One of my most serious considerations when buying a multiplayer game comes in the form of the question, ‘Will it have longevity?’

Battlefield 2, for me, provided one of the best multiplayer experiences, because it had that longevity. Where too many multiplayer games rely far too heavily on the simple ‘shoot this guy and you win’ scenario or total team tactics to the point where a side has to be truly dedicated or they will fail, Battlefield 2 did something different. It introduced their version of the Capture point mechanic, Conquest.



This simple game type allowed me countless of hours of entertainment in the game play options it provided. Firstly, it allowed me, one player, to change the entire tide of the battle by being tactical, but, it also gave me the choice to jump straight into that battle.

A lot of online multiplayer games rely very heavily on team tactics, which is all well and good, but very difficult when playing online with strangers, because of the inevitable lack of communication. With Battlefield 2, however, you could join the mess of colliding forces, but the game also allowed you, a sole person, to change the tide of a battle, and so, keep yourself interested in the game. I think a lot of multiplayer games fail at the hurdle of keeping players on their own entertained. Without the always present unlocks and achievements, there isn’t much to keep a player constantly interested in an online component, unless their doing it with friends, so a multiplayer game needs some form of longevity.

Battlefield provided this by allowing one person the ability to do serious good, on their own. You could play a match with the fight at a total stand still, with each team pushing against each other and no one getting anywhere, and you, one man, could slip past the enemy and achieve something. One person could make the difference in a game, and that person could be you, if you took the right control point at the right time, your team could progress significantly, all because of your actions, and it gives the player serious drive to play,you want to sneak around and capture a point to save the team for the sense of satisfaction you attained from doing it. I could find enjoyment in the game without communication, something which more or less doesn’t happen in most online games. It’s a multiplayer game that allowed me to play online with strangers, and still have a hell of a time.



Strike at Karkand was one of the best and most popular maps in BF2 when it was at its peak, and it demonstrates my point. In nearly every game the team’s main forces collided around the first Middle Eastern Coalition point in the city, and a tug of war match ensued as they pushed against each other and the kills mounted up, a lot of the time one team was able to push the other back, but, sometimes, as the destruction carried on, a single United States Marine Corps player could sneak up the right of the map, swim across the river and take one of the North Eastern points and thus, allow the entire USMC forces to spawn and rape the Middle Eastern Coalition. This kind of game play came across in many of the maps, obviously in far more depth, and it allowed one player to actually have fun in a multiplayer game with strangers, because they could achieve in-game alone, as well as joining in the chaos.



This idea, for me, however, gets ruined with the introduction of destructible environments. For a single player game, Bad Company, for example, this can prove extremely entertaining and fun, but not in multiplayer. It might work at some point, but, for me, Dice have not mastered keeping basic tactics and explosive entertainment. With destructible environments, tactics become somewhat null and void.



Where a team could set up a fantastic defence at one of the key points in a map like Strike at Karkand, in a game like Battlefield 1943, the enemy can just create new paths, ones that dodge these perfectly critical points on a map, and destroy the tactical advantage the defending team had.

Battlefield 1943 is a pretty decent online shooter, but that’s all it is, it lacks the tactical awesomeness BF2 had. With Wake Island in Battlefield 2, if you came up against one of the turret bunkers dotting the beaches, you would need to sneak around, pop a grenade in its rear (;P), then clear it out, or rush it with a large portion of your team, now, you’re basically getting advocated to pick up a rocket launcher, and blow the poop out of it.



With destructible environments, the need for tactics is gone, along with the need for teamwork, and there’s definitely no need for me or others to sneak around the side of every map to try to capture one of their undefended points, something which kept me interested, and added a serious amount of longevity to Battlefield 2. Despite the fact that DICE made clear that their direction for Battlefield was for an arcade shooter and fully destructible environments at the very start. I still feel that their end product for Battlefield 2 had one of the best multiplayer experiences I’ve ever had.



Basically, if Battlefield 3 has destructible environments, I’ll cry like a bitch.


Also, i'm new...so...hi