Battlefield 2 Forever: A guide to the best BF2 mods

Posted at: Tuesday 4th December 2007 by Mike Jennings

An army of fans have created a huge range of mods for Battlefield 2, from hyper-realistic conversions to comedy mods with Lego and Pirates. Mike Jennings takes a look at the scene

Alan Boney is the head of Public Relations for Project Reality, one of the most popular Total Conversions available for Battlefield 2, and one of the biggest successes for Black Sand Studios. Black Sand was founded by a ‘core group of mod teams in 2006’, says Alan, and has been a ‘fantastic success’, preserving ‘individual mod teams’ whilst allowing content and skills to be shared across several mods.

Because of their major role within the Battlefield 2 mod scene, the Black Sand Studios website is a great place to begin exploring modding the game. New players shouldn’t be worried , says Boney, who seeks to dispel the rumour the installing mods can break the ‘vanilla’ version of Battlefield 2. ‘This is not the case’, he affirms, confirming that ‘they simply use the core Battlefield 2 files to augment the mod files, as all the files install to a separate directory.’

It’s also a vibrant and rewarding community to join, he says, enthusing that ‘it’s like having a lot of free games that are ever evolving; there are continual releases updating, adding and fixing the mod so it’s always kept fresh, especially given the sheer variety of mods available – one minute you could be swashbuckling pirates, and the next fighting off Germans.’

Fan sites and major file sharing portals are also good bets for finding information about mods and reliable servers to download them from. Plenty of the larger sites actually have dedicated Battlefront 2 pages that update with the latest mod and game news, so they’re worth adding to your favourites list. Total Gaming Network, FileFront and Gamespy all maintain Battlefield 2 pages to help you keep up to date with the latest goings-on in the community. Battlefield 2 Online and the Mod Database are, again, worth taking a look at if you’re after a particular file.

Even BF2’s publisher EA, has got in on the act, providing a level of community support that’s rare for the usually protective powerhouse. Its Battlefield portal has regular spotlights on popular mods are backed up with tutorials and EA’s own contribution to their game – semi-regular Booster Packs filled with content. Two have been released so far: the angry-sounding Armoured Fury and the multi-cultural Euro Force.