After playing Titan mode until 4 am
, I've decided to get the game, I get a rush when you put the shields of the enemy Titan down and go with your boarding party flying or driving to blow it!
Dunno how, but there was a moment after all those hours playing that all members of my squad became quite good in boarding and charging through the Titan's corridors taking the defenses down, and then blowing up the consoles and the reactor, the sole objective of accomplising this mission made us work in lot more consolidated way as a squad than what I had previously experienced in BF2.
Besides, I'm starting to love how the soldier kits seem to be more varied, although actually there are less classes, now most of them have more useful weapons like rocket launchers and machine guns that actually work and you can aim very effectively, though most of the weapons lack some of the oomph factor found in BF2. I just can't wait to get the full version to unlock the C4 and also the nades for clearing up those thight corridors on the Titans!
Using the mechs is quite cool as well, being able to dance in circles around your enemies while pounding them with the machine guns and rockets, feels kinda like the helicopters in BF2, but with a lot more firepower and armor
The only thing I disliked about all the vehicles is how fast the guns heat up, and the loading time for most of the weapons, but I guess the designers had to balance gameplay a little bit. Also the fact that you can't point your reticle too high makes you easy prey for the gunships, but there's nothing more satisfying than taking down an incoming gunship whose pilot was careless to fly low enough for you to get your reticle on him, and then taking them down with a single round from your tank cannon or a full barrage of rockets and lead (or is it tungsten/depleted uranium, dunno what kind of ammo vehicles will use in 2142
) from your mech!
Altough the sprint function feel much slower and shorter than it was in BF2, I've read that getting rid of extra armor, and unlocking sprint boosts for your soldier in the full version will make the sprint longer and faster.
So far, I haven't had a single crash, the EA master server disconnected me once from the server in the middle of a round, but I could log on to the same server a couple of minutes later. The game runs quite well at 1280x1024 (this res enabled via the loader as shown at tweakguides) but the framerate can take a hit during a very intense firefight against other mechs, otherwise FPS feel very stable most of the time. There are some bugs like the tanks still running even after you stop pressing the accelerator, and once my mech had this weird strong shaking that didn't stop until I got out of it and re-entered it.
I still stand behind my previous thought that this feels more like a total conversion for BF2 than like a new game, but the possibility of unlocking many more functions (though sadly some of them taken for granted in BF2), the cool factor of driving new vehicles, and the rush I get while playing Titan convinced me of getting a copy of the full version.