Reviews - ChrisT|GamingZone

Nations at War Standalone is simply said, an appalling experience. This new build is the complete opposite of upgrading a project, it's simply insane to witness this happen to such a modification. Even so, I'm here to share my review.

Good Parts:

Locations – Folks who want to play basically nearly every single location in existence for Battlefield 2, this is your closest bet when it comes to a mass-scale number of maps in a single modification. However, quantity doesn’t mean quality. Nations at War although has an ample amount of locations, they have tons of issues. Some of them run horribly, some look atrocious, others straight up refuse to work and crash to the desktop. Visuals, balance, and many other things have issues in them.

Vehicles – Now one thing I can’t hate for sure are the provided vehicles. Although Frostbite assets are present in this mod, it still does feature some unique vehicles. For example: submarines, attack boats and so on. It's incredible to see something like this in a game like Battlefield 2, so that’s a huge thumbs up.

Factions – You have basically everyone from Vanilla and Special Forces Expansion, plus custom ones from other modifications, which is neat. Although I’m going to point out the disappointing fact that US and Russian teams use Battlefield 3 assets, leaving a weird impression of playing a knock-off Frostbite title, a typical thing found in asset-flip projects for Battlefield 2.

Bad Parts:

Armament – Nations at War instead of creating custom assets and improving upon original decided to go the route of using the same damn Frostbite assets that literally every copy-pasta modification uses. Not only that however, it doubles down on it by adding gadgets and knives from respective games. About the customization menu, I thought it provided you the ability to change knives, pistols and rifles to your liking. Instead of that however, you just click a button to randomize the assets. Weapons are a complete downgrade to what the original experience was.

Interface – New menus and interfaces have been added to the modification, but they are iffy at best. While I don’t have serious problems with the main menu navigation, I have tons of complaints on the gameplay UI department. Some elements have HD texts, some are the pixels seen in the vanilla Battlefield 2. CPName_bla_bla_bla still exists, that’s not a huge surprise here. The UI is a mess for sure, I’d like to see more work put in this department.

Bots – The AI in Nations at War can either be playable, or absolutely braindead. Sometimes they can pass near you without doing any hostile activity, and others they can straight up snipe you with a rifle from really far away. This instability creates a frustrating experience. A lot of work needs to be spent in this department, since nearly every map I have played had issues with these folks.

Polish – Should I really emphasize how bad the polishing department of Nations at War is? Mismatched deployment and reloading sounds for weapons, weird ammo capacity for guns, UI problems, bot problems, and so on. This is an open secret.

Stability – Nations at War by far is the most unstable project I’ve ever played, only coming down second to Medal of Freedom. For you to understand everyone, take a generic high end system, and it manages to run poorly even on such an overboard config. Loading times are straight up suffering, taking over 5 minutes for a single location to load on an SSD. Sometimes the game rounds last shorter than loading screens themselves. Talk about optimization. Crashes also exist, some which are random during gameplay, and others happen after loading locations. And the cherry on top, the performance. 20FPS slideshows on an RTX 3080, top of the line GPU as of current release window. I’m afraid to see how lower end systems run this Standalone build.

Installation – For a wrap, the installation. Nations at War has by far, the worst ever installation procedure I’ve ever seen for a Battlefield 2 modification. Not split in zip files that are partitioned, not in executables that are partitioned. It’s a launcher that has miserable download speeds, only working with 2-3 files at a time. You can download Call of Duty Warzone faster than this Standalone mod, that’s not a joke. To add more insult to injury, the standalone build didn’t even work after the download finished, throwing me Battlefield 2 assets missing error. I found out that I needed to copy Battlefield 2 and Special Forces expansion packs themselves into the mods folder of Nations at War for it to finally work properly. How in the hell can someone release a mod in such a state?

Final Mark: 4/10

This is an extremely cut down version of my review. For full details and information, please check this content piece. There is a lot more said there than in this written review: Youtube.com

Firebird, what an unlucky unlucky guest to fall in my sights while browsing projects for me to play. In this review, this mod will be roasted with the power of 2 suns by me, especially after witnessing the huge problems and downsides during the playtime I got the past couple of weeks.

Good Parts:

1. Locations - Credit where credit is due, most of the locations featured in this mod are decent enough, but that’s only if you count vanilla ports, and other custom locations carefully sto- *ahem* shared from other modifications. Real bad start for a mod when even in the good parts section I start praising content created by other content creators out there. Because some locations have been plagiarized, this point is contested. Basically what I can say here is that vanilla locations are decent, and only some custom ones are great in quality. And that’s the only semi-decent point I could find in Firebird.

