I actually had a really long post regarding your review where I agreed and disagreed on several points, but I decided it went on too long and I like you too much to post some of my comments on some of your opinions. In general I think a lot of the gameplay and other things they've done were done specifically to cater to a casual arcade pick up and play experience, for better or worse.

I honestly do feel I have to call out one thing specifically thought that really bothered me on your whole review; I find it sort of hilarious and odd that you slam it repeatedly for lag and connection issues when you haven't played the game in the last 10 days of the 18 since release. I don't doubt you had a bad run with the game, but I play the game mostly with people from Europe and specifically asked them about this today, and none of them have had the slightest issues with lag or connecting whatsoever since a few days after the game came out. And this is while I was in a game with them and there's a guy from Japan, 2 people in the UK, 1 person in Ireland, 1 person from the Netherlands, and another from somewhere else in Europe I don't know about. And I honestly just spent time looking at multiple message boards, and except for one or two people who seem to be having issues with connecting to EA Online (which is the problem I was having day 1), just no one seems to be having these issues at all the last week or two. I mean, maybe it's possible you could log on today and still somehow have the same problems, but it strikes me as odd you put out a review complaining heavily about online issues at launch with an online-only game, but haven't played it anytime recently. Unless you have another account or something?

I think you'll find - and feel free to point out any instances where this is not true - that I refer to all times of having connect issues in the past tense and point out that these are problems I experienced when playing the game during its first week and some. I acknowledge that things are now seemingly better (I say seemingly, because all I can go on are people's reports such as yours).

I'm reviewing a game based on my experiences with it, which largely consisted of issues trying to actually connect. Yes, I haven't played recently, but that's because the early experience annoyed me sufficiently to put me off playing (and not entirely to do with connection issues, but those were a big part of that).

I'm not quite sure what you expect me to do when reviewing the game, ignore all the shitty experiences I had? I'm pretty sure I point out that it's a good game underneath the crappy stuff I ran into. Plus I really don't go on about connection stuff too much (there's a block at the top, and it's referenced in the summary). Fair play if you disagree with me and I'm really pleased for you if you're having a good time with the game, but my experience with it was much different and the review reflects that.

Daravon, if you're game, I'd be interested to put up a counter-point review on the site if you'd be willing to write one (I don't mean just sit there slagging me off and saying I'm wrong, but present your own point of view as you clearly have a different experience with the game).

In Battlefield 2, on the maps with airstrikes you had to crouch in front of it, out in the open while you aimed it, meaning a semi-decent sniper could cover the thing and kill anyone trying to use it. That meant to use the air strike effectively, you had to sweep the area for snipers first and have a couple of people covering you while you used it, so in a game with semi-competent players it tied up three or more people to drop an airstrike and the console was generally miles away from any bases so they were out of action for a while getting there and back, often resulting in a lost base.

So essentially, the bombing raid bunker needs to have an open door so you can shoot the guy using it. If you're in a plane when someone on the other team launches an air strike though that's about the easiest 30 points you're likely to get in the game just for shooting down the bombers.

Like SD, I've not had any connection or lag issues at all since starting to play this last week so I guess it's fixed. In fact the only single moment of annoyance I've had with this was yesterday when I threw some C4 at a tank and it fell straight through it and didn't go off (And the tank driver noticed me behind him with predictable results). The moral of the story is the one I would have thought everyone had learned after Castle Crashers, buying an online only XBLA game in the week of release is a really dumb thing to do.

Only buying Crashers a week later would have solved nothing.

From the sounds of things, whatever they did that other weekend during that three hours of downtime really must have fixed a lot. People who have started playing since then certainly seem to be having far better of a time of it than the people who started (and got fed up) playing before hand. You can't really blame either party for thinking the way it does considering all they've experienced is one or the other.

Anywho, I'd be very, very down for open door bomber bunkers, that would solve a few issues with their relative power. Now a solution for the camping of them and I'll be ever so happy.

And, indeed, buying months after release still wouldn't have helped. You'd have had to waited, what was it 8 months or so before any issues to do with connections got fixed. So not really the same. Plus Behemoth is a 2 man team, EA/DICE is a pool of hundreds of experienced devs who should know better. Let's not start comparing apples and solar systems now.

As Skills said, it's clear that they've actually fixed a lot on the connection side of things and that's great. If you're having an excellent time with the game then brill, I really am pleased for you. However, for all the fun bits I encountered there was a lot of annoy stuff. Originally that was connection issues, but once those started to subside it was more the weird quirks that occurred far more often than I was willing to put up with.

For example, Shin, you mentioned putting C4 on a tank and it dropping right through. I had at least 2 times where I shot a tank at very close range with a rocket only to see the rocket fly straight through the tank. I had a couple of times where I threw C4 down and the C4 either fell through the map or didn't actually materialise properly. I've unloaded whole clips into people (with the hit indicator telling me I was hitting) to no effect. I've had people firing at me from about 2 foot away and no triangle appear over them or on the map (that one was happening a lot actually). I've been killed as I was exiting a bombing run shelter before I had any sort of control over my character. I've accidentally set of C4 when I was too close and killed myself, but not the enemy stood between me and the C4. Etc, etc, etc.

