Battlefield 2: Special Forces
The expansion pack gives Battlefield 2 a Counter-Strike flavor by adding specialized equipment such as zip lines, grappling hooks, tear gas, flash-bang grenades, night vision goggles and gas masks to an already potent arsenal. There are new weapons and vehicles as well, and, as you might well imagine, there is an increased emphasis on indoor combat, and for the first time, battles will be raging on at night.
The three original military factions in the game (United States Marines, People's Liberation Army of China, and the fictional Middle Eastern Coalition) are expanded to a total of nine with six new additional factions which include the Navy SEALS, the British SAS, the Russian Spetsnaz, MEC Special Forces, Rebels, and Insurgents.
If you're a regular player of the game, all these additional goodies as you might well imagine, really raise the bar on first person shooters depicting modern warfare. Suffice it to say that if you're into Battlefield 2, you really don't have much of a choice in the matter. Get Special Forces, and get it now.
Here are some screenshots:
Of course, there are some nitpicks as well. The add-on can be notoriously difficult to install if you have less than 3 GB on your C: drive, even if the game is installed on another drive. You'll have to download and apply the 280 MB v1.12 update before you can play, sometimes the game kicks you out to the desktop, and it can be prone to slowdown when a lot of things are happening simultaneously onscreen. My number one gripe is the excrutiatingly long loading times which can sometimes last several minutes. On my rig, the game is installed on a RAID 0 array consisting of two 7,200 RPM hard drives, and yet the loading times can still last upwards of five minutes, and sometimes even ten the first few times when it optimizes your video card's shaders. I can only imagine how those with lesser drive configurations will fare.
All in all, these nitpicks give the impression of an expansion that was rushed into release. It is very likely though, that these bugs will be addressed in future updates, so you'll probably have to grin and bear with these annoyances until then.
Notwithstanding these setbacks, Battlefield 2: Special Forces still turns out to be a must have add-on for the original Battlefield 2. If you don't get it, you'll be missing out on a lot.
Battlefield 2: Special Forces is available from DataBlitz at a price of P995.00.
Just yell if you need a medic.
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