This game ate up a great deal of my time after it was released in 2005. The squad based mechanics were solid, the action was intense, and the battles were expansive.

It was a real change to go from online shooters like Counter-Strike, Call of Duty and Halo, to a game like Battlefield 2. The maps and teams are bigger, but because of the squads, you're not overwhelmed with voice chatter.

As with any game, playing with friends is the best. In my case it was my brothers. Together we made an unstoppable force! Okay not really, but I thought we were pretty good.

Dylan was usually the squad leader. He seemed naturally inclined to choosing good targets, communicating well, and not dying so the rest of the squad could spawn on him.

Zach was the pilot, usually opting for an attack helicopter if he could get in one. My highest scores came from being the gunner while he was piloting. Some of his little tricks included:

- jumping out of a plane and into the seat of a helicopter on the ground.
- switching to the gunner seat, guiding a missle to a target, and then switching back to the pilot seat before crashing.
- dodging air to air missiles from planes with loops and corkscrews.

In the early days, the TV guided missiles didn't have a range, so as the gunner you could shoot one from one side of the map and guide it all the way into a helicopter or other target on the other side of the map that you couldn't even see to begin with.

Also in the early days, the blackhawks were way overpowered. The mini guns on either side could mow down any infantry or vehicle resistance. If there was any armor you could just skip that point and go to the next. An engineer in the back could continually repair the helicopter in flight. Later on they gimped the miniguns and made the helicopter weaker i think. But it was still fun to come in guns blazing, drop off a squad, and then circle until they were done.

I added links to my stats, and Zach's stats on the right. Dylan used some crazy name with numbers instead of letters that I can never remember.