It is a good game. The Battlefield series has always been strong and well designed. It's just not a very well put together game.

I think you're both kind of deliberately missing my point there. I was implying that one should wait a bit until other people have played a new game, reported the bugs and they've been fixed before buying it. Luckily for most of us here, we have you two to do that for us and as long as Skills keeps picking up those refunds it's not costing anyone anything anyway. :)

The best way to stop bombing run camping is to plot up somewhere suitably out of sight with a sniper rifle I find. Doesn't help much when the campers are on your team though. I'd have thought that C4 on or near the door wouldn't hurt either. If it doesn't kill the person inside, you can just wait for the bombs to be released and hit the trigger as only a real fuckwit would stay in the bunker after that point.

I think the thing to remember is that this is an XBLA game and cost a tenner, not a full £35 game so the odd glitch or lack of polish is perhaps fair enough. You could say that it's so cheap because there's only three maps but anyone who played BF2 online will tell you you only ever got to play three maps anyway. I think I've had £10 of enjoyment out of it already to be honest and I'll be playing it on and off until either Frontlines 2 comes out or BF:BC2 comes out and isn't a bit rubbish.

Maybe. :p

The thing is Shin, you can argue that it's only £10 so some issues are forgivable, and maybe it's more forgivable, but it's still £10 I've paid for a game from a highly experienced developer who I expect better of. And my point is that the number of little bugs and issues was enough to make me question why I was bothering with it when there are games as good or better and free (or largely so) of any such bugs sat in my game pile. About the only reason I'd be down for playing it now is because a bunch of you lot were on and games with mates are nearly always fun, but then I'd still rather fire up Halo 3, Left 4 Dead, Rock Band, Burnout Paradise, Gears 2, Ace Combat, CoD4, GRID, etc, etc, instead.

Fair enough mate. I'm quite into it mainly because I love games like these, nobody plays Frontlines online anymore and Bad Company was a real dissapointment so it's been a while since I've had some decent objective based squad FPS action.

Oh yeah, I love these kind of games too, hence my annoyance in disappointment. I put a shit ton of time into BF2 and was looking forward to a similar kind of thing. Sadly I think the lack of depth also hurts the experience over time too, as I did start to miss some of the variation of playing as the rather different classes and opportunities BF2 had. If Frontlines is so good maybe I should check it out, though do you mean the online games are almost dead?

Well there are still people playing it but whereas once you had a choice of several busy game rooms, there's generally just one 50 player game going on and a few smaller ones. Not necessarily a bad thing as the only people playing it now are those who play it properly and you can pick it up for about £7 second hand. I know a lot of people didn't like it though, mainly because the sniper rifle needs a lot of leading to hit properly, the game fogs out to hide redraw distance deficiencies and with 50 people in a room it occasionally lags a bit. £7 is worth it for the single player campaign though in my opinion which is the best of any game like this I've certainly ever played.

For the first time since I bought it, I experienced a flawless play session. Could be because BIG APPLE 5 AM, or because it was GELB KICK SOME ASS FORCE, but I dunno. Worked super. Has me enthusiastic, too.

New personal record, too. 21 kills, 0 deaths, in the same damn aircraft the ENTIRE MATCH. People are terrible at this vidya.

Also, "I'll be right there" has a new space in the dictionary of awesome.

Played this last night with Tails, Daravon, Devo, Mo0...

...But I was so goddamned drunk I barely remember anything.

You were going on about some crazy shit that made no sense and that X14 kept killing you.

Story, please. Need to determine if it unseats "Uh oh."

We're on (I think it was) Iwo-Jima, and after about a forever timespan of fucking around with airplanes, I decided to take to land because our team sucks and doesn't have any capture points. Skills is all "Where are you at?" but he sees me on the radar and is all "I'll be right there."

As I'm heading up the hill to the Signal Station the first thing I see as I hit the peak is a plane nose dive into the ground where the flag is full speed with Skills bailing out at the last second right before the explosion. It was fucking hilarious. He lived, too!

But like Skills said, we had a blast because we spent the majority of our matches last night both in planes, GELBing it up because everyone else sucks too much to shoot us down.

I was singing the theme from St Elmo's Fire for some reason.

And theres a TON of cheap sniping. I think X14 was camping on a hill by one of the flags and kept taking me out.

Well, spawn camping is always bullshit - but there was a couple of times where something insane would happen. Like I was hiding in a bunker with Daravon (who ran out and got himself killed) and I just kept lobbing grenades out the door to keep whoever it was at bay and it was like they shot me from around the corner and up a hill. Totally what the fuck.

You realize this is awesome because you apparently don't remember that we actually figured out that you were committing suicide, and "X14" killing you was actually the Suicide -10 popping on your screen, and you were totally misreading it.

Well, the text in this game is seriously fucking tiny. :(

Also, yeah, I killed myself a couple of times, but even you pointed out that there was a lot of absolute bullshit going on.

If Devo's saying things have improved then I might have to try this again. I do still have the game so might be tempted to fire it up if a bunch of GFFers are on.