Battlefield 2: Modern Combat

Battlefield 2: Modern Combat was released simultaneously with the PS2 and Xbox versions, and also as one of the launch titles of the Xbox 360 in November 2005, with this version meant to demonstrate what the new console generation could do beyond the rest. The gameplay content, missions, and multiplayer maps remain the same as on the older generation, but the technical side changes – higher resolution, more detailed vehicle and terrain textures, more elaborate lighting, and smoother explosion effects were meant to be a showcase of how Battlefield battles would look in the following years on the new hardware generation, even though under the hood it was still essentially the same game content as on the PS2.

This showed mainly in the scale of the battles, where the new generation could display more units and vehicles on screen at once without the frame-rate drops that plagued older consoles on large open maps full of tanks and helicopters. The Xbox 360 also benefited from the Xbox Live online service, so multiplayer offered a more stable connection, unified voice chat, and better-organized matches with player leaderboards than on the PS2 or the original Xbox, where online play depended on the less mature and more fragmented infrastructure of individual publishers. For many players, this launch version was thus their very first impression of the Xbox 360, and the game served mainly as a technological showcase of the new generation rather than a significantly different gameplay experience.

Why play it: Suitable for those who want to experience the same game in its smoothest and graphically cleanest form, just as players saw it at the launch of the Xbox 360. If you instead pick up the PS2 version, you won't gain anything extra in terms of content – the difference is purely technical, but for a new-generation launch title it mattered a great deal at the time, and it still stands today as an interesting record of the transition between console generations.