This formed a substantial jump from other FPS' of the time, which on average ran 32 player servers at most, and to complement this massive increase the maps in Battlefield were simply huge. Each represented a section of actual land used in the battles of WW2, and on these maps a player could seamlessly play as infantry, man a vehicle or even aircraft. Moving away from personalised battles and deathmatches, a Battlefield game felt like the two sides were embroiled in an actual war, a gameplay feature that had never until this time been implemented so successfully.

Numerous mods and patches followed over the years, one of the most successful being Desert Combat, which remade the game into the modern U.S. military against a balanced Middle Eastern force, and brought in helicopters and modern war machines, all rendered and coded by a dedicated team of Battlefield enthusiasts. BF was played right up to (and even beyond) the official release of this sequel. So against this DICE and EA games had to present something spectacular. Battlefield 2 is the result. Does it live up to expectations? In the ways that count, yes. In the ways that you would expect and take for granted, no.

A short summary of the game will help set the stage for more detail. First off, of course, the graphics engine has been improved significantly. While the new engine is very system requirement-heavy, it does bring the game and the wars it represents alive with a realism significantly surpassing other war games. Also, the game focus has changed, in the opinion of the reviewer for the better, in that team play, squads and team level strategy are much more pronounced. Players can pair off into named squads and one player per team can become commander, with the ability to call in artillery strikes, map scans, UAVs and supply drops, as well as giving orders to squad leaders.

The four classes in the original have been expanded to fully seven classes in BF2, each with familiar roles (especially for players of DC) but with a few surprises, too, that add dimension to the characters. All are reasonably well balanced (although, as usual, there are always whiners that claim otherwise) and specialised players will be glad to hear that online-exclusive play with a character class is rewarded through the new BFHQ and ranking system.

The original Battlefield had almost 30 maps, and here BF2 is a slight letdown in having around 15 or so. However, each map comes in 16-, 32- and 64-player versions - the same map but with larger play areas and different flag points.

Further elaborating on the graphics engine, the first thing to note is the near incredible system requirements. For a start, without at least a Geforce FX 5700 this game cannot be played, because the requisite technology is not included on cards before that cutoff point. The game also needs probably at least a gig' of DDR ram, no matter what the box says. Even with a gig', RAM crashes (a quit to desktop, no questions asked) can occur which really ruin the game experience, especially when online. If you have over a gigabyte, there shouldn't be too many large problems. Every graphic setting change necessitates substantial time spent rebuilding the shaders the next time you enter a level, which - depending on your processor speed - can take up to two minutes.

These monstrous requirements aside (which are extra annoying when you consider Half-Life 2, which has a better engine, takes considerably less and has some degree of scalability), the engine does wonders for the realism of the game and the map complexities. The original BF was good, granted, but these are much, much better. Strike at Karkand, for example has been created with such loving detail that it really feels like you're fighting within a sandy, windswept desert city, and yet the feel when playing the much more lush Dragon Valley or Fushe Pass is completely different.

Player models have been predictably enhanced in detail and further aided with the acclaimed Havok physics engine, meaning that yes, at point blank range a .50 calibre sniper rifle will push your victim across the room and out the window, to crumple on the rocks below; arguably a much wanted feature, realistic or not. Also new is the shellshock style effect, previously seen in games like Call of Duty, although it is much more pronounced in Battlefield due to the far greater number of situations under which it will affect a player. Standing too close to a firing tank, for example, induces this effect, and detpacks/grenades, which mean that when combined with the fact that player senses and reflexes are decidedly reduced, makes tactical bombing quite a possibility. All in all the game is much more 'real', always a must for a reputable war game.

In terms of actual gameplay, BF2 retains the goodness of the original while moving the focus in an entirely new direction. New are the concept of squads and commanders, a squad being a mini team within the team made up of one to six members, one of which is the squad leader. Squads come with automatic names (Charlie, Bravo, Delta, etc.) or a creative player can make one of his own. Players can join a team manually from a tab next to the class selection, or be invited, and squads can also be locked so only invited players can join.

The benefits a team provides are intensely strategical. First off, it is much easier to see teammates on the map (names show up through terrain even when players are not actually visible) and they are highlighted in green on the minimap (much like the 'add buddy' button in the original, which has been removed). Also the one squad leader acts as another spawn point for squad members assuming he isn't dead or in a vehicle without free spots. The squad leader can also give orders to his squad and pass on orders from his commander, the former by simply opening up the map and right clicking an objective. The commander has no squad, but can give orders to squad leaders to further coordinate the battle.

