse, also enemies in your line of sight get too highlighted. There are also technical issues with the network connection, but these will probably get solved with patches.

Battlefield 2 Modern Combat Graphics and Sound

Battlefield 2 Modern Combat is inferior to Battlefield 2 for PC in most categories. The graphics and sound are no exception. While the average graphics can be partially forgiven, taking into consideration the size of the maps and sheer number of vehicles and units, the Character models should probably have had more details than the moderate detail with a clone-like aspect on offer. The explosions do look impressive but they are completely unrealistic because vehicles simply disappear in a ball of fire.

The sound effects are quite good; they resemble the sounds of an intensive battle fairly well. You can also hear many radio transmissions during the game. The voice-acting of the Americans is nicely done while on the Chinese part is almost completely unintelligible.

While the firing sounds of weapons could have used more power, the game has a soundtrack composed mostly of heavy orchestral pieces which fit well to the theme… but still fall short of exceptional.

Battlefield 2 Modern Combat Summing up

In conclusion Battlefield 2 Modern Combat is a good and fun game for those who didn’t play the PC versions. If you own a console and you would like to taste the feeling of a Battlefield game, it’s worth a try. But it has simply brilliant predecessors and pales in comparison to Battlefield 2 so it’s probably not worth buying if you can have a go at the PC version. It’s still a good effort which will, hopefully, get much better in the next console installment.

Battlefield 2 Modern Combat Cost

At the time of this review, the game retails for $39.95US.