The only real difference between a ten dollar steak and a fifty dollar steak is how it is served. That same difference is what sets Defence Alliance 2 apart from all the other mods out there today; the mod is filled to the brim with that inexplicable style that you either have or you don't: the x-factor. From the dynamic main menu to the loading screens when you join a game, this mod acts like a prize-winning pedigree. What's even stranger is that this mod weighs in at a meager eighty or so megabytes, and yet you can hardly tell when content has been copied directly from UT2004. I guess it's because this mod has been able to replace UT2004's feel with its own; something of which most mods just can't do.
The name Defence Alliance 2 fits this mod pretty well. The mod puts two teams against each other: the Defenders versus the Attackers. The attackers have been tasked with completing several different objectives in each map such as flipping a switch to disable security doors or destroying a beacon, while the Defender's job is to stop them, at all costs. The mod plays like UT2004's Assault game type on steroids. Think of it like Assault with the antics of level 25 in Invasion. Defence Alliance 2 is like the first guy to combine peanut butter with jelly: it's a match made in heaven.
The only way I can describe the player classes of Defence Alliance 2 is tight. From the infantrymen to the medic, every class has its unique position in the puzzle. What surprises me the most is that, fundamentally, the classes are all pretty similar (each class has a gun, a pistol, and some grenades), but they couldn't be more different. In most of the other games I've played that make use of the class system, there is always that one class that towers above the rest. This is not the case in Defence Alliance 2, each class brings something to the table that your team will need to succeed. A nice example of this is the fact that a medic does not need to go from person to person hitting the magical heal key for each one. Instead, every player that is near the medic will be healed. You won't see a team of five infantrymen beat out an evenly balanced opponent in this mod.
The team also recently implemented a new class into the mod: The Anti-Armor Class (a.k.a Rocket Man), and I just want to say that he's still thinking about my marriage proposal, but I'm already planning the reception. Seriously, this guy has everything you could ever want from a man with a larger than average rocket launcher. He has two firing modes: an unguided primary fire mode, and a wire guided secondary fire that works similar to the way the rocket launcher works in Half-Life 2. What's even better is that he doesn't throw off the balance of the mod at all. In fact, he stabilizes it anymore. In the week or two that I played the mod without him, the turrets were these gods that could be left alone and still stop any attacks cold. Now, the turrets have to actually be defended and sometimes even manned to stop the enemy.
