Battlefield 2: Modern Combat Review

The Battlefield series on the PC pretty much does what most men want from a video game. It lets you play a soldier, armed with a load of guns, grenades and gadgets, and then throws in a load of army vehicles. It’s a total war experience that few other games have come close to matching, and an experience that, on a console, nothing has come close to. Battlefield 2: Modern Combat attempted to bring the series to consoles last year, but didn’t quite pull it off. The Xbox 360 port is effectively the same game, but benefits from hugely improved visuals and slight gameplay enhancements.

The single-player campaign is largely an exact copy of what was seen in the Xbox and PlayStation 2 versions last year. There’s some unrest in Kazakhstan so a US peacekeeping force is sent in to deal with the situation, and the Chinese also become involved. Throughout the campaign you’ll play as both the US and Chinese, and the conflict is padded out through news broadcasts from each side of the war. These interludes in the action go someway to drawing you into the war setting, but the campaign as a whole isn’t too convincing.

Mission objectives are thrown at you and you’ll have to do destroy or protect various things, but there’s no real sense of each mission actually being a level within a campaign – It’s like playing a multiplayer game with some dumb bots. You’ll often see a comrade on his knee, a few feet in front of an enemy, both of them firing haphazardly at the other, or senseless team-mates running with a death wish into the tank you’re trying your best to drive carefully. Being able to play as numerous infantry types, drive tanks and Humvees, fly choppers, cruise along in attack speed boats and more should be fun, but it all feels a little dull.

Rather surprisingly there’s a heavy arcade slant to proceedings, with a score totting up as you play, certain achievements giving you medals and health rewards, enemies simply spawning in right in front of your face (or behind your back) and an ability to zoom from one soldier to another with a simple button press. This hot-swapping is the game’s only real standout feature, and lets you experience the war from numerous angles. It’s not just a gimmick either; swapping to an RPG carrying engineer when a tank comes on the scene is just one example where the move can be used. The Xbox 360 version improves over the earlier versions by allowing you to hot-swap to any team-mate whose icon you can see, rather than just those in your line of sight. This gives you more options during battle and makes the system far less frustrating.

If you’re into collectathons, the number of medals and rewards that are on offer should be very pleasing (as are the 1000 Gamer score points that are split over 46 achievements), but otherwise the game lacks the spark required in a good single-player game. As a prelude to playing online it does its job, acting as a lengthy training session, but unless you’re totally new to the world of online first-person shooters, you’d be better off heading straight to the online game modes.

Online the game supports up to 24 players, which, while impressive, is the same as the PlayStation 2 and Xbox versions of the game supported. If you’re expecting huge maps, plenty of game types and general online wonderment, you’ll be a little disappointed. The maps are large enough to make for some very entertaining 24-player matches, but they’re nowhere near the size of the behemoths found in the PC game. Secondly, game types are limited to two: Capture the flag and Conquest. Neither mode is hugely original, but Conquest makes for some great battles assuming everyone knows what they are doing.

Players of Battlefield 2 on the PC often go out of their way to work as a team, but on consoles players tend to think only of themselves. With the way the game tracks your stats (quite extensively) players often forsake the wellbeing of the team, in favour of improving personal statistics. This obviously isn’t true for everyone, but on the whole playing Battlefield on the Xbox 360 just doesn’t feel as involving as on the PC. There’s scope for some enjoyable matches, but it depends entirely on if you can find some console gamers who are willing to work properly as a team. Clans can be formed, allowing you to challenge other clans, and this is probably the best way to experience the online game.

The visuals have been given a makeover for the Xbox 360, and while not being a leader of the pack visually, it’s still a very nice looking game. It seems that every aspect of the current-gen version has been redone, with vastly improved textures, impressive character and weapon models, and a draw distance to die for. Bullet holes and spent ammo remain in the game world, and the new lighting gives the game a more realistic look. The frame rate isn’t silky smooth, but holds up pretty well during battle and is never a problem. It’s not all great though. Weather effects, such as snow falling, switch off and on as you walk you walk in to and out of buildings, and snow can be seen falling under a solid roof if you are looking in from outside. Seams between walls also rear their ugly heads, damaging what is generally is nice looking game. Audio doesn’t seem to have changed over the Xbox and PlayStation 2 games, with weapons once again feeling a little weedy.

If your online gaming is restricted to consoles, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat isn’t a bad option. It lacks the insane large scale combat of the superior PC game and is more akin to something like Star Wars Battlefront, but if you find the right group of people, online matches can be a lot of fun. A next-gen game that matched the epic nature of Battlefield 2 on the PC would have been great, but the slight gameplay changes and the hugely improved visuals make Modern Combat on the Xbox 360 the best version to date.