Review: Forgotten Hope 2

Just because FH2 is a serious war game, doesn’t mean it can’t get a bit surreal occasionally

It’s hard to remember now, but there once was a time when games arrived without a three month frenzy of pre-launch hype. Games magazines just reviewed games that you could actually buy, instead of padding themselves out with vaporware previews. There were no demos, preorders, public betas or appetite-whetting game homepages to let you become an expert on all the neat stuff you couldn’t actually have yet. Our games radar had a range of just a few weeks, and we could still be surprised when something great arrived.

Battlefield 1942 was a milestone in gaming. Before BF1942, we had FPSs, driving games, tank games, and flight games, but along came BF1942 and rolled them all up into a combined arms toybox. This innovation alone would earn it its place in gaming history, but there was more. Much more.

With a few notable exceptions, (such as Novalogic’s Delta Force) FPSs to this point had ushered us through the game along a tunnel littered with triggers, spawns and loot, and while your intrepid avatar could beat his way past any amount or species of level bosses, he could be stymied from wandering off the beaten path by the simple expedient of putting a row of bushes in his way. BF1942 was an early rendition of what we now call a sandbox. Quite a small and non-interactive sandbox perhaps, but how you traversed it, whether on foot, boat, jeep, truck, tank or plane, was up to you. This raised the gameplay issue of how to put enemies in your way, so instead of triggers, BF1942 used bots, which spawned from specific bases complete with preprogrammed goals and behaviours, and then went about their day. The result? A game where each round, even with the exact same setup parameters, never played out the same way twice. Add a few human friends (or enemies) and the potential to work as a team, with drills, strategies and tactics, was all there.

Problems? Just a few maybe. The bot AI wasn’t great, and the landscapes were a bit featureless. Then along came BF2 – same type of game, but with an engine update, richer graphics, new functionality, and a contemporary setting. Now, suppose you liked the BF2 engine, but preferred the WW2 setting? Cue the Forgotten Hope 2 mod team, who built a BF2 mod to do just that.

FH2 is essentially a whole new game. All the skins, vehicles, weapons, sounds, voices and maps, as well as much of the interface functionality, is all the team’s own work. The weapons have been rebalanced for a more authentic experience than the lentil-firing cap guns of BF2. Even the armour facings of tanks have been modelled, so they don’t feel like papier-mache as in vanilla BF2. The forward spotter/rear artillery gunner double team from BF1942 has been reinstated, and the AI is smart enough to earn your respect.

The mod is very nicely packaged too. It’s a hefty download, but the installation is simple, and it’s very stable apart from the very occasional CTD. There are lots of historic maps, which are more involving than the nondescript engagements of BF2, and the lobby interface has authentic WWII footage running on a loop, to remind you that this really happened.

The maps are worth a mention, as most of them are very well designed from a gameplay point of view (although in some cases, switching sides unbalances them a bit, when playing co-op against bots) The desert maps are mostly large and open, focussing on armor and mobility,

I need to ‘jack this truck. And yes, I am wearing jackboots, as it happens.

while the European maps feature lush countryside peppered with atmospheric war-torn villages to make for some tense close-quarters work. (Beware in co-op = the bots can see, and shoot, through hedges)

BF2 was, and is still, a great game. In order to appeal to the large purchasing power of casual or junior gamers, it’s been softened and simplified a bit. The FH2 mod hardens it up again – all the atmosphere, action and intensity of the original BF1942, but in a slick and good-looking engine that mature gamers who enjoy real team work will find a lot of satisfaction in. It’s been a firm favourite of the Gentlemen Gamers for a while now, and we have no hesitation in recommending it.