We wanted to take a moment to give everyone a quick update on the Gamers Radio Podcast interview with Lars Gustavsson from DICE Sweden. Lars has the list of questions in hand. We are working out a schedule for us to do the interview.

Production of the show is coming along nicely. We have the voicework and music. Now we just need to put it all together and make sure it sounds kick ass!

For those of you that submitted questions, we have selected the finalists. Each one of you is elligible to win the Gamers Radio Crucial Ballistix Prize Package. Not to mention, we will get an answer to your question straight from DICE. Here are the finalist.

– Perry from Indiana
– SiLvABuLLetZ from Umass
– Ross of California
– Talus from Canada
– Hydrogen Elf from Texas

Listen to the show as the winner will be announced at then. We dont have a release date yet, but keep an eye here and we will let you know as soon as we can.

In that same PC Gamer section talking about the upcoming FPS games, they went into more detail on Battlefield 2: Special Forces. This article started making me think about the current state of Battlefield 2. I have seen a lot of people who prefer the city based maps over the larger terrain maps, present company included. There is something about the battles in close quarters with multiple paths of attack that I find more satisfying than the non-city maps.

The focus of the new BF2: Special Forces expansion is going to be close quarters, infantry based battles. There will still be vehicles, but the focus is on the infantry. Additionally, this will be more of a stealth based game. Oh and lots of new toys like Zip lines, grappling hooks and night vision goggles.

The article also mentions the armies will be the British Special Air Services, Navy SEALs and Russian Rebels. Further on in the article it mentions insurgents versus Navy SEALs on one map. Is it me or does this sound a lot like the most popular FPS of all time, CounterStrike? I am not sure if that is good or bad, but I know one thing. After the way BF2 was handled when it was first released, I swore I would not buy the expansion. Having played BF2 and finding the play style I prefer to be city maps, I find myself more interested in this expansion than I initially thought.

Which brings me to my last point. Even though Battlefield 2 has sold over a million copies, is it actually a successful game? I guess that depends on your definition of success. BF42 in my opinion was a highly successful game because it lasted so long. Heck, there are still people playing it, just not as many since BF2 was released. BFV on the other hand was not a very successful game because people quickly became bored with it and moved on. With all the unique features BF2 brings to the table, I really feel it is going to fall somewhere between BF42 and BFV. The only chance of it being played as long as BF42 is a mod as successful as Desert Combat was. Could the Special Forces expansion be that mod? Wouldnt it be ironic if BF2 actually wound up being 2nd to a DICE Canada produced expansion pack for BF2? Think it cant happen? My gut instinct says if it is a bug free game focusing on the tighter aspects of special forces urban combat, it just may surpass BF2. Could it be the game to dethrone CounterStrike? I dont know, but only time will tell.

Gamers Radio is proud to present their very first Gaming Talk Podcast. For our first show, we have lined up a very special guest. Lars Gustavsson, the Creative Director for DICE Sweden has agreed to do an interview. The topic of discussion will be the process DICE/EA uses to develop and test patches before release. We are also going to discus why a patch was released that had a memory leak given EAs lengthy QA process.

In addition, we want to give you a chance to submit questions for the interview. What would you like to ask DICE concerning the way Battlefield 2 has been patched? We will pick the best questions from the submissions and include them in the interview. If we select your question, you will be eligible to win a Gamers Radio Prize package.

As a tribute to the infamous “memory leak”, we have a special treat for the winner. Besides the few music CDs and Gamers Radio Swag we are going to send your way, Crucial Memory has agreed to send the winner a 1GB kit featuring Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC4000 high-performance memory (http://www.crucial.com/ballistix/). I bet BF2 would run sweet on that! Oh yea, they are also going to include a bunch of cool Ballistix Swag! How cool is that?

Send your question to podcast(at)gamersradio.com. Please include your name(Nic is fine), Location and one question. Make sure you get your questions in quick! We are making our selections this Sunday. Then, keep an eye out for the release of our first episode of Gamers Radio Podcast! I guarantee this is one Podcast you do not want to miss!

The Battlefield 2 1.03 patch has been officially delayed. According to EA UK, they could not make the end of August deadline because they want to make sure they get it right. When can we expect it? Your guess is as good as mine as they would not give a tenative date this time around.