Forgotten Hope 2 - Review

While everyone else is mentally preparing themselves for the release of Battlefield 3, and the inevitable toll it will take on people's social lives as they attempt to unlock every weapon set and achievement under the sun, I've been spending my time with the classic Battlefield 2 on the PC, and enjoying the return of an old friend lost from the series known as 'going prone.'

But this is no vanilla Battlefield 2 I've been playing. Rather than return to the sandy deserts of 2005's modern warfare blockbuster, I've been satisfying my cravings for a decent new World War 2 game with the mod Forgotten Hope 2.

Forgotten Hope 2 is a total conversion modification for Battlefield 2 which, as you would expect, puts the focus on the multiplayer and delivers one of the most immersive World War 2 experiences I've ever seen in a game. In terms of detail and scale, it surpasses anything achieved in the genre by any fully-fledged game studio, and to think this was all done by a group of volunteer developers is remarkable. Forgotten Hope 2 won the ModDB 'Mod of the Year' award in 2010, and I'm honestly convinced that if it was a retail title, and not constructed on a dated graphics/physics engine, it would be a true contender for the title of top World War 2 shooter. It just goes to show what a Dev team can do with total control over a project, outside the constraints and time restrictions of a studio.

The main interface of the game is roughly the same as the original BF2 design, requiring an EA online account to begin playing on various Forgotten Hope servers, kept running by donations from a generous fan community. Once into the match, you'll find yourself in either North Africa, Normandy, Greece, Germany, Luxembourg or Belgium during World War 2. The maps themselves - although leaving something to be desired by the modern gamer in terms of graphical quality - are something to marvel at when considering their scope, realism and historical accuracy. These aren't just generic maps thrown together for the purpose of a good gameplay experience. Each map depicts a specific real life WW2 battlefield location, and the developers must have seriously done their homework, as the terrain is a very good representation of what the locations would have looked like during the 1940s, with roads, buildings, rivers, bunkers and trees in the actual places of their real life counterparts. Rather than force the maps to work, the designers have simply imitated the real terrain and let the rest flow its natural course. Here is a good post on the official forum showing map similarities to the real life locations.

The assortment of maps vary in size, from close quarters suburban encounters to expansive stretches of rolling countryside, woodland and desert. Each plays differently, as the movements and tactical options of troops moving from flag to flag are designed to echo the tactical restrictions of the actual battlefield in question. The Africa maps are visually the least impressive, having been included when the Mod was first released, but the more recent Western Front maps feature a much greater level of detail. Grass covered fields and meadows provide cover for crawling infantry, hedges and ditches provide safe passage for otherwise exposed players, explorable buildings and church towers allow snipers to sit atop the scenery and spot incoming units from afar, and long roads and railway lines snake off to the limit of the viewing distance.

The game engine is six years old, and in an industry of rapidly evolving technology, that qualifies as ancient. But with all the meticulous details and masses of rustling foliage - especially in the Normandy maps - the designers have managed to hide its age well, and deliver a huge number of maps (36 at present) that are nothing short of impressive. Seeing an enemy tank rumbling towards you as you lay hidden in a stretch of hedgerow - knowing that one bullet is absolutely fatal in this refinement of the Battlefield formula - is particularly tense and satisfying.

As far as game models are concerned, an equal amount of consideration is shown towards detail and accuracy. I can't recall seeing a single static object in this mod that's been lazily plucked from the core game and dumped onto the new maps, and although there are some to be found, they remain so well hidden that I certainly couldn't identify them. Almost everything down to the finest detail has been created from scratch. That's quite insane when you consider that five armies are fully represented here, including soldiers from seven different nations. The British army alone has twenty-five unique weapons, thirty-two ground vehicles, seven aircraft and six stationary artillery weapons. And depending which map you find yourself on, a selection of weapons will be assigned according to historical availability during that particular battle, and vehicles will be skinned differently according to campaign or weather conditions. I assure you, that no matter where you look, you won't find a World War 2 game that takes its fine details more seriously.

So it looks alright for it's age, and the maps are packed full of detailed places to lay low and plan your assault. But how does it actually play?

Forgotten Hope 2 isn't a perfect game experience at all. Infact, I recall playing it for the first time and being quite shocked by the clumsy jumping function and archaic keyboard mapping. Trying three times to leap over a waist-high wall while bullets are flying past your head is a little bit absurd when considering Call of Duty's auto-scaling mechanic, but games have improved a lot since 2005. Also sadly missed is the destruction system incorporated by Dice in the more recent iterations of Battlefield, such as Bad Company 2, where the Frostbite engine is used to simulate destruction on an entirely convincing level. Firing a tank's gun at a wall in FH2 results in nothing but dust and smoke, and the absence of this destruction feature is felt if you're used to playing the contemporary versions of the game.

