Battlefield 2 seems to have been around forever now, to the point where you forget what a absolutely fantastic bit of programming it is (people tend to forget games are 'programs', and so forget what a huge amount of work goes into them).

As I am still house bound at the moment, I decided to have a bit of a bash at BF2 again - jumping into a German public server that wasn't too busy. And feeling a little lazy I decided to command, as no one else seemed to want the role!

What transpired was a 2 hours marathon of a game, which became a really fierce battle for Wake Island. An unusual aspect of this particular game is that the German clan who owned the server had a strange rule I had never come across before: 'Commander must not become involved in fighting' - in other words, if you choose commander, that's ALL you do.

It actually makes sense really, as you then have to concentrate on serving others to get your points, and don't take the eye off the ball by being concerned with your own personal survival. It was a bit different but really rewarding.

As I said, it turned out to be a very long game as none of my team seemed to have heard of defence (we played USMC on the attack), and they consistently lost back flags to the tenacious Chinese team and had to repeatedly go back and re-capture flags.

I spent most of my time as the commander spotting for Chinese 'flankers' who sneaked round the back of our lines and frustrated our advance by taking rear flags. I did this from the safety of the carrier, sitting in the AA gun - as in the beginning the Chinese kept attacking our ship with their bombers until we eventually took the airfield.

An unexpected result of all this 'back seat driving' was that I accumulated quit a few points and awards, which was a nice perk. Additionally, this game recaptured all the early excitement I remember having when I first began to play BF2 (as it seems that a lot of the annoying little frag-bunnies have moved on to frag fests like CoD4)!