Excuse for Not Writing Last Night

I bought Battlefield 2 yesterday.

Well, not “bought”, exactly. I ended up paying $1.50 out of my pocket. The other $52 came from a gift card I got for my birthday that I’ve been saving for just this occasion, and a DVD return.

The return was difficult for me, because it was a birthday present from my brother, who actually went shopping and found something I would like instead of taking the easy way out and getting me a gift card. But I never get time to watch DVD’s anymore; the TV always has Dora the Explorer or Max and Ruby or The Last Avatar (ugh). I’d had the DVD for five months, and it was still in its plastic wrapping.

That turned out to be a good thing, because it made the DVD returnable. It was a double-disc concert DVD (Alison Krauss, if you’re curious), and it cost thirty bucks. Just enough, when added to my gift card, to pay for BF2. All I had to do was pay for the tax.

The game itself is fun. I’ve always wanted a tank game, and I love flight games, and I like driving games, and shooting at things is always great. BF2 has all of that. The only thing is doesn’t have is a story. I’ve never played a game that didn’t have some semblance of a plot before; I wouldn’t have guessed that such a thing would be marketable. But BF2 is a new brand of game – it’s made for the multi-player experience, not the single player story.

That’s not the way most games are made. Games up to this point were built around an SP storyline and the MP part was based on the SP part. BF2’s single-player is the exact same as the multi-player, but with computer-controlled enemies instead of online humans. The objective is to win all the points on a map. There’s no storyline tying it together, even loosely. You aren’t General Roxors, in command of a battalion that needs to win a series of encounters in order to secure victory for the USA. You’re just you, trying to survive a battle. And when the battle is done, you do it again. And again. And again.

In a way, it harks back to the old days of gaming, when there was no end level. You went through “stages”, each more or less the same, but progressively faster and harder. You played until you couldn’t keep up anymore. No theme, no real plot, just reflex endurance.

BF2 is kind of like that, which is unfortunate. I remember the first game I ever finished (Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight). I felt a great sense of accomplishment. It was exhilarating. Playing a single-player game without a real end is like chewing a really good steak but not swallowing; it tastes good, but in the end it doesn’t satisfy.

That being said, BF2 is worth it for the MP action, especially if you have people you know to play with. I probably wouldn’t play much after a couple weeks (and, in fact, wouldn’t have got the game in the first place) if I didn’t know a lot of guys (and at least one girl) who were eager to play it. The team camaraderie makes all the difference.

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