Battlefield 2: Modern Combat

"Better than I expected"

I have to say from everything I had heard about it, I got more from it than I thought I would. At the same time I got a little less.

Campaign: Sometimes this is simply annoying. I've spent hours having to do the same level over and over again because of minor details and incompetent AI. Being able to switch in and out of characters is fun and unique, but gives absolutely no character development. Nice at times, but every now and then it wouldn't hurt to feel like a bad ass commando.

Multiplayer: There is no splitscreen, this is my biggest complaint with this game. I wouldn't mind most of the other things about it, but this kind of makes me mad. I know a lot of people who would love the game, but because it lacks any internal multiplayer all you can do is play them on XBL, which takes much of it away. XBL is a little disappointing as well. I'm constantly having problems with the mic, can't hear people or they can't hear me, and the way you communicate isn't the great either.

The forced even teams factor is annoying as well, it asks you which team you want to join and yet you really don't have a choice until the other team has an equal or greater number of players than the other. Usually if you want to be the Chinese you won't have a problem, if you want to be American or EU however it is a different story. Naturally this causes players to quit out, which means that the matches quickly become one sided.

Vehicles and Weaponry: I like much of how they did the vehicles and weapons, it's more realistic than being able to take out a tank with a standard issue rifle. However I do despise the way you operate the vehicles, the helicopters especially. It took me an ungodly amount of attempts to beat a level because you have to fly a helicopter low through a canyon to the other side. If you go too high a missile will lock on to you and you're screwed. Sometimes it locks on anyways. If the helicopter is destroyed, it's mission over, and until you destroy the rapid assault vehicles, fight your way on foot to the missile turrets, and disable to ground to air weapons, you have very few reinforcements. Coupled with an incompetent AI, you can see where it became annoying. On multiplayer it's a bit different, usually I don't get the chance to go that far before I'm blown up by another vehicle. Sometimes I feel that they simply respawn too fast. Also, there isn't a lot of team work used in them like their should be, but I blame that more on the voice comm system than the people themselves (I've heard them trying to organize, but it's hard to do with the voice system how it is).

As for my two bits on the weapons, most of them are fine. There biggest thing I have is there's really no point in choosing standard assault infantry. Anything they can do a Special Ops unit can do just as well, but I prefer the weaponry of the special ops. The SMG should be much less powerful, but as is I have yet to see any difference between it and the Assault Rifle except it tends to be more accurate than the Chinese AR. Snipers are kind of annoying too, I'd figure they'd have a low powered sniper rifle with a high rate of fire, but all the snipers are high powered with low rates of fire, and we're talking about a rate of fire much slower than anyone would actually do in the field. Not that most people would trust their lives to a manual load in the midsts of modern warfare anyway.

Anything and Everything Else: Overall I like this game simply because of the chaos. I don't like the medal system they have and I feel the vehicles could have been done much better. Still the chaos is addictive, though sometimes annoying.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/19/06