Bad Parts:

1. Armament - Starting of course with the weapons of Firebird, these are straight up Battlefield 4 copy-pasta’s. From the start I was greeted with the legendary SCAR-H that looks exactly like the version seen in Frostbite games. Sounds and animations also have been taken from that, and a whopping 90% of guns are from Battlefield 4. If that’s not a sign of a copy-pasta, then I don’t know what is. I’m not even going to discuss the balance of these things, since shotguns can destroy vehicles with a whole mag given the opportunity to do so. Isn’t it lovely when a rifle can blow up a car from 20 kilometers away which is just passing by. Anyways, guns are absolutely atrocious in Firebird, and I gouge my eyes out trying to take down an enemy with them. I think Nerf guns are more effective for this purpose than whatever M249/Type-88 was supposed to do.

2. Vehicles - I would’ve praised Firebird for the vehicle tweaks it has. If it came out before Alpha Project that is. Just like the locations, vehicles have some plagiarized assets, and those are the mechanics and interface. Imagine the surprise entering a vehicle, and seeing the UI from Alpha Project just chilling there and saying what's up. Except those 2 moments I have mentioned, everything else is pretty much the same as vanilla. Oh wait, they actually have some custom camo on the jeeps and tanks, but I highly doubt it’s made by the developers of Firebird, especially when you look at locations and armament.

3. Interface - Outside is 2022, a lovely trainwreck of a year, having decent AAA game releases with high quality UI’s. But instead of looking at wonders of UI design, I’m still looking at the pixelated mess from 2006 that Firebird didn’t give a damn to upgrade, and just taking it from other projects. Look, I’m grateful that it doesn’t feature those Battlefield 3/4 style abominations and that makes my eyes bleed upon the sight. But leaving everything a pixelated mess doesn’t cut it. Modern projects for Battlefield 2 feature modern refreshed UI, and sometimes look better than full-fledged games. At least some effort should’ve been spent on this department, instead of throwing all your forces in porting Battlefield 4 content for the looks.

4. Plagiarism - And for the cherry on top, the copy-pasta content. I’m not surprised when I see vanilla locations shared between projects, since these are the starting point in mod development, because they are base maps provided in Battlefield 2. Seeing them radically changed is quite awesome, and gives you a new experience entirely on the fields you already know. But, just taking maps that other projects have and throwing them in for the sake of content is not only wrong, but insulting, especially when you have dog**** guns and vehicles. As mentioned with the locations part, I have seen content taken from Allied Intent Xtended, some of which is iconic for me since I’ve played that mod for so long. That’s not the only case however, as there is the aforementioned UI for heavy vehicles from Alpha Project, even the radio sound as well. And of course, the obvious Battlefield 4 weapons that I’ve seen countless times in other copy-pasta projects. Those things make me sick to the stomach, since not only are they bad, you can’t even use them properly. Anyways, as you guessed, this bad part takes a lot of points out of Firebird.

Final Mark: 3/10

Omnicide. I think there is no point in me explaining what the project is all about. This is one of those mods that became classics for Battlefield 2, me spending days and nights playing in these iconic locations. For this review however, I’ll take my pink glasses off and give it a proper verdict! Let’s start off with Good parts:

1. Maps – The locations chosen for Omnicide are great and are very immersive. You have night-time fights (which are my favorite), as well as some day-time ones. Zombie Mosque’s chilling setting is truly awesome, just like Infected By The Dead, Chernobyl Outskirts, and many others. Every single one of them is cool, and has its respective style, which I appreciate. Great job, I wish I could play on more, but the number provided here is enough.

2. Zombies – The main part of the whole Omnicide of course, the zombies. These models are properly made, and sometimes scare the living hell out of you when coming from behind. You always have a sense of urgency when near them, and that is a very solid point.

3. Weapons – Can’t forget about these of course. Nearly every weapon seen in Omnicide has been remade, featuring custom models, sounds, textures and animations. To this day I love how G3A3 reloads in this mod. When you take in hands the machine gun, it truly feels like a tool to take down huge hordes of zombies. Also let’s not forget about the awesome easter egg AK-2015, the one-shot machine that’s awesome to have around!

With some positives pointed out, it’s time for Bad Parts:

1. Survival Mode – While Escape is real fun to play, especially on the huge locations seen in the mod, I can’t really say the same about Survival. Majority of locations were given a very small area of action, for example, Hell’s Facility. It’s extremely claustrophobic, and when it’s flooded with zombies, it’s straight up a nightmare. The support kit with the sniper won’t help you much because it’s not a one-shot kill on the zombies, and the pistol is absolute garbage when it comes to damage. Only on large locations you have a chance to score some good rounds, but forget about it entirely in close-quarters versions, unless you have some friends around to help you.

