Battlefield 2 gets my thoughts all twisted around. I love it, but I can't tell if I love it specifically.
Let me start by talking about the game itself. The plot barely exists - it took me years to realize it was supposed to be World War III, essentially taking place as an extension of the Iraq War - but that's clearly not the focus. I also never really got to mess around with the main selling point of BF2, the commander screen; cool that it exists, cool that the other players (when they messed around with it) were able to air-drop supplies basically anywhere on the map, wish I'd messed around with it to get a sense for how well it works. I like the map variety - the base game has a good mix between urban, industrial, and wilderness maps, and expansions and custom maps did a lot to keep the rotation interesting. I definitely remember having more fun on the remade 1942 maps in BF2 than I did in the original game. I like, in retrospect, the flexibility behind the different classes; back in the day I always wanted to be able to heal AND have a worthwhile gun AND have C4, but these days I understand and appreciate what they were going for. Personally, I usually played Medic or Engineer, sometimes switching to Sniper if it was a map with a good sniper's nest (Gulf of Oman, Sharqi Peninsula, Dalian Plant). Occasionally anti-tank if it was a particularly grueling tank map. I did play Medic and Sniper fairly sincerely, but if I was playing engineer, usually all I wanted to do was rig a jeep with C4 and drive it into somebody.
As you might surmise, I wasn't particularly good at BF2. That might've proven an issue if we didn't exclusively play against bots. I do fear that I must've been rather obnoxious to play with as a teenager; I had a tendency to doof around and babble when I was younger.
No, but if there's any reason I love Battlefield 2 specifically, it's because it was my Sunday night gaming group's go-to game for the longest time. We started with Battlefield 1942, moved our way up through Vietnam, settled on Battlefield 2, and jumped all over the place from there, usually between FPSes. But we always came back to Battlefield 2. In the years since EA shut down official private server support for Battlefield 2, Left 4 Dead 2 became our fallback game, but while I've gotten burned out on L4D2, I never really hit that point with Battlefield 2 (probably because I wasn't very good at it, so it never became a "solved puzzle" the way L4D2 did). It was comfort food, a capstone to the end of the week in a way I haven't experienced from any other Sunday night games. During rough patches throughout middle school, high school, and college - my family almost falling apart, losing friends, bad grades, rough stretches of work - Battlefield 2 would always be something I could hold onto at the very end of the week, to buffer the time between my weekend and my weekdays. BF2 isn't around anymore, not in any way I'll ever be able to play, and it never again will be. But maybe that's for the best, at least for the sake of my memories.
Is this a fair review? I value my memories for BF2, but they could've been for any game. Is it fair for me to hold this game above so many others because of the memories I happen to have with it? Man, I dunno. Like I said - my thoughts get all twisted around with this game.
Let me start by talking about the game itself. The plot barely exists - it took me years to realize it was supposed to be World War III, essentially taking place as an extension of the Iraq War - but that's clearly not the focus. I also never really got to mess around with the main selling point of BF2, the commander screen; cool that it exists, cool that the other players (when they messed around with it) were able to air-drop supplies basically anywhere on the map, wish I'd messed around with it to get a sense for how well it works. I like the map variety - the base game has a good mix between urban, industrial, and wilderness maps, and expansions and custom maps did a lot to keep the rotation interesting. I definitely remember having more fun on the remade 1942 maps in BF2 than I did in the original game. I like, in retrospect, the flexibility behind the different classes; back in the day I always wanted to be able to heal AND have a worthwhile gun AND have C4, but these days I understand and appreciate what they were going for. Personally, I usually played Medic or Engineer, sometimes switching to Sniper if it was a map with a good sniper's nest (Gulf of Oman, Sharqi Peninsula, Dalian Plant). Occasionally anti-tank if it was a particularly grueling tank map. I did play Medic and Sniper fairly sincerely, but if I was playing engineer, usually all I wanted to do was rig a jeep with C4 and drive it into somebody.
As you might surmise, I wasn't particularly good at BF2. That might've proven an issue if we didn't exclusively play against bots. I do fear that I must've been rather obnoxious to play with as a teenager; I had a tendency to doof around and babble when I was younger.
No, but if there's any reason I love Battlefield 2 specifically, it's because it was my Sunday night gaming group's go-to game for the longest time. We started with Battlefield 1942, moved our way up through Vietnam, settled on Battlefield 2, and jumped all over the place from there, usually between FPSes. But we always came back to Battlefield 2. In the years since EA shut down official private server support for Battlefield 2, Left 4 Dead 2 became our fallback game, but while I've gotten burned out on L4D2, I never really hit that point with Battlefield 2 (probably because I wasn't very good at it, so it never became a "solved puzzle" the way L4D2 did). It was comfort food, a capstone to the end of the week in a way I haven't experienced from any other Sunday night games. During rough patches throughout middle school, high school, and college - my family almost falling apart, losing friends, bad grades, rough stretches of work - Battlefield 2 would always be something I could hold onto at the very end of the week, to buffer the time between my weekend and my weekdays. BF2 isn't around anymore, not in any way I'll ever be able to play, and it never again will be. But maybe that's for the best, at least for the sake of my memories.
Is this a fair review? I value my memories for BF2, but they could've been for any game. Is it fair for me to hold this game above so many others because of the memories I happen to have with it? Man, I dunno. Like I said - my thoughts get all twisted around with this game.