Battlefield 2: Special Forces

Format PC

Developer

Publisher Electronic Arts

Genre First Person Shooter, Action

When it launched, Battlefield 2 proved to be both the most excitingly enjoyable online squad shooter ever devised from a gaming standpoint, and the most frustrating from a technical standpoint. Problems with particular brands of graphics cards, a hog on your system hardware, an online ranking system prone to hackable abuse - any ordinary publisher would have thrown in the towel long ago and started again. But then EA is no ordinary publisher and Battlefield is no ordinary franchise. Hence less than half a year later: the Special Forces expansion pack.

We were given access to three of the planned eight maps, specially designed for the titular forces to battle across. Russian Spetsnaz, Navy SEALs, the good old SAS and three variations of insurgent groups fight across a chemical weapons factory, an east European rocket pad and a darkened airbase, all bristling with new vehicles to play with.

UPS AND DOWNS
These maps all conform to the usual BF2 parameters - plenty of chokepoints, siege areas and widespread flag bases to capture. The main difference between these and traditional BF2 maps is the sense of focus each has. Environmental triggers (lift switches and the like) add a touch more interaction and verticality to things, showing how tiny little touches can make a lot of difference to otherwise static map environments, adding a sense of purpose to them. These no longer feel like generic war zones but real working locations with actual reasons for your squads to be there (again, in keeping with the special forces nature of the pack).

That said, the code wasn't working too well at the time of writing as lifts designed to take you to the top of a rocket pad or a cliff-side control centre would just shoot off into the heavens leaving you at ground level, staring up at the rapidly disappearing platform like something out of a Road Runner cartoon. I'm sure it'll all be operational on the night, though.

Then, of course, there are the zip lines. Everybody loves zip lines. When Special Forces was first revealed to us, it was the thought of sliding from rooftop to rooftop that had us most excited. Next to parachutes, zip lines are perhaps the finest innovation ever to hit the world of shooters and Special Forces has them in spades.

That is, snipers and special forces classes have them. Everyone else will have to get their rope-sliding kicks down the gym like everyone else. Simply fire your new crossbow weapon at the surface of your choice and a handy-dandy super-fun slide appears, ready to take you to the lower level location of your dreams.

ZIPPY AND BUNGLE
But will zip lines change the dynamic of the base game in a major way? Probably not too much, although it does provide a hefty boon for the busy sniper on the go. In fact, it's the sneaky element of society that will get most practical use out of them - the rest of us most likely enjoying the novelty factor of impromptu sliding races from atop tall buildings.

Yes, snipers can now add to their already burgeoning survival prospects. Previously, once installed at the top of your giant crane/tower/chimney stack and having mined all the access points with claymores to prevent people sneaking up the ladders to end your reign of sniping terror, you were sorted for life. At least until the enemy commander got a fix on your position and dropped ten tons of artillery on your head.

Thanks to the manually created zip lines, you can now give yourself an instant escape route out of the path of fiery barrage death, sliding James Bond-style from your rooftop idyll as it explodes behind you.

HOOK, LINE AND SINKER
I know what you're thinking. Great, snipers are now even harder to kill. Just what we needed. Luckily there's an extra gadget in the non-sniping arsenal, designed to provide additional rooftop access for regular troops. The grappling hook. This little beauty is carried by the assault and anti-tank classes and does exactly what you'd expect of it - you chuck it over a wall or onto a roof and climb the rope it tails behind. Handy for avoiding the sniper's booby traps.

A small annoyance with both grappling hooks and zip lines is that they appear (at present anyway) to be one-shot deals. Shoot your bolt or toss your length once and you'll have to rest up before you can have another go. Understandable for the zip line as it creates an intricate-looking construction that would be unrecoverable once you've taken the ride, but I can't see any realism-based reason not to let your soldier pick up his line once climbed, other than to avoid turning all the players into wall-scaling monkeys, barely ever touching the floor during an entire round.

Something we weren't able to experiment too much with (annoyingly, the current build hadn't properly activated it) was night-vision. However, from what we've seen in earlier demonstrations it's a dynamic thing, providing substantial illumination in darkened areas but proving to be detrimental if a light source is viewed (something that the new flashbang grenades have been designed to counter). It's probably shaping up to be a nice touch, but hardly one that's going to be the key selling point for the pack.

EXIT PLAN
So how much will Special Forces alter the overall BF2 experience? Not significantly, it would seem. The core of the game remains the same (it is, after all, beyond the purview of an expansion pack to make any wholesale changes), and all the new additions would seem to be limited to the Special Forces maps anyway. This isn't likely to be a different-feeling game, just a different spin on the existing one. The weapon, vehicle and gadget enhancements all look like being novel, but easily assimilated add-ons, and there are barely any changes being made to the command modes - other than providing night-vision filters to help see what's going on.

Is that a good thing? It's no secret that EA and DICE haven't managed to create the all-encompassing, smoother than Kilroy, online war experience that we'd all hoped for with BF2, not through faults within the game, but because of bad server management and administration processes. Special Forces doesn't do anything to address the myriad problems players are having with the existing game (even the now admittedly ugly front-end has been left untouched), and it's likely to take more than just some new maps, gadgets and balaclavas to win back the hearts of the notoriously fickle online gaming crowd. Even if the balaclavas are made from 100 per cent real virtual wool.

PC Zone Staff