The successor to Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142 is set in the distant future, where Al Gore's worst (or perhaps best) dreams have come true. A new ice age is upon the world, so vaguely British people are fighting vaguely Russian people for vaguely discernable reasons. Apparently, in the distant future, when battle walkers and hovertanks are the technology level, cold weather is an insurmountable obstacle.
It might be my own mental problems at work, but playing futuristic shooters frees me from the whole “realism” issue, and makes tolerating the game much easier. When the weapons are purely fictional, there's no temptation to make note of the glaring inaccuracies in their performance. Shooting a soldier in the chest with a .50 caliber sniper rifle wasn't fatal in BF2. That's ridiculous. In this game, who knows what caliber anything is, or how effective body armor is? You just go with it. One gun shoots faster, one gun does more damage, one has a bigger clip, etc. You just pick the ones that work for you. Put simply, the futuristic setting is less prone to nit picking, at least for me.
The “unlock“ and “kit” system has changed, and I think it's for the better. In BF2, you simply chose one of seven kits, and off you went. There were relatively few unlockable weapons, and the basic guns were pretty sufficient in most cases. In fact, in some situations, the basic guns were preferrable (I found this to be the case with the Assault kit). So, right out of the gate, you could play a respectably equipped soldier.
Not so in BF2142.
You start out with nothing, not even reasonable sprinting abilities, and you have to unlock everything. Early unlocks come quickly, so it won't take long to get your basic grenades and sprinting ability (if you so choose), but there's still more unlocks (roughly 32 if mermory serves). The seven kits of BF2 have been merged into four. Sniper and Special Forces are now “Recon.” Assault and Medic are now “Assault.” Support and Engineer are now “Support.” Anti-Tank and the new Anti-Aircraft class are... I dunno “Anti-Vehicle.” I forget. In any case, you start out with only the basic weapon for the class, and then can purchase upgrades that help you fulfil that role. The upgrades come in a sequence, and culminate with an upgraded weapon. You can share the options within any class but not between classes. Thus, while you can load out as Assault and toss in a Medic's defibrulator, you can't throw in the demo packs from the Recon class. It's an interesting system, a good evolution from the BF2 system, though the upgrades come at a declining rate as you level up, and upgraded classes are going to be vastly more effective than unupgraded, so it discourages using anything but your preferred classes. It's also a bit linear and clunky, and it'd be neat to play a system that allows more merging of classes and gear.
Two major issues I had with BF2 were the aircraft and the artillery. While marginally realistic in terms of being horrible inescapable death, neither was very fun. In BF2142, aircraft have been significantly downgraded, and while they still can take out a tank when piloted with skill, they're much less dominating, much more vulnerable, and much more in balance. Artillery remains, and is still a frustrating, ridiculous part of the game, but not to the extent that it was in BF2. It's much easier to find overhead cover to hide from it.
BF2142 adds “battle walkers,” which are pretty typical ambulatory robots with guns on them. They're fun to watch stomping around, and add some tactical interest with their different profile and vantage point, but they're nothing revolutionary. They seem to be a bit stronger than tanks, both head to head, and in hunting infantry, but it's hard to judge. All in all, I find the vehicle combat to be extremely inconsistent and bizzare. In BF2 I had a clear idea of how many shots it took to kill various vehicles with various weapons.
Not so in BF2142.
I've pumped a half dozen anti-tank rockets into a walker, and had it shrug it off. I've then had a single anti-tank rocket knock 3/4ths or more of the armor off my walker. I've fired three and four shots from emplaced anti-tank guns into a walker and had it turn around and blast me. I've had the same gun take my walker out in one shot from head on. It's really very bizzare, and significantly diminishes my interest in the vehicular aspect of the game. I've had some fun with walkers, but I don't really like big vehicle battles.
In this respect, BF2 is much like BF2142... The urban maps are most popular, because, while the integration of infantry and vehicles is supposedly a drawing point for the Battlefield games, I don't think it actually works all that well in larger scales, and many people prefer to see no more than a tank or two in the battle. I already see “Berlin/Belgrade” servers, which run two very similar snowy urban maps, which are by far the best in the game. Much like the “Karkand/Mashtuur/Sharqui” servers that were so common in BF2.
There are also new “Titan“ maps, which play similar to the traditional “Conquest“ maps, but add large flying battleship sorts of things, Titans, and the teams try to kill the other side's Titan to win. They do this by controlling points, just like Conquest, and those points shoot missiles which weaken the Titans' shields, allowing boarding and finally destruction. I haven't done much Titan play, it's not terribly different, and tends to involve the larger, vehicle heavy maps I usually avoid. It doesn't add much to the game for me, but that's just a matter of preference.
The game does suffer from a few glitches.
First off, the stat/unlock tracking, which is so critical to the game, is quite buggy. Perhaps 25% of the time when I connect to a new server, none of my unlocks are available. While one might have tolerated this in BF2, since unlocks were relatively minor there, and you can take the field at 90% efficiency even without them. In this game there's absolutely no way you're going to take the field without the upgrades you've worked hard to get, and without which you're at 50% at best. You log off and try again.
I've also had some trouble with crashes. Nothing horrible, but I've had a few crashes to desktop while in game, and even more while in the menu system. Speaking of the menu system, this remains a really weak spot in the game. The server browser was always abysmally horrible in BF2, and while it's a bit cleaner in BF2142, it doesn't have as much detailed info on the server itself. I used to like to use this in BF2 to check if the server I was joining had excessively stacked teams, or somebody whoring aircraft (as visible by their 48-3 score).
What's really amazingly awful, though, is that the menu system actually loads... If you're in the game, and you hit Esc to get your menu, it takes a good four seconds to come up. That's bad, but what's worse is that the game has no context sensitivity regarding the Esc key. I reflexively hit Esc to back out of menus, so I might go in to quickly change my loadout before my next spawn, then want to Esc out of that interface, only to have the game spend eight seconds loading the menu, then unloading it as I frantically try to get back into the game. It's a minor detail, but one that would easily be fixable. It's very irritating when you're hustling to get to a spot to pick off an incoming enemy squad, only to spend precious seconds standing there like a tard, while the game tries to load its menu.
Graphics are pretty comparable to BF2142, which is to say that they're very good, and represent the top end of current multiplayer FPS games. The futuristic setting adds some new visual effects not seen in BF2, but mostly it's the same engine. The sound is very good, and sets the mood well.
All in all it's an incremental improvement over BF2, nothing revolutionary, but some new ideas, and some improvements that I think demonstrate that the designers are aware of what was good and bad about their previous efforts.