We're encouraged to replay missions to improve our score and rank, but I rarely found any of the missions challenging or entertaining enough to warrant a second visit.īut for all of the single-player campaign's failings, the on-line multiplayer mode, which remains surprisingly faithful to the original PC experience, makes Modern Combat worth a serious look.īoth the Xbox and PlayStation2 versions allow for up to 24 players to take to the field on maps which, though not as expansive as those found on PC-based Battlefield games, are just as well designed and provide the same opportunities for both strategic and action-packed game play.Īs in PC Battlefield games, Modern Combat's on-line play is all about choice. The driving, shooting, and hotswap challenges between missions - which are completely out of context relative to the game's story - don't help matters.Īdding to the game's arcade feeling, some of the main story missions take no longer than a few minutes to finish. With no set control or spawn points, enemies continually - and annoyingly - materialize from out of nowhere throughout each battle.Īcquiring scoring bonuses for performing multiple kills in succession or taking down a half dozen enemies with a single clip makes Modern Combat feel more like Quake or Unreal rather than the gritty military game it should be. It lets you move from sniper to engineer to assault trooper in a matter of seconds to deal with different threats as they arise.īut the hotswap feature is just about the only positive thing found in the single-player campaign, which is too short, too shallow, and too arcade-y to be truly satisfying. Just look in the direction of the soldier you want to take control of - he could be next to you or hundreds of meters away - and at the tap of a button you'll fly across the map and into his shoes. The hotswap trick is actually pretty nifty.
Rather than an enormous theatre of operations we're provided with maps of a much smaller scale, and instead of control positions that double as spawn points, our squads simply move from area to area as commanded, and we take control of allied soldiers on the battlefield as necessary through a feature called hotswapping. The single-player campaign is composed of about 20 fast-paced missions with a variety of short shooting and racing challenges that act as segues between each battle.Ĭampaign missions are nothing like what we've seen in Battlefield games for PC. The packaging reflects the game inside: an arcade-like shooter, complete with level scoring, power-ups, and mini-games. And, as one might expect, the alterations to Battlefield's core game play are the most troublesome.Īnyone familiar with the Battlefield games will be suspicious from the second they see Modern Combat's box art, which on the front shows a spectacular explosion sending a dune buggy soaring through the air, and on the back features a trio of stylized video game soldiers who are more reminiscent of characters seen in games like Counter-Strike than the more authentic looking troops that typically traipse across a Battlefield battle ground. The latter changes are where PC ports most often run aground.īoth superficial and core game play changes were made in bringing Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, a port of the most recent game in Digital Illusions CE's exceptionally popular PC-based Battlefield franchise, to the Xbox and PlayStation2. Some graphical and level design adjustments are typically required to ensure the game performs well on console hardware, while alterations to core game play are frequently made in an effort to meet what the developer thinks are the expectations and requirements of console gamers. Of course, many PC games eventually make their way to consoles - but in the transition developers often make significant changes to the original game. They read in magazines about the precision control afforded by a mouse and keyboard, visit gaming websites to see beautiful screen shots and video from triple-A PC titles, and their PC gaming friends tell them about epic 64-player on-line matches.
The world of PC games can be both exotic and alluring to many console gamers. The Verdict: It's about the most we could expect from a console-based Battlefield game - just do yourself a favour and skip the silly single-player campaign.The Bad: Single-player mode is short, shallow, arcade-like, and unrecognizable as a Battlefield game.The Good: On-line multiplayer successfully recreates - albeit on a smaller scale - much of what makes the PC-based Battlefield games so good.