After a long week of playing the demo, I thought I'd be able to handle anything anyone had to dish out when the game hit retail stores this week. In my first round of playing the newest game on the market, I found I had met my ultimate arch nemesis: lag.
The debut of such a colossal game should grant some leeway to EAGames, after all, how can they possible anticipate the stress the game will be under when thousands of people try playing all at the same time? They should, since they stress tested it with their largest test group ever.
The newest feature of this game was the ability to track your combat progress and award you with promotions and medals as you fight your way through the various landscapes of BF2. The only way to do this though is to play on the Ranked Servers, servers which adhere to a very strict set of rules to be approved by EAGames and listed as ranked. However, due to the structure of Ranked play, each kill is confirmed by the master server, producing an overhead of latency that can bring a game to its knees. Not only are you combating M1A2 Abrams tanks or Mi28 Havoc helicopters, you're fighting the dreaded "Your connection has a problem" and subsequent "freak out" of your character as he tries to resynch with the server.
Despite the glorious three dimensional eye candy, it can't rid the frustration of not being able to fight back because you're lagged up. Lining your sights up on the perfect kill only to be interrupted caused headache upon headache. Although, the non-ranked servers, while not tracking your progress, are lag free, and play as the game should be played. Stat hungry players swallow their pride and play with only the satisfaction that their name is on the top of the stats list for one round, only to be reset and forgotten a few seconds later. Personally, I tend to be competetive, and play only on the ranked servers, since I see playing the other servers a sort of deathmatch. Even if you play 3 hours straight, the second you quit, it's as if you did nothing at all. There's no sense in accomplishment, which is why I think the ranked server lag problem should be number one priority on EA's fix list.
Despite this problem though, when the game actually does work, it's a marvel to behold. The fury and destruction of the battles are overwhelming to the senses. The realism of war, despite the arcade style gameplay, is astonishing. Watching a 2,000 pound bomb land on your unsuspecting squad, decimating them while leaving you unscathed leaves you with a feeling of guilt; if you had walked with them, you would've suffered the same fate. It's situations like these that bring the game to life and give it the personal touch, which is why the Battlefield series has been so successful, and will continue to be with such great sequels as Battlefield 2.