Also available to the commander is the devastating artillery barrage, a map-wide scan (revealing all enemy units), a more enduring UAV scan (which reveals troops for 10 seconds or so) and a supply drop which heals, reams and repairs. Each of these abilities is tied to static terrain emplacements in and around the commander's team on the map, which can be destroyed by enemy spec ops. The commander can also zoom in on the map right down to an actual overhead visualization.

In reference to classes available to the player, there are seven: they are Assault (basic rifle and high health), Medic (who can drop health packs, heal and shock paddle players back to life), Support (with a heavy machine gun and the ability to replenish ammo), Sniper (sniper rifle and anti-personnel Claymore mines), Engineer (shotgun, repairs vehicles and anti-vehicle mines) and the Special Ops (with a zoomable automatic rifle and detpacks, which are the only thing capable of taking out artillery and the like). Many weapons have multiple fire modes, all classes have grenades and in addition some classes gain extra GUI info (e.g., the medic can see team members' health, support can see ammo status and engineers can see how damaged a vehicle is), which makes these classes very distinctive in their roles. Medics, in particular, are a vital asset to any team with their ability to bring the dead back to life.

The objective system, too, has changed, although to newcomers it can seem a bit cryptic. Basically a player has a kill score, a death score (number of deaths sustained), a team contribution score which gets incremented for helping teammates and decremented for things like team kills, and finally an overarching score which in main is increased by things such as flag captures. These scores can at times become a little unbalanced. For example, a player who rushes around in a jeep, never staying long enough at a flag to defend it after capturing it and never killing anyone (or even firing a shot) will have a much higher score than a sniper who stays at a single flag and bags 20 people.

The fact that the game is now limited to a single play mode, conquest, means players that favour different game modes are unfortunately out of luck (that's right, no co-op mode means no bots in multiplayer, a very questionable design decision at best). As far as score goes, however, the limitations are more or less entirely class independent. A medic and the like get points for helping others, but this is balanced by their relatively weaker weapons, meaning in the long run all the classes have their own methods of arriving at the same score.

In multiplayer gameplay, BF2 excels (once in the game, anyway). With the addition of global ranked servers, a player's account accumulates all kills and scores achieved over time. Once certain thresholds are achieved (in a single battle or over the course of many battles) players can receive medals for their skills, as well as basic/veteran/advanced, etc., badges in specific classes (such as 'basic sniper'). Eventually a player can gain enough kills/points to advance a rank (starting from Private, then to Private First Class , Lance Corporal and so-on). After becoming Lance Corporal and for every rank thereafter, a player can select an additional weapon (one per class) to unlock, which can be used from then on. For example, the sniper weapon is a .50 cal. rifle capable of punching through armoured glass, and the assault weapon is the H&K G3.

The ranks get progressively harder to achieve, especially after Lance Corporal, making them a real indication of player experience, and as expected the higher ranked you are the easier it is for you to become a commander in a given battle. When a round starts every member in the team can choose to apply, with the place being assigned randomly amongst those of the highest rank. After that players can initiate a vote to remove a commander, or even kick another player, and the vote appears in the lower left corner of the screen and each player can either vote or not to the affirmative or negative. Based on the votes topic (next map, commander mutiny, kick player, etc.) a number of votes per team size are required for the vote to pass and a time limit is imposed. The same interface is used when choosing whether or not to punish a team killer (which can be as severe a kicking from the server) and being invited into a squad. Team killing can be quite an issue with artillery strikes and the wide radius of detpacks and grenades. Apart from the usual idiots, drivers of vehicles have also been quoted as 'killing if a player, friend or enemy, so much as scratches a pinky finger against them'. Given that it is extremely hard to see all around you most times when driving a vehicle even the most cautious drivers can inadvertently decimate their teams.

The biggest flaws in BF2 would have to be put down to gross designer mistakes or deliberate maliciousness, and centre around the castrated features compared to the original game. Single-player is the most affected mode, with ticket ratios set to 100%, 16 player maximums and a smaller set of maps. Add to this that any configuration file change to circumnavigate these settings will remove the ability to play on a online server, and EA has effectively removed BF2 as a single-player game. Perhaps it's to combat piracy, but one thing is for sure: they have in a single (no pun) stroke removed any revenue they could have gained from the we-don't-like-to-play-online/like-to-lan-with-less-than-ten-players group (as has been previously mentioned, bots are no longer able to be in multiplayer games).

A clever connect-to-IP hack can be used to get around this, but it is expected to be nerfed by EA in the game's next patch. Fortunately the current patch fixed the multiplayer screen, which frequently used to lock up and crash the system, however the game still lacks a favourite servers list, something which has been standard since Quakeworld and should be considered mandatory for multiplayer-focused games. Gamespy comes shipped with the game but typically, after installing the horrible ad-swamped counter-intuitive program, you will be informed that BF2 is not supported, which begs the question as to why the two were shipped together.