Kits

As mentioned, there are seven kits in the game, each with its own particular strengths and weaknesses.

Assault

The assault class is going to be your standard killing machine, and any given team's primary assault infantry class. While not the most powerful class, assault troopers combine good ammo reserves, body armor, and secondary weapons into a general anti-infantry kit.

The assault class's grenade launcher makes quick work of enemies that clump together, as these poor fools are about to find out.

Unlike some of the more support-oriented classes, like the medic and engineer, assault players get a suit of body armor that will protect them from some of the fire coming their way. You won't be able to stand up to a machinegun for very long, but it will enable you to live just a bit longer while you're taking fire. In addition, all assault players get a weapon-mounted grenade launcher to go along with their automatic or semi-automatic weapon, which will let them fire explosives at a much longer range than will be possible for most classes, although using these appropriately can be difficult. They're great for use against enemy soldiers, and you can sometimes rack up multiple kills by landing one on an enemy fast attack vehicle. Still, they take a few seconds to reload, so you won't want to have to use grenades while engaged in a one-on-one duel; normal weapon fire will be a better choice for most close-range assaults. If you can get the drop on someone, then launching a grenade at them will usually kill them in one shot, but doing so will leave you without the ability to fire for a couple of seconds, so be careful!

In addition to their assault weapons and grenade launchers, assault troopers also get a single smoke grenade as part of their kit, which can be useful to cover up an assault, especially when you're about to bring a whole squad into the area around a flag. Sometimes its best to just use them as a diversion, though, and intentionally mis-throw them into an area you have no intention of entering just to divert your enemy's attention long enough for you to overrun them.

Sniper

The ghillie-suited sniper is going to be both a welcome and feared sight, sometimes inspiring both responses at once, even from your own teammates. While being a sniper in Battlefield 2 is easier than ever (thanks to the total elimination of scope drift), sniping is still a task best left to the professionals, and you should carefully monitor the population of snipers on your team before deciding to become one yourself.

First off, though, it's worth considering the role of a sniper in a game. As in most titles, snipers in Battlefield 2 are long-distance killers, capable of headshotting opponents from a good distance away. They have a harder time going up against enemies at close range, though, due to the fact that the sniper rifle doesn't have a crosshair when aimed from the hip, and due to the fact that their only sidearm is a pistol; the closer your enemy gets to you, then, the more likely it is that you'll die. You should thus not only try to stay a good distance away from your enemies, but also conceal yourself from their view as best as possible. Whether this takes the form of melding into a shadow, crouching under a bush, firing from the windows of a building, or what have you, you're going to need to be as close to invisible as possible if you want to avoid getting punked by the first assault trooper to come along. Since there's no scope drift, as mentioned, you have more options here than you used to; you can actually stand up at a window's edge and fire with near-perfect accuracy, allowing you to pick off soldiers as they come down the street.

Hitting targets from this far away is going to be difficult unless you've mastered the art of sniping.

That said, sniping isn't necessarily going to translate into a massive number of kills for you, even if you manage to find a perfect spot from which to blast away. For one thing, a sniper round won't instantly kill a healthy target unless you hit them in the head. Many players of the demo are reporting that it can sometimes take two or three hits, and that it's difficult to accurately hit enemies, even at relatively short ranges, due to the fact that bullets actually drop as they travel horizontally across the battlefield. If you're good at getting headshots, then bully for you, but most snipers will require at least two hits before their target goes down. The complicating factor here is player movement; smart players will start sprinting for the nearest wall or cover as soon as they get hit by the first bullet. While good snipers are capable of landing shots on moving opponents, the new sprint maneuver is going to allow players to temporarily double their movement speed, which will be difficult to adjust to, even for the talented snipers out there.

What's more, even if you are an excellent sniper and can take people down from long range with good consistency, the dark side of the class is that it rarely has a huge impact on the flow of a game. Snipers, by nature, tend to stay away from the densest portions of a map, which usually wind up being the flag spots. That, compounded with their inability to go toe-to-toe with enemy infantry, means that they'll usually have to avoid getting close to flag spots, even if they spot one that's being undefended by enemy infantry. Since capturing flags is the entire point of the game, and snipers are often going to be the worst class at doing so, choosing to be one is often more about personal glory and big kill totals than helping your team.

Of course, there's exceptions to every rule, and when you can integrate your role as a sniper with the needs of your team, then you can be an effective anti-infantry force or a fantastic spotter. Snipers aren't really needed in squads, so you'd be best avoiding them if possible, or even make your own, one-man squad to enable you to call for supplies or artillery when needed, while giving you a direct voice pipeline to the commander. If you're flying solo, then you can try to take up a position in a central location and keep an eye on enemy locations; since you can use your Q menu while zoomed out, you should be able to spot enemies and call them out to your teammates from a good distance away. If you stay away from the well-worn sniping spots and find a place a bit off the beaten path, then you should be able to remain alive for a while, or at least until the sound of your shooting clues someone in on your position.

Video Walk-through

If you're playing as a sniper, you should more or less immediately move when the enemy figures out your location.

Watch It »

Lastly, it's worth noting that even good snipers will eventually be killed. Although the deathcam of Battlefield 1942, where a dead player would immediately zoom in on the location of the player that killed him, has been eliminated, it's still a relatively simple matter for enemy commanders to ferret you out with scans or UAVs, allowing enemy players to track you down. Artillery is also a fine sniper-killer, at least in smaller games, since snipers often enjoy getting up on top of cranes and tall buildings, which are unprotected from the shells. It's difficult to survive for the length of time needed to rack up a large number of kills here, and even if you do get a large body count, you're still not going to be contributing as much to your team's success as the grunts that are capturing flags will be. Still, sniping can be an entertaining diversion if you're just looking to take down a few enemies rather than get caught up in the hustle and bustle of quotidian running and gunning.