Battlefield 2: Special Forces is an expansion pack for Battlefield 2. This first expansion contains some great stuff to enhance your experience. It changes the original game play a bit by adding more sneaking/night maps and more possibilities of finding and killing your opponent (zip line, grappling hook).

Battlefield 2: Special Forces pack adds:

- six different flavors of "elite" troops - you can play as Navy Seals, British SAS, Russian Spetznas, MEC Special Forces and two insurgent groups -  a Russian Rebel group and a Middle-Eastern Insurgent faction. These last two armies are apparently inspired by, respectively, Chechen rebels and Iraqi insurgents, but not named as such in the game. As with the main game, each newly introduced faction is broken down into the distinct standing character classes (Assault, Sniper, Spec-Ops, Engineer, Medic, Support, and Anti-Tank)

- 10 new vehicles including the Desert Raider (a big dune buggy bristling with guns), Hummer With TOW Missile (tube launched, optically tracked, wire guided), Combat ATV (quad-bikes - high speed and maneuverability), Jet Ski (water-going version of the dirt bike), a Russian BMP3 Armored Personnel Carrier (its main gun fires a 100mm round, and it also has a small machine gun for alternate fire), Civilian Truck, Civilian Car, MI 35 Hind, and an Apache Longbow Assault Helicopter. Most of the vehicles are just the ones from Battlefield 2 with different skins, however there are some notable exceptions e.g The ATV.

- new gadgets and weapons - there's a new British assault rifle that has a grenade launcher attached, an RPG and a new SEAL carbine with a scope. However, the major additions to the game are new gadgets that you get to play with that you didn't have access to before. Grappling hooks give you and your teammates the ability to scale buildings. Since you carry either a hook or a zip line, you'll need to work together with your team if you really want to exploit these new capabilities. There are also new grenade types - the flash bang grenade and the tear-gas grenade. The flash bang grenade is pretty handy - when it detonates, anyone in the effect area will be deafened and those looking at the explosion will be temporary blinded as well. They almost guarantee that you're going to be shot shortly after being dazed. Then there are the tear-gas grenades that make your vision swim like you're in a drug-induced daze (you are unable to sprint). Tear gas can easily be countered by a gas mask, which limits your stamina due to the difficulty of breathing through it. The game also includes night-vision goggles for certain missions that take place in the nighttime (they're unavailable in daytime missions). These new items are balanced well so they're useful without being overpowered.

- 8 new maps for single and multiplayer use (only six of the game's eight levels are available in single-player). These maps include an island, an airfield, and a functional spaceport. Three of the maps feature assaults in the cover of darkness, where all forces are equipped with night-vision goggles. The goggles give you that green-tinted binocular effect we commonly associate with night-vision equipment. The gameplay here is a bit different from the original game because of the nighttime. Night missions are pretty interesting, so if you're into night missions, these three maps may justify the cost of the expansion themselves. Mass Destruction is a Dalian Plant clone, but it's still got its own unique charm with the chemical weapons plant at one end. Two maps are urban maps (one of them with choppers), both of them provide some intense fighting. There's also a sniper's dream map (Ghosttown) - lots of buildings make for some terrifically paced combat while some interiors are more complex than we remember them from BF2. Plenty of opportunity to go rooftop... The zip line I mentioned above is great for going from one roof to another as is the grappling hook for climbing up walls.

Overall, this is a pretty solid follow-up to Battlefield 2 and while it could of been better (hopefully patches will fix some weak areas and bugs), I do recommend it for any Battlefield 2 player or fan of the Battlefield franchise.

related links: cheats, patch+server v1.12, homepage, Battlefield 2 review (94%) // This expansion pack is available for purchase via EA's content delivery service, known as EA Downloader.

Minimum system requirements: 1.7GHz CPU (2.4GHz recommended), 512MB RAM (1GB recommended), GeForce FX 5700, ATI Radeon 8500 or ATI Radeon 9500 with 128 Mb of RAM (video card with at least 256MB recommended), 3.0 GB free HDD space