2. Broken Assets – I’m going to classify the huge bugs in this category, since Omnicide is basically filled to brim with them. My first big complaint about the game is this “Zombie Mode” garbage. For some reason if you are killed, you suddenly switch to the other faction, and literally can play as a Zombie. While this worked fine in Co-Op, and allowed you to research the map to your liking, in Singleplayer it’s extremely annoying. This was the main reason I played the 3.0 version, because it didn’t have this team-switch problem. Next up is Carrier Escape which is literally unplayable. Yeah you can reach the escape point, but the boat simply doesn’t work. Same can be said about the flag, it’s uncapturable for whatever reason. Quality control issues can be seen everywhere, from flags clipping through walls, to weapons being able to fire while the reloading animation is still going. Let’s not forget about zombies that speak Arabic for some unknown reason. These are some rough patches that this project hasn’t fixed since the Final version dropped. Some new content was teased back in 2015 with some news, but since then nothing new appeared on the website. That’s a shame.

3. Crashes – Omnicide is prone to crash very often, and I’ve experienced this multiple times back in the day. This was one of the more unstable projects that were around, and I can completely understand why. Remaking an AI made for gun battles into zombies is a very hard task for sure. But still, these crashes ruined some good runs I had, and it was a very disappointing conclusion to them every time it happened. Also, the Conquest problem. Developers never stated that you should host the game in Coop Mode only. When you forgot to switch Conquest mode, the game would simply crash to desktop without warnings. This was one huge reason why my friends refused to play Omnicide with me at internet cafe’s, because hosting a server was a big problem.

Final Mark: 7/10

Sadly lost the script for Review :(
Video version: Youtu.be

Sadly lost the script for Review :(
Video version: Youtu.be

Zone of Continuous Fire, a mod which from some reason had a lot of content cut going through it’s development cycle. Let’s have a look and see what happened here.

Good Parts:
1. Weapons – This modification, like the past editions, has some cool weapons to show. Models quality are top notch, and the animations are really good looking. Some of them are recycled though, I’ve seen these before in other projects. But these have been tweaked to fit the setting, so good job.

2. UI – You can’t ignore this part, the interface received a serious uplift going through version. The minimap section has been polished, and this dark-theme is something I like a lot. Same can be said about vehicles, these had their UI improved going forward, with cool overlays and indicators. Good job!

3. Vehicles – These have been tuned, and now have different mechanics applied to them. For example, the APC’s now have a machine-gun as an additional weapon. While the talks is about those, stationary and car-mounted guns allows you to scope-in, a very welcome change. Not only this, that Black Hawk now has missiles, something that scared the heck out of me. Good job here.

Bad Parts:

1. Removed Content – Probably the biggest problem that this project has right now is downgrades related to it’s content. From what I’ve experienced in the past, this project had more custom locations introduced, alongside new factions. Going back to older versions proved my theory, as the Ukrainian controversial content has been removed. Promised Chinese faction is now gone from the latest 2.5.1 release, alongside others. I’m not big fan of the vanilla locations, since these are old as hell going in 2021, so having some custom locations is something essential these days. Some old weapons could’ve made it in this build just by tuning them out, since the problems for them where mostly the damage output. Shame that content was removed from this project.

2. Polishing – The infamous issues have returned everyone, under the form of CPName underscore location name, as well as some missing vehicle names from the texts seen in UI. You can spot this kind of stuff on basically every location on this map, that is a bit annoying to see. Not only that, crashes can happen as well, which is a bit irritating when you are having fun. Airport was a slow start, and just when the action started, yep, goodbye battlefields and welcome my desktop. Some polishing is required in this department.

Final Mark: 8/10

Zone of Continuous Fire still at it again, it’s fun to play this mod, especially with all of the changes introduced with latest patches. The interface hits every point, the grenades now have a warning indicator for you to be aware of surroundings. High-quality icons which are a welcome introduction, along with the dark-themed setting for this mod. Makes an unique experience with it. Weapons have been tuned properly, but it’s a bit annoying to use burst-rifles in the combat without having a full-auto alternative out there. My favorite so far was the SVD, I love how it just destroys everyone with 2 shots, feels really nice. As for the vehicles, yours truly rarely uses those, as I’m more of an infantry man. But I’m glad to say that these have been tuned properly, and you have a great experience in them. Minus some issues with the helicopter, it needs to decollate a bit faster.
As for the drawbacks, I can definitely feel the missing content going into the newly released version. Promised factions and locations introduced with previous versions are now gone in this one, that is one strange thing to witness. I expected content growth, not decrease. Counting that with some polishing issues, such as weird control point names, weirdness seen in UI with the texts, and the crashes, sometimes that can break the immersion.
To sum up, Zone of Continuous Fire is a decent mod to play around with, but you will feel the lacking content if coming from previous versions. My suggestion is to revise this removal going forward, that should mitigate this problem.

