It's good news for all fans of Battlefield 2 which is one of the best ever First Person Shooters still available today (IMHO) despite being over four years old now.
The franchise was originally started in 2002 with the release of Battlefield 1942. Two expansion packs were released, 'The Road to Rome' and Secret Weapons of WWII', then a new title called Battlefield Vietnam was released late 2004. Then early summer 2005 Battlefield 2 was released, then four or five months later an expansion called Battlefield 2: Special Forces was added to the list. The following year two booster packs were added which are the packs that are now totally free (Euroforce and Armored Assault). Each one adds three superb maps to the game. Then Battlefield 2142 and an expansion Northern Strike were released in 2007. The franchise then released a title for X-box 360 and PS3 but not for the PC called Bad Company. Finally the release of Battlefield 1943, a multiplayer only title is set for release later this year.
The Battlefield mod community has created nav-meshes for all the Vanilla maps (original) so that you can fight against Bots right up to the largest 64 player maps. New armor, jets and helicopters as well as a new Army (NATO) were added to the game via the first of the booster packs.
There’s a great free utility available called Bot Changer that allows you to adjust the number of bots that appear in game, as well as the AI (artificial Intelligence). The game engine supports up to 128 bots, which really does make for some interesting battles. Of course you do need a reasonable rig to run everything maxed out including running 128 bots, especially if you’re running a vehicle intensive map, though there is a utility available called Battlefield Cleaner that turns off uneeded programs (like Game Booster) as well as other funnctions that enhances game play. Most custom maps also support cooperative play. (There’s two versions v2.0 and v2.1. The main difference being that v2.1 allows you to adjust bots up to 256, but as the games engine only supports 128, if you set the number of bots greater the excess over 128 will just stand around idly and will not react to anything.
What makes this game so brilliant is the sandbox nature of the game. No two games are ever alike, plus there’s around a thousand custom made maps available for free for this game as well as some amazing modifications (mod’s) that have added loads of extra content to the game. Off the top of my head I'd highly recommend The AI-X (originally called Allied Intent), Forgotten Hope 2, Eve of Destruction, POE 2, Mercenaries 10, 12 or 14{my favorite for a long time}, Black Ops Mercenaries v2 (Special Forces), Assault Mod, Project Reality, Operation Peacekeeper, Nations at War v5 and Northern Exposure modifications. There are loads more; such as the Hard Justice, Marines and MCC mod’s that are worth exploring as well. Each mod brings something different to the game, whether it be a little more realism (Project Reality), new weapons (several mod’s), a submarine (NAW mod) a different theatre of war such as the Indochina War that encompasses the Vietnam War (Eve of Destruction), WWII (Forgotten Hope) and soon to be released (I think), the Korean War (Korean War mod), and even a nuclear bomb (Hard Justice Mod). You'll also find loads of mini mods that add specific things like a trials bike (done out in military green), skins that give armies different uniforms, unlocker mods that enable you to use all the best weapons without having to earn them (which was essential in the single player game, or that enables killed bots and destryed vehicles to stay in game to give the battlefield more realism.
Anyway, the two booster packs are now incorporated into the recently released v1.50 patch that also adds another new map. The latter really pleases me because I've always found it a pain having to re download the packs from EA. I misplaced the password to my account several months ago and was unable to reistall the six maps because of it.
You can download the patch from all the big download sites such as Gamershell, Filefront, Fileplanet, fileshack etc. It is a very large download at 1.92 Gb and I've not as yet seen an incremental patch to patch the last one v1.41 to v1.50.
If you don't have a copy of Battlefield 2 I highly recommend that you purchase a copy. You can get the base game for around $10 now and a Deluxe Edition that includes the Special Forces Expansion for around $15. Well worth it if you enjoy FPS games.
There's over 600Gb of free downloadable extra content available for Battlefield 2 alone, in the form of mod’s, maps and other utilities.
Download links:
http://www.gamershell.com/download_50494.shtml
http://www.fileplanet.com/204626/200000/fileinfo/Battlefield-2-Patch-v1.5
http://battlefield2.filefront.com/file/Battlefield_2_v150_Patch;103697
Apparently some users have been getting crashes when you use the Alt Tab function. You can now get a hot-fix for that from Fileplanet:
Alt Tab hotfix:
http://www.fileplanet.com/204918/200000/fileinfo/Battlefield-2---Patch-v1.50-Hotfix-Alt+Tab-
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So....... if you do have Battlefield 2 stashed away, forgotten and forlorn, I reckon it'll be well worth fishing out again. All the official extra content, plus the fact that all the major mods have had upgrades released over the last year as well as several more maps being released. Project Reality has finally included a single player patch (as has all the others previously)
