DICE have made half a great game, and that’s the best they could ever do. The other half needed to take Battlefield 2 to the top comes from the players, for without teamwork BF2 is nothing, but with it, it can be an immensely satisfying gaming experience.

While there is indeed a single-player mode, it really is just a token inclusion and offers little enjoyment. If there was no such thing as the internet and multiplayer gaming, then we’d think that playing with and against bots is just the best thing ever, but once you’ve had a taste of playing online with real people there’s no going back.

DICE have provided a set of exquisitely crafted maps for teams to battle on. Inspired no doubt by the massively successful Desert Combat mod for the original Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2 is all about modern weapons and vehicles. Cobra gunships, F-15 and MiG-29 fighters, M1A1 and T-90 tanks, as a sampler.

It is not until you have spent some hours fighting it out that you appreciate the strategic cleverness that’s gone into the maps. Everything in each map has a tactical function. From a clump of trees to a crane gantry, at some point you’ll be cowering behind pretty much everything and hopefully using the map features to tactical advantage. Not to say that Battlefield is just a run and gun game. Various special classes and tactics work wonders as force-multipliers, and this is why teamwork is essential. Engineers, and only Engineers can repair vehicles. Special Forces can plant explosives, Medics heal, Support carries spare ammo, while Anti-tank, Assault and Snipers perform down and dirty grunt work.

The game engine itself is no wonder of 3D, and the game menus are ponderously slow to navigate between, game loading time, too, is horrendously slow on even the fastest systems, but it is the maps and gameplay mechanics that make BF2 a winner.

Key factors add up to determine whether BF2 rewards or disappoints. The ‘tard factor is the big fun-killer. BF2 is, unfortunately a magnet, for idiots, killing their own team members and various acts of massive irritation. The workaround is to play with people you know, or on a pay-for-use server, where the tards are less inclined to risk a banning.

Nice touches ensure maximum multiplayer friendliness, such as built-in VoIP and maps that scale in size to accommodate numbers of players online. We especially like the Commander mode, where one player effectively plays the game as an RTS, giving orders to everyone on their team.

Sure, there are bugs, but there will be patches and mods. This game is destined to live long on the game servers and new players will always be welcome.