Once the Titan's shields are down, you can either continue to bombard it from the outside, or you can board it and attempt to blow the reactor from inside. This brings about some very intense firefights onboard the Titans that are reminiscent of base battles in PlanetSide, only on a smaller scale.
I certainly prefer the objective-based nature of Titan mode over running back and forth capturing flags, but there are some drawbacks. Titan mode is limited to 48 players rather than the usual 64, no doubt because the lag would get very severe with too many people fighting it out in the reactor room. It's bad enough with 48 players, particularly if a commander moves the Titan with a lot of people onboard. Another concern is that, while the game includes 10 maps, just 5 of them can be played in Titan mode, which will likely leave you wanting more if you enjoy this style of play.
In-Game Ads
EA decided to experiment with a new form of revenue in BF2142 by serving ads in the game. There is also a system in place for them to monitor the metrics of these ads, although we have been assured that they will not be snooping through any files unrelated to the game. As you can imagine, this has caused a ruckus among the Battlefield community.
I've been looking for ads in the game, but all I've seen so far is billboards promoting imaginary products. Assuming they do a decent job of placing real ads on those billboards, I doubt that it will have an overly negative impact on the game. Although it would be nice if the benefits of that extra revenue were passed on to the consumer in some way, that still seems a long way off. Given that there are plenty of financially successful titles without in-game ads, it's hard to swallow the argument that the revenue is needed because games are getting more expensive to make.
Technical Problems
I participated in the multiplayer beta of BF2142, so I had high hopes for a reasonably bug-free launch, especially since the first patch was released the same day as the game. This series has a long tradition of irritating technical problems, and BF2142 is at best a small improvement. As in the beta, if I turn on the built-in voice chat, the game will crash to the desktop within 5 minutes of play. Even with VoIP disabled, it will periodically crash to desktop with no warning or error message. For a while I was having a lot of problems connecting to game servers, and then kept getting dropped because my connection to the master server was lost. The stats system has also gone on the blink, failing at times to update ranks and provide access to unlocks. Some of these issues have already been addressed, but if the patch history of BF2 is any indication, others aren't likely to be resolved for a long time.
One thing that did work properly for a change is the server browser. It has favorites, a history list, and even a buddy tracker. If you use the advanced tab, you get numerical pings rather than those green, yellow, and red icons.
Bottom Line
Overall, BF2142 is probably the best game in the series so far, but it's definitely not much different from BF2 in terms of gameplay. It's great to have Titan mode and the more substantial unlock tree is likely to be a hit. The futuristic setting works fine for me, although I know that some consider it a little bland for science fiction. While I would recommend it to people who don't have BF2 without hesitation, for a lot of current BF2 players it will feel like an expensive expansion pack. You might want to give the free Point of Existence 2 mod a try before you buy BF2142, because you would really, really have to love Battlefield to warrant owning both of these titles.
