Nostalgia - The Final Word

At this point in my life I am no stranger to gaming; I hope I have shown the part it has played in my life so far, as of mid 2010. However, despite the goliath titles I've played recently, despite the goliath titles that have gone before, and quite possibly despite the goliath titles yet to come, there is one game that stands above the rest. If I look back now, I was a console gamer first and a PC gamer second; I believed in the dedicated platform and controller as the final say in modern gaming. Yet this game changed all that. This game changed my mental criteria of what a great game has to have, and in some aspects removed the criteria completely. This game is Dice's masterful Battlefield 2.

In case you're unfamiliar with BF2, it is essentially another online shooter similar I suppose to the Call of Duty series. It has seven classes to choose from, a few weapons to unlock, stats tracking, badges and ribbons to obtain, a few maps to choose from, and a virtually non-existent single player campaign, with just a multiplayer situation with bots. It all sounds fairly generic at this point, but that ends now. BF2 is played on either 16, 32 or the enormous 64 player maps. It has a tonne of vehicles for three factions, ranging from a small jeep to a fully fledged fighter bomber; all playable with online. It has a brilliant squad based team system for better co-operation with other people, and each side has an elected commander to control the situation. I could go on, but what this did was create a window of opportunity for the greatest online experience of your life.

And what an experience it was. I remember playing one match while in a 6 man squad, and I was a medic with his hands full keeping his squad from disintegrating around him. On voice chat, and with the squad leader giving orders, we worked as a single entity, racking up points while wiping out the opposition and having an absolute blast. Games as good as that were rare; but the average game was still highly entertaining.

So there it is; my conversion to the PC as a gaming console, the final word in quality gaming. Consoles are more suited to casual gamers, providing the opportunity for comfort and social gaming with friends, but to truly experience the thrilling hunt in an FPS or to rapidly deploy units in an RTS, the PC has the final word, and BF2 has the final word on the PC itself.