It's plainly obvious that all of the above complaints are down to limitations of the original core game, and can't really be held against Forgotten Hope 2, which squeezes far more out of the Refractor 2 game engine than Dice ever managed to, and more than makes up for its own shortcomings. We as gamers have been utterly spoiled by the best technology the interactive entertainment industry has to offer, and the gameplay here isn't bad at all. Once you get used to the fact that there are a few age related flaws, you'll realise this was cutting edge technology back in 2005 (bullet material penetration) and the game engine is sturdy and very playable. It may not be competetive with current game design, but Refractor 2 certainly isn't a bad engine. There's quite an experience to be had here. The more you play, the more involved you get, and the more other first-person shooters just seem to pale in comparison.

Accuracy and timing is key to surviving on the battlefield, as even with standard rifles and carbines, shooting distances are incredibly lengthy and realistic. Peeking down the tiny reticule of your ironsight and seeing an unidentified footsoldier as a few tiny pixels on the horizon (at 1080p) is quite a common occurrence, but all the more satisfying when you can drop him from that range. Recoil is vicious, so unless your firing location is very well concealed, you wont often get a chance to line up your sights for a second shot before someone homes in on you. It's at this point when I realised that trying to jump over waist-high walls wasn't the best idea anyway, and it was much more beneficial to my health to crawl around them unnoticed.

Weapon combat in Forgotten Hope 2 is about as real as it gets, as in almost every instance a single bullet will kill. When you first start playing, you'll get used to the pop, whizz and crack of a bullet appearing from God-knows-where and flinging you to the dirt in a tumble of amusing ragdoll physics. It's a case of having a keen eye and being quick to take the shot, but despite the frustration involved in dying so quickly and frequently, things get easier as you become accustomed to the setup, and there's much more satisfaction to be had from gaining a kill here than in any other first person shooter I'm familiar with.

Vehicles are employed well in the game. Seeing a tank rumbling towards you as you plod down the street with a rifle in hand is an encouraging sign to dive into the nearest door or window, or simply play dead. Like other Battlefield games, enemy units remain unmarked on the mini-map unless 'spotted' by yourself or an allied player, so playing dead can often be a very valid tactic. The tank, on the other hand, finds it very difficult to hide, and can easily be outsmarted by fast moving troops on the street with explosive charges. The balancing is good, so nobody can enter a vehicle and spend the next hour on a killing spree.

But what this mod nails so well is the atmosphere. Wide open fields bordered by hedgerows that conceal narrow country lanes. Dead livestock littering farmyards and flocks of birds scattering from the sound of a gunshot. Eruptions of dirt flying skyward as artillery rains down around allied soldiers, rushing to find a covered position to plan their approach across open terrain. Spitfires and Messerschmitts dogfighting high in the sky, diving down for lethal strafing runs at scurrying units on the ground. German MG42s spraying lead across the frontline. It's all here, and unlike the corridor based WW2 shooters that have obliterated the market, it lets you play the game however you want. In the spirit of the Battlefield name, Forgotten Hope 2 doesn't just concentrate on the deeds of an individual soldier in a tunnel view of warfare, but instead creates a convincing backdrop and the means to go into combat, and lets you decide the rest.

If World War 2 shooters really are your preference, and you can overlook the older graphical finish to this fantastic mod, it comes highly recommended. Infact, I'd happily say if you don't atleast try it, you're missing out on something that stands not just as an unbelievable undertaking in game modification, but also as true competition for the games we spend £40 for. And in Forgotten Hope 2, you probably get more content. The mod is being updated all the time with new maps, vehicles and weapons (a recent update added some post-processing effects that arguably improve the look of the game) and I doubt the community will let the support of their project slide for some time to come. 

Forgotten Hope 2 v2.4 with extra post-processing effects (focus blur while aiming)

The highlight of the game? Definitely the Ramelle/Neuville map, which takes the fictional scenario shown at the end of Saving Private Ryan, where Tom Hanks and co. defend the bridge from a German armoured division. The ruined town, as seen in the film, is recreated so well in-game that you'll be running around scouting out your favourite movie locations within minutes.

The Saving Private Ryan map

Playing Forgotten Hope 2 will cost you next to nothing. You will need only the following items, in this order:

• A copy of Battlefield 2 - no expansion packs needed, just the core game. You can get it for £3.99 on Amazon or Play (bargain)
• Battlefield 2 patch 1.41
• Battlefield 2 patch 1.50
• Forgotten Hope 2 (Latest Version) part 1, 2 and 3 from here
• Manually install Punkbuster from here and make sure Battlefield 2 is added to the program list