Good game that I will be playing for awhile..just not the spiritual successor of BF2 I was hoping it would be.
What I like:
I'm really enjoying the vehicles. Helicopters, armor and other vehicles are playable and fun to hop in. It makes me wonder how great Call of Duty 4 might have been if they had kept some vehicles and bigger maps as part of the game play.
I love the size of the maps. Village, Oil Field, Solar Farm and Mountain Top are among my favorites. I like that the designers seemed to ignore the conventional wisdom that players all want short, cramped firefights.
The mood, setting and atmosphere pulled me (happily) into this world. The artists and designers created a scary, verge-of-apocalypse vision of the world fighting over the last drop of oil. And I like going with the old Cold War distinctions of East vs. West, with US and its Allies on one side and Russia and China on the other.
What I did not like:
The vehicle controls are more slippery and feel less real than Crysis or BF2. Helicopter flying is a frustrating experience. I miss the ability to have the repair ability from BF2 and then co-op play with another player and two tanks. You can repair vehicles in Frontlines, but you risk getting your tank stolen as you hop out to fire up your welding torch.
While the single-player campaign was a full experience and rewarding to play, I wish it was longer. This is one player who does not want or like shorter single player campaigns. I understand that level design is getting expensive, but please don't think that I or other fellow gamers actually like it.
There does not seem to be a massive amount of servers or players, yet. I don't know if that will change as more people buy the game. As I write this, I am just finishing up the first or second week of play since the game was released.
The squad feature which was so brilliantly implemented in BF2, does not seem to have much use in this game. I can spawn where my leader spawns but other than that it just sorta feels tacked on.
One more negative would be that for some reason I got this idea into my head that this would be a persistent "frontline" where I could sign up for one faction or the other and try to advance the lines across Europe or Asia. The key game dynamic is capturing points on a frontline, but it's just across a single landscape or setting. I just think this would be so much more interesting if the battle started fresh each day and played itself out on a dynamic world map.
In closing, like I said there is more in this game to like than to not like. If you liked BF2 a lot, you almost have to play this game.