Screenshots :.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
PC
Matt
19-03-2010
"Through the fire and the flames"
"Squad buddies are great, aye?"
"RUN!"
"One man and his tank, went to blow a wall down..."
"Bit of the classic pew pew happening here"
You know what? It took me about six months to properly start getting excited about Battlefield: Bad Company 2. I never so much as fired up the original game when it came out, and having cleared my way through Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 only a few months back I must admit that I felt a slight twinge of modern war burnout. Of course, if a game is a barrel of fun then it’ll manage to overcome such disinterest in even the most cynical of gaming monkeys, and so it proved to be the case with DICE’s latest squad-based shooter.
Battlefield games have been around for years now, the majority of which have focussed on multiplayer squad battling across large levels. That’s all loaded in and ready to go this time as well, but for those who prefer their single player offerings to their multiplayer blattings then there’s a very enjoyable campaign to shoot, zoom and drive your way around as well.
Putting you in the shoes of a US marine named Preston Marlowe (who possibly has brothers called Stoke and Blackpool), you and your three squad buddies must traverse a selection of battlefronts worldwide as you hunt down a WMD before the Russian forces can nab it for themselves. As you progress through you’ll find yourself fighting across a whole number of different settings (and even – briefly – time periods), so whilst one minute you may find yourself battling through a dusty lumberyard filled with enemies, the next you are barrelling down a snow-capped mountain, being forced to break into houses to raise your body temperature to prevent dying from the cold.
Another positive about the single player mode is that DICE have made sure to give players plenty of variety when it comes to the destruction they are dealing. There are plenty of powerful weapons that you can chop and change between at mid-level supply crates if needs be, and you’ll also find yourself being loaded into a tank, gunning from the back seat of a jeep or flying a little UAV mini chopper around trying to blow up targets. By mixing it up as much as they have, DICE have successfully stopped the game from feeling stale at any point throughout the story.
The story itself is reasonably well-told. It may lack the punch that MW2 provided via its chain of rather draw-dropping set pieces, but you have a likeable bunch of characters alongside you throughout, and the game most certainly gives a great impression of what it must be like to be pinned down by enemy forces and desperately having to try to fight your way out. Obviously you have recharging health so that kind of breaks the illusion of reality a tad, but it’s often truly harrowing stuff.
Depending on how you play, what difficulty you select and how bothered you are about collecting all the various weapon type badges and blowing all the M-Com stations you are, the single player side of Bad Company 2 should last you up to a dozen or so hours. If that had been the game on its own then it would have been decent enough (although probably not a case for celebration), but arguably the package’s greatest asset is the multiplayer mode upon which you can spend entire evenings fragging and not even start to scratch the surface.
As I mentioned in my multiplayer beta comments last month, your initial voyage into the world of Battlefield online if you are a newbie will see you vastly underpowered, with each of the four classes starting without even their class-specific toolset at first. For the first few hours you will venture forth, perhaps on occasion scavenging a higher-level equipment set off a corpse now and again, with very little to do other than shoot your way to your unlocks. It’s a little frustrating in a way, but by heck does it make you feel like you’ve achieved something when you manage to work up the ranks and get yourself new bits of kit.
There’re plenty of different game types to delve into, with Rush and Conquest modes being supplemented by Squad Rush and Deathmatch types. Rush is probably the mode-of-choice amongst the fanbase; one team has to defend a base of two control points, which the other team obviously have to capture. If this is done then they must move upward toward the second base, and after four have been successfully captured it’s game over. Sadly for them, the attacking team only has a finite number of spawns available to them, so if the ticker reaches zilch before one base is taken then the defending team can throw a party.
Between two evenly-matched teams, this can be as enjoyable a multiplayer experience as you can find. The selection of maps on offer provides the same selection of settings that the main game does, and when pairing up with buddies to form little squads of four you find yourself getting sucked right into the battle, constantly yelling instructions and warnings as you try to defeat the enemy. Conquest mode is pretty much a Capture the Flag mode under a different skin, and although again it provides moments of fun, half the time you find that the action is hugely spread out and not quite so organised as in Rush.
To be honest, there’s a fair few folk who may find diving into a full 16 v 16 multiplayer clusterfunk a little daunting at first, so there are a couple of smaller modes offered in the form of Squad Rush and Deathmatch. The former is a 4 v. 4 version of the Rush mode mentioned above on a smaller scale, whilst the deathmatch is just that – fragging with no objective. By comparison to the other modes deathmatch feels rather... well, lacking, but in time you learn to regard it as almost a practice mode to allow you to learn the ropes of various classes in a slightly friendlier, less tense atmosphere.
It’s all heckishly addictive too, what with the ranking system, unlocks and pin badges and insignias to unlock. It also encourages a player to mix-and-match with different classes rather than, say, just be a Recon all the time because SNIPING IS SO COOL MAN, as each class have their own specific unlock rewards that not only give that class a new bit of stuff, but add to your overall point total and help you gain other bonuses too. Theoretically, you could spend your first few dozen hours simply experimenting with various class options and tactics just to find your preferences. You’ll also get a selection of tanks, choppers, jeeps, jetskis... you name it. There’s so much to do that you can spend entire chunks of playtime completely ignoring most of the options available and still have a great time.
