Battlefield 2 Armoured Fury and its add-ons offer hours, days, indeed weeks of modern era FPS fun.
Battlefield 2 (BF2) and its various official EA add-ons and third party mods makes for one great, highly replayable, modern era first person shooter (FPS). I do prefer story driven single player (SP) games and have only rarely ventured into online multiplayer (MP) so BF2 would seem an awkward fit for me. Also the capture - hold - recapture gameplay dynamic of the SP version of BF2 would normally become quite repetitive after an hour or so. But the multitude of maps and terrain, the ability top play for either faction, the vast array of weapons, the ability to drive/operate a variety of vehicles, and the fact that one is never out of the action for long keeps me coming back for more. BF2 is very much a guilty pleasure.
I own BF2 Deluxe Edition which comes with the Special Forces (SF) expansion. Nowadays you get the Euro Force (EF), Armored Fury (AF) booster packs for free as part of the v1.5 patch. I came to the BF FPS series somewhat late after playing story-driven and/or mission-based FPS games like COD, MOH, Rainbow Six, and SOF2. My most recent BF series acquisitions are the oldest, BF1942, and the reasonably recent BF Bad Company 2, which is as yet unplayed. While I vanilla BF1942 and BFV are reasonable games it is the third party mods that make these games truly enjoyable. BF2, together with its SF/EF/AF add-ons, however is eminently enjoyable in its own right and even more so through the excellent mods available. BF2 and its add-ons, official and otherwise, make BF2 a desert island FPS game as there is enough variety through its add-ons and mods to keep replaying.
My review of BF2/SF/EF/AF is based on a SP play through of all the official EA missions/maps as both sides against AI bots and indeed many of the maps/missions in the numerous mods. BF2 missions are focused on capturing and/or defending objectives and have no single player character or narrative (apart from the usually extremely brief mission briefing screen which gives you the setting). The missions, while overwhelmingly generic, do offer a good variety of weapons and vehicles, vessels, and aircraft to try and maps to explore.
Like the other Battlefield series titles, the "missions" in BF2 require you to attack enemy bases (flags) and defend friendly and captured bases (flags). There is no need to look deeper as that is all there is to the BF series games. You select the battle (or map), adjust the difficulty, pick your side, usually Western forces of some kind (mainly US or NATO in most mods) or terrorists (of various kinds, usually the generic "middle eastern" variety), pick your weapon's load out (troop kit) and spawn point and away you go. Simple, beer and pretzels stuff. Simple enough. That said, it is great FUN, though far from realistic for an infantryman, to jump on board and drive a tank and fire its main gun and MG or pilot a fighter plane. I preferred playing as one of the various infantrymen types or as a tank driver/gunner rather than trying to fly any type of aircraft; alas I'm several hundred flying hours short of getting my pilot's license.
The weapons load-outs are fairly generic for each troop type in vanilla BF2 but can be quite varied in the various mods. Each troop kit has its own particular capabilities in addition to the weapons carried, for example the medic can heal wounds and the engineer lay mines or repair vehicles. The various troop kits can also be changed before each re-spawn so if you are being overwhelmed by enemy tanks then re-spawning as an anti-tank or engineer (mines and explosive charges) may be good choices. You can also pick up the troop kits of deceased ally and enemy troops which can be handy as you tend to burn through ammo quite quickly in the (seemingly endless) firefights. You can also call for aid from medics, heavy weapons guys who carry spare ammo of all types, engineers for repairs and backup in general.
The official BF2 series comprises, briefly, Battlefield 2, which has three factions the USMC, the Chinese PLA and the Middle East Coalition (MEC); Special Forces, which adds the British SAS, US Seals, Russian Spetsnaz and generic rebels/insurgents as well as new maps including two for night combat; Euro Force, which adds the NATO faction primarily French and German with maps in Europe, China and the Middle East; and Armored Fury, which adds more armoured units and anti-tank weapons and aircraft to the existing factions and maps set in mainland USA depicting invasions by the MEC or PLA. Each faction comes with its own array of personal weapons (via troop kits), armoured vehicles, light vehicles, aircraft and small vessels. So the "basic" BF2 plus SF patched to v1.5 gives you all the above for the expanded vanilla BF2 experience.
Once you have played and replayed all the maps and both factions in vanilla BF2 you may feel like "mission accomplished", well the good new is there are BF2 mods galore freely available on the internet.
