Battlefield 2: Modern Combat

The hugely popular franchise finally makes its way to the the next-gen console.

The Xbox 360 gets yet another first-person shooter added to its library with Battlefield 2: Modern Combat from developer Digital Illusions and publisher Electronic Arts. And while the game is 100 percent playable and even has a unique feature or two to recommend it, the game cannot quite measure up to other superior offerings on the console.

Stop me if you’ve heard a similar single-player campaign setup before. There is trouble in Kazakhstan, a now independent republic of the former Soviet Union. UN peacekeepers are sent to the area to restore order and save lives. The bordering Chinese are concerned about their own territorial interests and send troops to the area too. The whole mess could ignite World War III. Yep, sounds like the setup from any number of Clancy-story inspired games. No points for story originality.

Don’t worry about the story anyway. It is merely a device to move you between the different places you’ll be fighting. And indeed you will fight. In the course of the game you’ll be doing everything from sneaking about on rooftops performing a counter-sniper role against enemy sharpshooters to just blowing the bejesus out of enemy troops with a main battle tank in the streets.

The maps you’ll fight on are fairly large and offer nice terrain. The missions are easily winnable, but take some skill to score highly on. Unfortunately even the fair variety of missions and okay maps can’t overcome the flat feel that the single-player campaign has. All too often it’s like the enemy soldiers are set up for you to knock down like tin targets. Add to that the nasty habit of enemies just popping up from nowhere a significant percentage of the time, and you have a less than satisfying campaign mode.

One element unique to Battlefield 2’s single-player campaign mode is the “hotswap” between units on the battlefield. Hotswapping allows the player to use every friendly weapon on the battlefield. Tired of plinking away with your rifle? Look across the street, target that buddy holding a rocket launcher, hit the hotswap button, and take over his body. Now you are ready to rock and roll on any vehicle dumb enough to come into your field of fire. This also works on friendly vehicles.

You can be the most lowly infantry grunt in the mud one moment and the next you’re riding in style with 70 tons of M1 tank equipped with a 120mm cannon of whup ass. The hotswap feature is fun and allows you to rapidly move around the battlefield to add your human intellect to a situation that might otherwise go badly for your guys. But even it cannot make up for shortcomings of the uninspired single-player campaign. Naturally the hotswap cannot be used in the multiplayer game, since all units are under human control when you have multiple players.

Speaking of multiplayer, it is a bit of a mix. It does entertain better than the single-player campaign, but it has some issues. On the good side, up to 24 can participate in a battle via Xbox Live. There are currently 16 multiplayer maps that cover terrains from desert to arctic. There are only two modes of play in multiplayer, Conquest and Capture The Flag, but they are both good. Conquest has your team taking and holding control points on the map. CTF is the pretty standard game all FPS players know and love.

On the bummer side of the multiplayer mode is the narrow way to play. This game is showing its PC roots unashamedly. There is no multiplayer if you don’t have Live. No single-system multiplayer or System Link multiplayer. As a person who likes to get together in the same room with my friends to game, I was a little disappointed with the limited options.

As you head into a multiplayer game you will be given a choice of the type of soldier you’d like to play. The standard grunt is the Assault soldier packing an assault rifle and grenade launcher as his main armament. The Sniper naturally carries a sniper rifle, but he also performs a recon role with his GPS unit and has a laser target designator. Special Ops soldiers have command detonation C4 packs.

An Engineer soldier can fix vehicles with his torch and destroy them with his rocket launcher and mines. Support soldiers can heal and call in indirect fire. These choices support a wide variety of playing styles. It goes almost without saying that BF2 supports all the clans, friends and match creation options that make a good Live gaming experience.

From a presentation point of view, BF2 on the 360 is good but not great. Things generally look pretty impressive, but I don’t think we’re seeing as big a leap over the Xbox version as I’d hoped for. It does not quite measure up to the best 360 games. Sound remained about the same: it is okay but it definitely does not knock your socks off.

I guess in a way Battlefield 2: Modern Combat is suffering by comparison in my mind to Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. That game has a better campaign mode and offers more ways to enjoy the multiplayer than BF2 does. GRAW also just looks, sounds and generally controls better. I think if I had not played GRAW first, BF2 might have fared better in the score department. But with a better modern-combat game already on the shelves, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat has to settle for a just-above-average.

This review comes courtesy of our friends at Gameshark.