In fact, you could go not only as far as saying that EA have their very own Modern Warefare – arguably, it betters it. It’s a more considered, more tactical game in many respects, and in our opinion all the better for it. Bolted on to a solid and enjoyable single player campaign, the multiplayer mode takes DICE’s latest into Triple A territory and some, and when combined with great visuals and bombastic audio you have a great package to get stuck into. Have patience, experiment a little and you’ll soon find that Battlefield: Bad Company 2’s world is very much your oyster.
Battlefield games have been around for years now, the majority of which have focussed on multiplayer squad battling across large levels. That’s all loaded in and ready to go this time as well, but for those who prefer their single player offerings to their multiplayer blattings then there’s a very enjoyable campaign to shoot, zoom and drive your way around as well.
Putting you in the shoes of a US marine named Preston Marlowe (who possibly has brothers called Stoke and Blackpool), you and your three squad buddies must traverse a selection of battlefronts worldwide as you hunt down a WMD before the Russian forces can nab it for themselves. As you progress through you’ll find yourself fighting across a whole number of different settings (and even – briefly – time periods), so whilst one minute you may find yourself battling through a dusty lumberyard filled with enemies, the next you are barrelling down a snow-capped mountain, being forced to break into houses to raise your body temperature to prevent dying from the cold.
Another positive about the single player mode is that DICE have made sure to give players plenty of variety when it comes to the destruction they are dealing. There are plenty of powerful weapons that you can chop and change between at mid-level supply crates if needs be, and you’ll also find yourself being loaded into a tank, gunning from the back seat of a jeep or flying a little UAV mini chopper around trying to blow up targets. By mixing it up as much as they have, DICE have successfully stopped the game from feeling stale at any point throughout the story.
The story itself is reasonably well-told. It may lack the punch that MW2 provided via its chain of rather draw-dropping set pieces, but you have a likeable bunch of characters alongside you throughout, and the game most certainly gives a great impression of what it must be like to be pinned down by enemy forces and desperately having to try to fight your way out. Obviously you have recharging health so that kind of breaks the illusion of reality a tad, but it’s often truly harrowing stuff.
Depending on how you play, what difficulty you select and how bothered you are about collecting all the various weapon type badges and blowing all the M-Com stations you are, the single player side of Bad Company 2 should last you up to a dozen or so hours. If that had been the game on its own then it would have been decent enough (although probably not a case for celebration), but arguably the package’s greatest asset is the multiplayer mode upon which you can spend entire evenings fragging and not even start to scratch the surface.
As I mentioned in my multiplayer beta comments last month, your initial voyage into the world of Battlefield online if you are a newbie will see you vastly underpowered, with each of the four classes starting without even their class-specific toolset at first. For the first few hours you will venture forth, perhaps on occasion scavenging a higher-level equipment set off a corpse now and again, with very little to do other than shoot your way to your unlocks. It’s a little frustrating in a way, but by heck does it make you feel like you’ve achieved something when you manage to work up the ranks and get yourself new bits of kit.
There’re plenty of different game types to delve into, with Rush and Conquest modes being supplemented by Squad Rush and Deathmatch types. Rush is probably the mode-of-choice amongst the fanbase; one team has to defend a base of two control points, which the other team obviously have to capture. If this is done then they must move upward toward the second base, and after four have been successfully captured it’s game over. Sadly for them, the attacking team only has a finite number of spawns available to them, so if the ticker reaches zilch before one base is taken then the defending team can throw a party.
Between two evenly-matched teams, this can be as enjoyable a multiplayer experience as you can find. The selection of maps on offer provides the same selection of settings that the main game does, and when pairing up with buddies to form little squads of four you find yourself getting sucked right into the battle, constantly yelling instructions and warnings as you try to defeat the enemy. Conquest mode is pretty much a Capture the Flag mode under a different skin, and although again it provides moments of fun, half the time you find that the action is hugely spread out and not quite so organised as in Rush.
To be honest, there’s a fair few folk who may find diving into a full 16 v 16 multiplayer clusterfunk a little daunting at first, so there are a couple of smaller modes offered in the form of Squad Rush and Deathmatch. The former is a 4 v. 4 version of the Rush mode mentioned above on a smaller scale, whilst the deathmatch is just that – fragging with no objective. By comparison to the other modes deathmatch feels rather... well, lacking, but in time you learn to regard it as almost a practice mode to allow you to learn the ropes of various classes in a slightly friendlier, less tense atmosphere.
It’s all heckishly addictive too, what with the ranking system, unlocks and pin badges and insignias to unlock. It also encourages a player to mix-and-match with different classes rather than, say, just be a Recon all the time because SNIPING IS SO COOL MAN, as each class have their own specific unlock rewards that not only give that class a new bit of stuff, but add to your overall point total and help you gain other bonuses too. Theoretically, you could spend your first few dozen hours simply experimenting with various class options and tactics just to find your preferences. You’ll also get a selection of tanks, choppers, jeeps, jetskis... you name it. There’s so much to do that you can spend entire chunks of playtime completely ignoring most of the options available and still have a great time.
In fact, you could go not only as far as saying that EA have their very own Modern Warefare – arguably, it betters it. It’s a more considered, more tactical game in many respects, and in our opinion all the better for it. Bolted on to a solid and enjoyable single player campaign, the multiplayer mode takes DICE’s latest into Triple A territory and some, and when combined with great visuals and bombastic audio you have a great package to get stuck into. Have patience, experiment a little and you’ll soon find that Battlefield: Bad Company 2’s world is very much your oyster.
9/10
