Battlefield 2 fun

I haven't played FPS (First Person Shooters) in a while. Having a family with 2 little kids doesn't lend itself to having much time to be mucking around playing computer games.
However after I cleaned up the study (spare bedroom) in the house, Santa was good enough to give me Battlefield 2 for xmas.

I had been playing the demo on and off for 2 months and decided to buy the game. Demos are a great way to try before you buy. The full version of the game is always better than a crippled version. In BF2 demo, it was one map, but it was enough to showcase the game.

So I am happily smashing the computer AI bots in singleplayer even on veteran level, so it was time to face reality and play against humans. You can not code the computer to act like humans.
For example, in another multiplayer game Starcraft (real time strategy RTS), we were playing each other in a local LAN game of 6 players. One of players nuked their own base to destroy an attack. The computer would never do that.

So I go to the GameArena Bigpond Games servers and after some false starts due to network problems I am in a 32 player map. I got my ar*e kicked. I think I managed about 10 kills over about 5 games, and was killed 10+ times each of those.
The hardest part was I knew noone in the game, plus I hadn't been using the chat and talk functions at all, so I couldn't communicate quick enough. eg. Stop driving as there are mines ahead.
On the fun side of things I learned a couple of things
1) Head ons at sped are a good way to kill more people even if you die.
2) Some players are awesome flying jets, deadly accurate too.

The funniest situations were
1) Missing throwing a grenade into a helicopter three times... I need practice. I managed to bounce the grenade off the helicopter instead of landing inside which would have killed 4.
2) Being rocket-ed to death and returning the favour later.

More practice is required which should be fun

Have Fun