[Xbox 135] rustig zo, zonder hype

quote:

Please excuse the following lousy writing. Expect lots of short sentences, brackets and parentheses. I'm knackered.

I know how some people have a tendency to skim, so let's answer the questions that will probably come up within about two or three posts first.

There is a Live-enabled demo of Battlefield 2 for the XBox. It was given away on the cover of this month's USA XBox magazine.

This demo is not on a multi region disc - it plays on a USA XBox only.

This demo is LIVE ONLY. Don't bother downloading it, you can't even wander around the map without being connected.

This demo is not available on any UK magazines, and whilst I can't speak for the future, it's definitely not on next month's UK OXM.

I got a copy by contacting a USA-based forumite who was kind enough to put one in the post for me. The US Official XBox Magazine isn't very good, by the way.

And YES, of course the PC version is going to be better. Tell someone who cares.

Right.

The demo features one map, Backstab, in Conquest mode. You can play as either the good ol' US of A or as BAH GAWD TERRISTS. All of the possible units are available to play and both sides have a variety of vehicles. The Terrists get a couple of helicopters and armoured cars, whilst the US get tanks and Hummers. There are fixed gun and stinger missile emplacements about the place, as well as a handful of cars and a small base from which you can launch an airstrike at certain times.

It's a very early demo so there are bugs and lots of balance issues that need sorting out. Technical bugs include the game 'sticking' a bit, and some dodgy polygon clipping here and there with guns poking through walls and such. It crashes a fair bit, too - but it's n early build that I'm presuming is designed to test the servers so all that jazz should be fixed for the final game. You know - just like Battlefield on the PC was!

The game has some problems that need to go. At the moment, the sniper rifle kills in a single hit anywhere on the body, but since Dice have gone on record as saying they hate sniping it's very likely the rifle will be downgraded to the same standard as the PC version. Your opponent's names are displayed above their heads once close, too and thanks to odd polygon clipping you often see your enemies coming from around corners. Again - it would be better to strip the names out altogether. There's also no auto-balance - you'll often find one team growing far larger than the other, and again I'm presuming that'll be fixed later. I'd tone down the auto aim a little, but I was never a fan of the auto aim in Halo 2 either. I'd tone the SMG right down, too - it's deadly accurate and really shouldn't be, both in terms of realism and game balance.

Bottom line - it's good.

The map is superb. I have no idea if it's in the PC version, but it's a long and thin dusty desert map with a town and a river in the centre and open plains beyond. It's a great close-up skirmish map that typically sees mini battles breaking out across the central town; there's plenty of opportuinty to engage in a bit of long range sniping too, so it's the perfect choice for giving people a flavour of the game.

The characters feel nice and weighty, though the weapons run from meaty and satisfying to spudgun-like. The shotgun in particular looks and sounds like crap, but does an arseload of damage unbefitting its weedy 'pop'.

Medic and support are now merged, and the Engineer gets the anti-tank gear - all of this because the game is smaller and more skirmish based I suppose. medic can't revive dead guys, but can heal wounded ones.

The points system is in place and much like the PC version it has ranks, and I'm presuming the unlockable gear too. This doesn't function in the demo but the placeholders are there.

Technically, the XBox does really fucking well. The draw distance is good with lots of effects and physics and explosions and all sorts going on with no slowdown. Everything looks very pretty, but of course the polygon count has suffered to keep the complexity of the environments up. You'll ignore it and enjoy it - it's not as pretty as Halo 2, but there's a hell of a lot more going on so we'll forgive it that.

The controls are nice, thanks in part to the good weight and feel of your character. B gets you into a vehicle, A jumps, Y reloads, X changes your stance, Black is a multi-purpose context sensitive button, White is your comms button (the game has proximity voice and long range comms by HOLDING White) and the D-Pad can be used to bring up your map and scores and such. Weapon selection is on the left trigger - squeeze it and use the right stick up, down, left or right to select your weapon of choice, Rainbow Six style. It's all been mapped onto the pad well and the auto-aim varies depending upon your proximity so it always feels fairly natural on the pad. No option to configure the controls in the demo, but I'd imagine that'll be in the finished game.

The game is absolutely RAMMED - it's ranked as the seventh most popular XBox Live game this week, ahead of the likes of Splinter Cell and PGR2. Make no mistake - the finished version will be the next big Live game; there's a Live demo of Darkwatch on the same disc which is fucking empty on Live and has been all day, whilst BF2 remains jammed at all hours. It's on dedicated EA servers by the looks of things and they're holding up brilliantly and allow twenty-four players per game. Even connecting to the US servers from the UK I've experienced almost no lag and haven't felt disadvantaged once. If nothing else, EA have done a nice job with them and if they can keep it up I might consider forgiving them for the Burnout 3 debacle.

Unfortunately, I do believe I may be the only Brit on the game. Fortunately, the game seems to have a garnered a decent adult fanbase and the players are generally alright sorts, though obviously the twelve year old Little Live Fuckers™ turn up occasionally. If you're European and have a copy of the game, add me.

All in all, top stuff. If you're in America or have an American box and can get at a copy, I highly recommend it. It's the best demo ever.

It's remarkable that just about everything in the demo works really, really well. I'm a jaded old bastard, and I spent a good long while looking for things to complain about, but there's very little seriously wrong that I can criticise - it's only small niggles relating to balance and effectiveness of certain weapons that are pissing me off, and those are easily ironed out.

The only real problem with the game is that it's not BF2 PC, and there'll be some people who are disappointed by that. But frankly, I think anyone with half a brain knew it was going to be very different anyway - some will embrace it and enjoy it as the very different, but very fun experiece that it is, whilst others will bitch and piss and moan about it for the next year.

Out in October now, apparently. They've moved it FORWARD, if you can imagine such a thing.