Gamespot Special Forces Review

[DMC]

Gamespot wrote up their full review of the BF2 expansion, Special Forces - giving it a score of 8.1 out of 10.
Meanwhile, there are six new factions in the expansion, which is a big number considering that Battlefield 2 itself only shipped with three. These new factions are needed to justify the scenarios (for example, Russian special forces versus an insurgent group, or British SAS versus a different type of rebel group), though one of the disadvantages of having six factions and only eight maps is that you see factions only once or twice throughout the game.
Read the entire review here (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/battlefield2specialforces/review.html).

Expect to see a comprehensive Total Battlefield 2 review coming up very soon!

[Spuddy]

Both the IGN and GS reviews quite interesting. Both say it's good but buggy, which is a shame. I assume there'll probably be a patch mentioned shortly, although the arrival of it will no doubt take some time.

[Eglaerinion]

Please the patch excuse is getting old, try releasing when it's ready to be released. I have read nothing but complains about performance problems, people not being able to install because of sloppy programming on the installer part and other Special Forces related issues.

[Spookie]

While it was released unfinished (couldn't miss that holiday season eh ea?). DICE US has really improved from 'nam. While the game is flawed and needs polishing some of the maps and ideas are very sound.

The new grappling hook and Zip line really do add new ways of taking flags and really does a good job of ****ing off the opposition! :D

[chrilyng]

That guy in the video review had a hangover I think.

[vbl]

While it was released unfinished (couldn't miss that holiday season eh ea?). DICE US has really improved from 'nam. While the game is flawed and needs polishing some of the maps and ideas are very sound.

The new grappling hook and Zip line really do add new ways of taking flags and really does a good job of ****ing off the opposition! :D

It's DICE Canada. These is no DICE US.

[-=[CID]=- Texan]

I didn't have any trouble patching or insatalling the game at all. And as for bugs, well maybe I havn't played enough yet to see any yet. (like 5 hours straight:p )
Love the urban action and the new choppers. Can't really complain about anything.
You'll see me playin' online alot. Unless I see you first of course.

[Spookie]

It's DICE Canada. These is no DICE US.

I stand corrected, I wasn't completely sure of the studio creating it. I knew it was "over there" though! :p

[DoubleVee]

I installed the game today, and the only bugs I found, where the RPG reload animation, grappling hook glitches, not be able to run after enabling NVG or Gas Mask...and maybe some other ones...but overall the game is great...I'm waiting for my 2gb's of RAM that I ordered today...then the game will run even better.

[imported_Knight_Yellow]

A lot of the points he makes are unfounded or just mistaken.

He doesnt actualy seem to have played it for more than an hour.... he thinks all the classes get grappling hooks or zip lines, Medic, heavy assualt and engineer get neither.

Then he says that loading times are longer.... not on my rig, he then goes on about the shader loading... wich has happened in bf2 since day 1 every time you change graphics settings, and since the patch no doubt adjusts said settings etc... it has to reconfigure the shaders.

After it does that it loads as fast as bf2 ever did.

He even goes as far to complain that theres already a patch??? WTF, does he want them to do instead? not release a patch?

His point about maybe releasing the game too early might be valid but what company is realisticly going to delay the game when they can just patch it on the release day?

Damned if they do, damned if they dont.

And thirdly, i cant be the only person alive that managed to install the game from EA downloader without a single problem at all.

[Spookie]

After it does that it loads as fast as bf2 ever did.

Verifying client takes an age. It plays the sound track TWICE on my PC before I get in. On BF2 it takes 1/4 of the time. Something is horribly wrong there.

performance drops if there's too much action on the screen.

Also sadly true, more noticeable when playing the night maps.

[DoubleVee]

Verifying client takes an age. It plays the sound track TWICE on my PC before I get in. On BF2 it takes 1/4 of the time. Something is horribly wrong there.

I can't say anything about that...Just let me get my 2gb's of RAM and then I will time both loading times :cool:

[imported_Knight_Yellow]

Verifying client takes an age. It plays the sound track TWICE on my PC before I get in. On BF2 it takes 1/4 of the time. Something is horribly wrong there.

SF loads the exact same on my rig as BF2.

Never more than a minute.

[<EsP>Fury]

Originally Posted by Knight_Yellow "And thirdly, i cant be the only person alive that managed to install the game from EA downloader without a single problem at all."


You are not the only one that had no problems with the downloader.

[Jofaba]

Ram doesn't really increase your load times, a faster hard drive does. Anyway, the optimization issue isn't about the first optimization. It's about all the followup optimizations. You have to close out, delete your cache, optimize again, close and reopen to avoid further optimizations. This is a bug from the patch. I also lost some graphics on my first time patching but they came back when I uninstalled and reinstalled. Currently doing the latter again because I'm having issues connecting to my own server (getting booted for having "modified content" but have no mods installed since last BF2 removal).

I'm not complaining. It's all a bit irritating but since b&m'ing about it won't change anything, I've just done my best to optimize my system to get the best framerate possible. Yesterday before my last attempt at patching to get the server launcher working, I was running all high 4xAA in Special Forces with an average of 40-45fps. After the last patch I was back down to 15. Reoptimizing my computer, and about to reinstall BF2, Special Forces, 1.12 client and 1.12 server.

For those of us that know a little more about computers or are happy to have the learning experience, it's not a big deal. But all these tiny hacks and uninstalls/reinstalls aren't good for EA because as news spreads, people who haven't gotten it yet are going to be petrified of it.

As for the people not experiencing problems at all, they seem to be falling into two classes: 1) people perfectly content playing at medium/medium-high settings and thus aren't reaching the strain that the rest of us are (and they even find it silly/rediculous that we'd want to run the game at such high settings, especially since it "just doesn't work apparently", and 2) People with high end nVidea cards. I won't get into a debate about whether that means nVidia is better than ATI. I think it has more to do with the fact that BF2 was built with specific brands in mind (nVidia, Zboards, Alienware etc) because of marketing relationships.