by 
I’m in an awkward position – I’m reviewing a highly acclaimed first person shooter 12 years after it was first released. The trouble here is that there have been dozens of AAA games that have been trying to fill the exact same role every year since then. It’s a good concept – two teams trying to capture rally points and slowly take over the map. But genre saturation is a thing, and we’ve passed that point by about a decade.
I say all this because Battlefield 2 is a good game. But it is far from original, and there are any number of other, better games that will scratch the exact same itch with better graphics and without having to install Punkbuster and GameSpy Comrade (I’ve lost count how often I’ve uninstalled those programs). Honestly, there isn’t a whole lot to say about Battlefield 2 – it was successful enough that you see the same aspects repeated again and again in every other US Armed Forces FPS since then. My conclusion is this: when it came out, it was fantastic and it deserves its place in history. But there isn’t really a reason to play it now (especially since you’ll only be playing on LAN). To Tier Three it goes.