NBrid

Battlefield 2: Special Forces (PC)

Say what you will about GameStop, but they got BF2: Special Forces to me in 3 days complete with a free t-shirt (spawncamp THIS). With free shipping it was 'only' $30, which seems high for an expansion when that's about what I paid for Battlefield 2 itself. But so far it seems worth the purchase.

There are several new additions: 8 new maps, 6 sides to play as (who doesn't love British accents?), new vehicles (civilian cars, jet skis, attack choppers...), tear gas (and gas masks), night vision goggles, flash bangs, grappling hooks to scale buildings, and then ziplines to repell down buildings. Only certain kits get the gas, flashes, hooks, and ziplines though. Each character kit also has a new weapon you can unlock. But those aren't even the biggest change.

Special Forces plays quite differently than the 'vanilla' BF2. SF puts much more of an emphasis on infantry (ground) combat. Vechicles are still around and useful, but they aren't the dominate gameplay as in BF2. To go along with this, maps have more of an urban setting with numerous buildings to go inside of, and some are quite roomy inside. The maps are also much more confining compared to the wide-open areas of BF2, which really helps put an emphasis on infantry combat all the more. You can have some serious fire fights this time around.

Another big differance is darkness. A number of the new maps take place at night. Night vision is your best friend on these maps. Just make sure you map the 7 key (night goggles) for easier access, or you're dead. It really does make for a nice change of pace.

I did have some issues running SF the first time, but since then it seems fine. (Even though BF2 and SF servers are listed together, exit and start up the one you want to play since switching can cause problems.) I do notice more performance hits than in BF2, but I've read some people can't even play SF so I shouldn't complain too much. There's a reason it recommends at least a GeForce 6800, heh. You can play it on far less, but the draw distance is so much shorter that it puts you at a serious disadvantage. It should also be noted that it still takes forever to load. The first time you ever play a level it can take 5 minutes to 'optimize shaders'. No joke. After that it can still take a minute to load a map. Ouch.

Protip: When you install SF it updates BF2 to version 1.1, but you still need to download version 1.12 and apply that AFTER you install SF.

However, there are still a few minor issues I've seen, like I've already seen a teammate marked in red (grr...), and SF still has BF2's biggest weakness: people don't know how to play! I don't mean people suck (beacuse I'd be a hypocrite if I said that...), I just mean people don't understand this is a SQUAD game! I see waaay too many people just wandering around alone. That's no fun and you're not nearly as productive that way. And often even those in a squad, just go off and do their own thing anyways. Sigh... join a squad people!

Still all in all, for whatever reason, I really enjoy Battlefield 2 and now this Special Forces expansion. I'm not normally a big military game fan, but DICE (and I guess EA) has done an admirable job. It's not perfect, but what is. With all the different layers, it always feels fresh and fun. This isn't some lame random respawn FPS, it takes more than just quick reflexes to play this. So for fans of BF2, SF is a nice expansion. If you din't like BF2, why do you even play shooters? Err, you won't like this. But the emphasis on infantry makes for a nice compaion to SF2's vehicles to mix up the gameplay even more. It would of been nice though if they could of found more of a balance between these two on at least some maps (and have more than one gameplay mode!). Maybe next time.

Verdict: Recommended, if you have a decent PC.