The Longest Day
Let’s have a look at the maps as there’s obviously been a huge amount of work on these to give as satisfying an experience as possible. Overall there’s 12 maps, with each map available in three different sizes to cater for 16, 32 or 64 players. Though the 64 player maps are great if you get yourself up in the air, the 16 player maps offer a much more frenetic and frantic experience with bases being quite close to each other at times, prompting some desperate defensive battles as you struggle to hold on to your outpost. The larger maps offer a more relaxed experience and are ideal if you have a squad of regular players you know. You can take the time to group up, move into an area tactically and even a group of just six well co-ordinated players working as a team can take some of the more heavily defended bases.
Now although 12 maps might not sound like a lot, you really do have to get in there and check them out to see what a difference there is between the different map sizes. As you notch up from 16 players to 32 up to 64 you’ll find more and more parts of the same map revealed, all of which are geared to a greater and wider conflict. On some of the maps it’s on the big 64 player versions that you’ll find the airbases with the fast jets sitting around waiting for a pilot. Believe me, you need a big map for these babies, especially in a dogfight as you can easily run out of room when you throw the throttle open in a bid to escape.
All of the maps are heavily detailed and can at times be intricate little numbers. The towns and cities are no longer just a few houses clustered along a crossroads. Once you engage in house to house fighting, you soon realise that the maps are pretty complex and it’s no longer a case of simply legging it to the next base and taking it out. You’ll have to think carefully about what your next move will be or you’ll soon end up dead. Many of the maps have obvious choke points which favour the defender and brilliantly, these choke points work both ways so if you do manage to take a base, you’ve now got a choke point to help you defend it.
But it isn’t all a bed of roses as far as the maps go, though it’s clear that Battlefield 2 is the most bug-free on release of all of the series, there are still some issues that hang over from the original game. Quite a few of the maps are unfairly balanced with the US team starting out with nothing but one base and their objective is to take the entire map from the enemy. If you’re playing US, this isn’t as impossible as it sounds as your base is immune from being overrun, but playing as the enemy it all feels a bit pointless as you hold out waiting for the game timer to tick down. Also, that old problem that plagues the original is back in being able to drop way behind enemy lines to take out their rear bases. This can completely destroy the feeling of having a coherent frontline and even re-spawning can become a toil as you instantly come under fire from an enemy miles behind the line. That said, you could argue that dropping behind enemy lines is a part of warfare, and I’d agree with you but I’d say that only certain classes should be able to do it, perhaps to take out specific targets before legging it back across the lines… but more of that later.