During my 2011-2012 replay of BF2 I have played various maps from the following mods, with favourites marked*:
o Eve of Destruction (EOD)* set in the 1965-75 Vietnam War. In any of its BF series guises EOD is one of the best and most stable mods available and streaks ahead of vanilla BFV.
o Forgotten Hope (FH) covers WWII Western Front. A very popular mod that is sadly not stable on my PC (perhaps as it uses its own, rather than BF2's, graphics set up folders).
o Nations at War (NAW)* a massive "kitchen sink" mod with maps from WWII to (mainly) current anti-terrorist era with huge multipart client and map files to download. Arguably the only mod you need.
o Allied Intent Xtended (AIX) modern era with a SP focus. NATO (US and its allies) takes on what George W Bush would call the "Axis of Evil" (Islamists, North Koreans, Taliban, etc plus China).
o Australian Forces adds Australian skins and troop kits but alas retains American accents.
o Close Quarters Battle (CQB) is essentially an infantry mod set in urban Japan with Japanese counter terrorist forces versus terrorists. Smooth playing and glitch free.
o Hard Justice which uses a number of standard BF2 maps and adds new weapons, vehicles and more lethal aircraft.
o Operation Peacekeeper (OPK)* which pits the UN German peacekeeping units against Serbian forces in the recent unpleasant Balkan wars. Topical.
o US Intervention (USI) which allows you to re-fight the 1991 war versus Saddam's Iraqi forces. Better than vanilla BF2 in its attention to detail.
o Gen Ost* which is a great mod set in the mid-1980s with East Germans and Soviets vs NATO in Western Europe. My favourite Cold War era hypothetical conflict that seemed all too plausible in the days of Reagan. A good companion to the excellent World in Conflict RTS game. Another smooth relatively glitch free mod.
o Point of Existence 2 (POE2) US, German, Russian and Ukrainian forces in Africa and Russia.
o Battlegroup Frontlines(BGF) WWII Eastern Front ... unplayed.
o Dogs of War a single player Cold War era focused mod.
o Insurgent Strike set in Middle East and Russia with regular Western and Russian forces battling terrorists/insurgents ... unplayed.
o Project Reality (PR) adds more factions, like Canadians and Israelis, and seeks to make things more realistic with regular map pack releases. You be the judge.
o Special Ops Warfare (SOW) with additional special forces weapons and maps, however still in beta.
There are many more BF2 mods and add-ons, large and small, and the above are the better known and/or more popular ones. BF2 mods are found all over the internet but a good safe place to find them is at www.moddb.com where you can read up on them or follow link to the developers official webpage for the latest versions and/or patches. New mods or updates to existing mods seem to appear almost monthly at moddb before they show up at the various mirror sites.
Note that some my experience indicates that some BF2 mods may not be compatible with others you have already installed; therefore if you are keen to try a mod, especially one of the bigger ones, I would recommend uninstalling BF2 and all previous mods before re-installing BF2 and the mod you wish to try. While tedious this may save some heartache.
BF2 gameplay is essentially the same as its main predecessors BF1942 and BFV however the large number of air, land and see transport available make re-assigning control buttons (to the more intuitive Delta Force style defaults I prefer) difficult but not impossible. Once you are "in the zone" BF2 becomes an enjoyable experience and the bots in SP mode have much improved AI over their BF1942 and BFV counterparts. Also some of the mods have AI tweaks that make the game even more challenging.
BF2, once you get your graphic settings tweaked, is a reasonably stable game BUT it does suffer from seemingly random and unexplained crashes to desktop (CTD) or worse, screen-freeze/lockups that require hard restart or occasionally depending on the Nvidia driver the dreaded BSOD. Older drivers (258.96) work better with my Geforce 9800GT. Random and unexplained as it may be, it will generally be a 3D graphics related issue and a simple PC restart may fix it (as in my case) rather than un-/re-installing drivers and/or BF2 as many forums suggest. As advised on numerous forums it is best to delete your shader cache before you change your graphics driver, settings or card (located in My Documents Battlefield 2 modsbf2 [or if you have Special Forces installed My Documents Battlefield 2 modsxpack]).
OVERALL: BF2 provides hours of fun on well detailed maps that are representative of the hypothetical modern era battles they portray. Each mission, or more appropriately map, while unique pretty much follows the same backwards and forwards capture, defend, and recapture dynamic. Still BF2 and its add ons remain a good time filler when you need a FPS fix and it'll keep your eye and trigger finger well tuned. Nowadays it is best to buy the BF2 Complete (or BF Deluxe as you get the Euro Force and Armored Fury for free as part of the v1.5 patch). BF2 is a game worth keeping installed on your PC either in its vanilla form or with one of more of your favourite mods just in case you need a FPS fix. BF2 is just plain fun and you don't need to look too deeply to enjoy it.