Well, the weekend started off pretty great with a show at The Riverview Cafe in South Minneapolis. For not having performed since earlier this summer things went pretty well. I did manage to really blow a Norah Jones tune, but despite that the other material went really well.

In video game news…

I tested out Battlefield 2: Modern Combat this weekend and overall I can’t say I’m all that pleased with it. Here’s why.

The installation process took an extraordinary amount of time. The one point some-odd GIG install took about ten to fifteen minutes between the three CD’s. After the install, you have to create an online account to keep track of your stats on a central game stats server — there went another five to ten minutes of my life. So after creating an account I went to log on, I got an error message saying that the serial number I provided was already in use or might have been hijacked.

WHAT THE???

I tried installing the patch provided on the EA site and the patch process wasn’t so fun. After going through the steps a little box comes up saying that it’s patching but doesn’t do anything visually to indicate a process with time remaining. Thinking that the process had hung up (after like five minutes of patching), I ended the process. Of course the game wouldn’t launch properly because I ended the patch process prematurely. [What would you do if the app didn't show any sort of status and just sat there for like five minutes??]

Battlefield 2 Loading Tip You can bypass the introduction screens by making a few modifications to a few files. Locate the mods/videos/ folder in your BF2 game folder and find the files Intro.bik, Legal.bik, etc. Rename all of those files (except the menu files) with a new extension like .BACKUP in case you’d like to keep the files. Create new text files (with nothing in them) with the same filenames as the old video files (Intro.bik, Legal.bik, etc.). The loading process will go by MUCH faster and you won’t have to sit through all the lame intro screens.

So I re-installed the game — tried the serial number in ALL CAPS this time (they were lowercase last time) and eventually got the patch to work, which took about five to ten minutes. I was pretty ticked by this point that it took so long just to install and patch the game…. and I haven’t even gotten to try it out yet.

After dealing with the install process I finally tried logging in—depending upon the traffic and activity, logging in can either be a ten second process or a two-minute one. Considering this was a Saturday morning, I was experiencing two-minute login periods. And as if that wasn’t long enough, getting a game to load is another story. Unlike Call of Duty, these games take a VERY long time to load. We’re talking two to five minutes depending upon the size of the map, the amount of network traffic, and the processing power of your computer. So if you’re going to select a server to play on, make sure to select one that has two or three rounds per map. It makes it a bit more worthwhile so you’re not loading a new map after every round.

Admittedly the whole installation process and the length of time it takes to log in and load up games has left a bitter taste in my mouth. I’ve played a few rounds and find that the gaming experience isn’t THAT much better than BF’s predecessors Vietnam and 1942. Why do I say that? You need a PC with some serious horsepower to truly take advantage of the display technology that they’re trying to integrate. I’m running a 2.2 Gig Celeron with 512 MB RAM and a moderate-end NVidia GForce graphics card and I have to run the game at the lowest setting: 800×600 60hrtz with LOW QUALITY on all of the feature settings. If you ask me, they’re trying to do too much with this game and asking too much of your computer — pushing the boundaries of what average gamers are going to have for hardware.

One thing that I do like about the game is the global stats and ranking, how you can work your way up the chain and earn various medals and honors. I’ve already earned Basic Special Ops and am a Private First Class, but I don’t play video games very much except on the weekend and at that rate, I may be Lance Corporal in a few months.

The maps are okay but not as rich in detail as that of Call of Duty, especially with some of the custom maps and mods that are out there. I even got to play a cool map of the Mines of Moria (”Lord of the Rings”) and The Shire. There was just something weird about running around the Shire with a Browning semi-automatic rifle and pegging off German soldiers.

I don’t know. It’ll take a little while for BF2 to grow on me, but in all, I still like Call of Duty and BF:Vietnam better than BF2.

November 7, 2005, 11:03 am

Filed under: Gaming, Performance

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