Good Parts:

1. Builder Menu – This is the heart of the mod, as it grants the tools to create, delete, duplicate and many more actions on the objects. As stated before, you can spawn vehicles, objects, and many more things. This feature however, is limited by itself. You can’t spawn full-blown houses, or light effects, as expected by me. The interface is clean and it’s not a problem to find the thing you want to spawn. Everything is sorted properly in boxes, and in addition, you have some sweet mechanics like gravity changes, which personally, is one of my favorites. Not only that, it’s possible to save and load your creations, saving a lot of time if you want to have fun right from the get-go.

2. Maps – The maps featured with Sandbox are customized, vehicles and borders being removed for players. Almost every map is available, but it’s a shame there are no Special Forces locations available. Among those, there are 2 additions, one being quite exotic, and the other just being a plain field, with sea, mountain and forest regions scattered somewhere. Vanilla maps have nothing special to them, other than removed limits. I’d like to see more custom locations, but sadly, the development for this mod finished a long time ago.

Bad Parts:

1. No Custom Content – For a bad part, I suppose having no custom content available. I understand that this is nitpicking, but it’s true. You expect a mod coming at least with some custom weaponry, but in Sandbox, only Vanilla content is available. A letdown to be honest. Back then there were mods featuring custom content, it’s would be weird to not ask for something fresh in a project. Not a big deal for me personally, but it’s disappointing to have a sandbox without some spices added to it.

Final Mark: 8/10

As you can see with the sections, there are a few things you can talk about this mod, and I personally don’t enjoy blabbering a lot about a single mechanic. The only serious addition I can speak of is the toolset which can spawn objects, vehicles, and do those gravitational changes. Everything else can be counted as vanilla Battlefield 2. Building stuff with friends is especially fun. I remember when my brother and I were changing Sharqi Peninsula completely, covering the TV Station around forming a base, and having fun dropping vehicles from sky. Sandbox is focused on Multiplayer, hence a gameplay for it is sadly impossible in the current era. I’m glad that I got to play it in the past, and I still have it installed, maybe a gameplay with my brother can do its thing again. Although, nearly 10 years have passed since last time we played together.

Copy-pasta. I put more effort in writing this review than the developer himself.

Offtopic Review for a Game Engine.

Outdated garbage since 2013 resuscitated every single time with a new release done by EA, and DICE.
In my personal opinion, this engine is awful, it can give good looking graphics like Battlefield 1, but never forget the travesty seen on Battlefield 4 release.

Review Updated as of May 2020

Good Parts:

1. Vehicles – Honestly said, this is the strongest part holding the mod together. Tanks, Helicopters, Cars and that interesting “APC” are surely a great addition, and are on point. Both factions have them set properly, in the period of 1960’s and 1970’s. And that’s it mates. This is the only strong good point I could find in the gameplay itself.

Bad Parts:

1. Weapons – I don’t find any reason to not trash these barely-working things. Sorry mates, but even the models look awful, with some exceptions like the AK-47 with adjustable stock. Animations are barely doing justice to these guns, some even reused from vanilla. Damage on pistols is just awful, and I’m dead silent about that Super Bazooka. The only positive thing I’ve seen out of them is the sniping experience, and that was basically it. It was fun, but the animations and models lack in quality a lot.

2. Maps – Apart from the vanilla locations like Strike at Karkand included in this mod, every custom map makes me sick. Imagine your first game, you spawn inside a house, and you clip through some buildings while going out. Or when you spawn through a TV Station, or near an enemy who just knives you when spotted. These are a disappointment, I expected a lot more from the developers. Quite the shame.

3. Quality – This final bad point consists of many nitpicks condensed into one point. First up, horrible voice lines for Israeli soldiers, those sound worse than someone washing headphones and recording audio through them at the same time. Maps still have the canonical CPNAME_Blablabla, rough mistakes in naming such as Isreal and Egypt. Floating objects on maps, ability to fire guns while in reloading procedures, and I can go on and on. The interesting thing is, back in that period, there was no Egypt, it was the United Arab Republic. There are some rough spots which shows that quality wasn’t top spot on the list. That’s honestly, disappointing.

Final Mark: 4/10

Yet another letdown, which I gave quite the high-grade back in the old days. Honestly, I’m disappointed to find this modification in such a state 4 years after my initial review. The developers had a lot of time to release an update, or at least, a patch to fix this travesty. But sadly, nothing has been released, besides some news updates dated back in 2019. The only strong point I could find are the vehicles, which are really cool. But besides that, there is nothing special to be found. Weapons are in low amount, and majority of them are either underpowered, or just have atrocious animations and models. Custom maps are awful to look at, and AI act really strange in those locations. Tall Afar is one prime example of how the map has weak visual components. And over-all, quality check is missing, with floating stuff, clipping through objects, and rough audio quality for voicelines. I’m sorry for such a negative mark, but I’ve seen Battlefield 3 copy-cats doing a much better job at holding content together than this project. I had hopes for this mod to grow higher, but sadly, I witness once again how good ideas fall short after time.