The Squad leader beacon is pretty cool. They can lay down a spawn point that remains active even after they die. The problem is that when you spawn there, you fly down in a drop ship that the enemy can see. When you "land" you are disoriented for a few moments. I got knifed a few times and shot a bunch more. None of the squad leaders I was with could figure out how to pick one up and lay down another. The beacons are destructable by enemy fire.

The support turret was pretty neat. I didn't use one, but they were used against me. They will keep firing after the person who layed it down dies. There is no obvious way to tell if it's going to shoot at you or the enemy, that I could tell. A grenade will take it out, or a few clips of rifle fire.

The cloaking device is pretty neat. You can't see them from med to long range, but if you get up close, they are pretty obvious.

I like the underbarrel shotgun on the assault rifle, it's autofire (no load time) but it only carries 3 rounds. Nice trade off.

The defib works good. The recharge time seems a little quicker.

I didn't play the demo, so I don't know what was in it. Did you have the hover tanks? Those things are awesome.

Vehicle combat was a little tough for me, because I didn't know all the weapons or what can beat what. Once I was in an APC vs. APC battle and we didn't seem to be able to hurt each other. We just kept firing EMP grenades until I got smoked by an aircraft.

The walkers are pretty neat and after I figured out the interface, they aren't too hard to drive. You are able to tell which way the top versus the legs are facing with a bit of practice.

None of the unlocks seem to game breaking. Not too many people had the weapons yet.

If you entered into the Veteren's program, you get a "2" next to your name/rank.

The login system is much better than BF2. You log into the game with your EA account name/password. From there, you are allowed to have 4 soldiers or profiles to play with. You can put a clan tag on each profile (I believe). MUCH better than the old system. None of that gamespy nonsense. I was a little let down by the BFHQ interface. It's not very well put together. Looking at your stats/medals/ etc. is really confusing. BF2's interface was superior in this regard.

I am sure I am forgetting a ton of things. If you have any questions I can probably answer.

How does the gameplay differentiate itself from BF2?

This game sucks and I have no reason to think so.

Oh. They really need to do something about that. I thought underbarrel weapons were designed to be readily available and quick to use.

Having a really strange problem:

Looks like it won't let me install the patch. I've done it through the EA downloader, but I restart the game and no servers appear for me. If I uncheck the "same version only" button, I get list of 300 servers but they're all red.

My firewall is off.

I'm gonna keep digging. Any suggestions?

OH, I played the single player "Fall of Berlin" map. Looks like the next Karkand!

Feral I had that same issue one night with the demo....reboot of the router did the trick for me.

Here a pretty cool case mod for 2142

Very cool, but I think I'd point it away from me.

The X-Fi option works great for me. Are your X-Fi drivers recent?

Newest available. And X-Fi support works in all my other games. It even works in BF2.

Which driver revision are you using? Do you have the clean ones without all the extra garbage installed or just the regular ones?

Other than the X-Fi thing, I had a great time playing for a few hours today. I particularly enjoyed the one snowed in city map. I don't remember the name, but it was just as much fun as Karkand.

I played like 8 rounds worth and unlocked one whole side of the support set, though I haven't gotten to use the new HMG yet because the unlock servers are apparantly just as slow as they were with BF2.

I played for a bit and got 6 unlocks (I started with 2, so I guess that's cheating).

It is really easy to earn points. There are a ton of little things you can do (kill streaks, defense, offense, etc.) that earn you pins, which give you a couple extra points at the end of the round. You also get a large infusion of points whenever you get a badge. I got one badge for taking out an enemy Titan that was worth 40 points. In a single round, I earned 39 points just playing, but walked away with 129 due to bonuses.

I've got the defibs, 2x grenades, AP Mines, C4, NetBat (Recon), and cloaking device.

APMs are great. They're just claymores, work exactly the same, but for Titan defense they're incredible. It's also nice being able to carry both claymores AND C4, for trapping the hell out of stuff. I do need to unlock that Recon carbine though. The sniper rifle is powerful and accurate, but not suited to fighting in hallways; I end up using my pistol, in fact.

Everything went surprisingly seamless. Installed, patched and up and running. No updating of video drivers or anything. Better performance than BF2, too.

I was very apprehensive about all the crap that came up lately about the game and was to the point where I was going to avoid it altogether (especially when the demo didn't even work for me). After doing more reading on the game I got more interested and took the plunge tonight.

I haven't played it much, but I like it so far. Hopefully I'll get a better chance this weekend to get some time in.

As to Thursday night games I think 2142 is a pass for this week as folks are still waiting for orders to arrive. So it'll be vanilla BF2 this week. Next week perhaps we'll switch to 2142. Again I will not be on Thursdays for a couple of months due to my current show so if someone else wants the honor of setting up the Thursday game please do!

So the whole "it's okay, the spyware doesn't do anything" analysis from this thread could be because it's not turned on yet? What a delicious time for Hateraide. (I will now shut up in this thread until the game goes into ad mode.)

Had a great night playing 2142 last night. Some impressions:

It's way different than the demo. The map they chose for the demo was ok, but it's really not nearly as good as the few I played last night. There was one map that has a structure on one side of the map that is essentially a network of futuristic trenches. Since it's a vehicle heavy map, this makes for a place for infantry to clash without interference from vehicles. It's also a great place from which to snipe vehicles. I never thought I'd enjoy a vehicle-centered map, but with all the forests, trenches and other little crannies this map was really fun.

Vehicles go down fast. Maybe a little too fast right now. You need a well coordinated team of two to really use the vehicles to their full potential. Having a good turret gunner is essential.

With many of the unlocks already unlocked, the gameplay is fast and furious. It feels faster than BF2 for some reason. The battles on board the Titan are insanely kinetic and are a great place to earn points. My first unlocks were grenades, defib and the under-barrel shotgun. I was initially disappointed with the shottie as it has a massive recoil, and you only get three shots before reload. In the tight halways of a Titan, the shotgun rules. Between that and some well tossed grenades, I finallly got a decent score on a map. Slick and I tied with 46 points.

The incentives for following the chain of command are a welcome addition to the game. If a squad leader follows the commander's orders he gets points, and if the squaddies follow the squad leaders orders they get points. It's a nice system that rewards team play.

Speaking of points, I had some depressingly low scores last night. I finished one map with 6 points! The learning curve on some of these maps are steep.

Performance was great for me last night, although once server we were on was stuttery. We left and that solved the problem. The maps load very fast in comparison to BF2.

In all, I would say that although the demo was enjoyable for me it was not representative of the game as a whole. Grenades, remote turrets, different weapon choices etc. make for some interesting tactics, and the other maps are very well designed. I'll go out on a limb and say that the maps in general feel a lot better than BF2's, as does the game play. Certainly they've opened up a more detailed tactical game. Personally, I'm psyched. I only hope that the ads aren't too intrusive simply because it would be a shame to ruin such a good game.