The Battlefield series has always been extremely popular on the PC, winning numerous awards, and rightly so. Making its debut onto consoles last year was Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, now Xbox 360 owners are lucky enough to see what all the fuss is about.
Living up to its name Battlefield 2: Modern Combat is set in modern times, with modern weaponry, modern vehicles and modern gameplay. It also features the modern typical propaganda fuelled plot. In a nice touch however, you get the chance to experience both sides of the story, not only in terms of gameplay but in cut scenes as well, with news stories of views from both sides which is a nice touch. As well as a 20 mission single player campaign, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat features an impressive online multiplayer mode where up to 24 players can fight to secure checkpoints, or battle it out in capture the flag.
A new addition to the console version of Battlefield was ‘hot-swapping’, allowing the player to move freely between allied players at the touch of a button. This great feature makes an appearance on the Xbox 360 version of the game also, and really adds to atmosphere of the single player campaign.
The campaign mode of Battlefield 2: Modern Combat has around 20 missions for you to battle your way through. When working on the numerous objectives in the campaign mode you will notice enemies come in numerous ways, such as air by parachuting down (giving you a nice opportunity to snipe) as well as by land and sea. Unfortunately there are times when the enemies just pop out of thin air, which can be a particular nuisance.
The campaigns excellent hot-swapping feature allows you to swap between team-mates at your request, and has been implemented extremely well. It can also be very amusing, hot-swapping your way out of trouble, leaving the poor soldier you hot-swapped out of to get ripped to pieces!
The enemy AI isn’t the smartest bunch to grace a videogame. More often than not an enemy sniper would miss their first shot, giving you just enough time to repay them kindly with a precise shot to their face. In particular instance of AI idiocy, a jeep decided to drive past us while shooting (albeit five yards away from us) and then proceeded to stop with the driver just sitting there, looking at us. The generous driver gave us enough time to shoot the gunner, shoot him and then steal the jeep!
The physics available in the game contribute amusement also, especially online. Watching someone fly 30ft in the air as a result of an explosion can make any gamer smile, especially when it’s that player who was constantly sniping you.
As well as the campaign, there are also some challenge modes in the game. These include Hotswap, weapon and also race challenges. The latter puts you into some sort of crazy taxi style mini game in which you race to pick up your comrades’ in the quickest time possible while the clock ticks down. Although not great, they can be fun in short bursts.
The voiceovers in the game can be slightly irritating, possibly due to the fact that more often than not you will hear the same lines constantly repeated over and over and well, you get the idea.
The music is another aspect which is irritating, we’re not sure if it’s supposed to be tension building, but those drum beats just give you a headache after a while.
In spite of the criticisms above, the sound of weaponry, vehicles and the like is just as impressive as any other FPS available on the 360. Generally everything seems to sound as they should, helicopters sounding like helicopters, or from what we can tell (not being helicopter experts or anything).
Amalgamated, the sound can impress, it certainly does it’s job of immersing you into the battlefield with helicopters flying overhead, jeeps racing past and the sound of gunfire coming from all kinds of places.
