Battlefield Bad Company 2 – Multi-player Review
EA has come out with its second installment of the Bad Company series and the results are pretty sweet. I’ve logged some significant time in the multi-player version and this game is hard to put down. I keep intending to do the single player but I just never get around to it as the multi-player has completely sucked me in. First off, this game is nothing like MWF2 at all, so really I think it’s kind of comparing apples to oranges in my opinion; sure you shoot at others, you snipe, etc.. all the regular things you would expect from a FPS but with the Battlefield series there is so much more to the game than just running around and shooting people. First, the game, if played correctly is a blast weather you win or lose. It relies on teamwork and support classes to break the up the monotony of twitch shooters, if you aren’t the greatest infantry guy well there are plenty of other options in BFBC2. You can jump in as a medic, revive your team heal them as you move throughout the map. You can also choose an engineer, repair vehicles, take out enemy tanks. You can snipe from afar, blow up stuff with C4, and bring down heavy mortar strikes as a Recon Class. Neither of those sound good for you? Well find yourself a chopper or tank and wreak havoc on the battlefield that way. That is the beauty of this game you don’t have to be a quick twitch shooter type to succeed in Bad Company 2. In one round I played Medic and Engineer and my kill death ratio was pretty terrible but to my surprise I still finished around 3rd on the scoring list. The multi-player game relies heavily on teamwork and communication and if you take that route you will lead on the leaderboard, if you lone wolf it you will probably find yourself near the bottom. Players that think they can snipe the whole time and not attack will lose and will make their teammates miserable as the other team annihilates you. With that said lets get on with our review. I captured some actual in game footage to highlight what I’m talking about and to give you guys who don’t have the game some examples. Most of the example videos are from the Xbox 360 version, a few I used the PC and fraps. I’ll upload my full game play footage later so you can see most of my round. I did have to cut it up quite a bit to fit the 10 min you-tube limit.
How Multiplayer works:
Pick your favorite kit and get going, the kits you can choose are Assault, Medic, Engineer, and Recon. Each have their own strengths and weaknesses. The system is basically a leveling system, as you go up in level you gain points and unlocks, there are also a secondary unlocks based on the kits you play, for example more powerful guns for assault or med packs for medics. In addition, as you do vehicle combat you will unlock vehicle specific unlocks such as better armor or bettor weaponry.
Example of your first Unlocks:
Assault: unlocks a ammo pouch to be distributed out to your team, as you re-supply them you gain more points.
Medic: Heal Pack, will heal you and your team. The more you heal the more points you get. Next is a Defibrillator that can be used to revive your team.
Engineer: Repair tool, you can repair vehicles and what not.
Recon: Motion sensor, You throw a ball and it will let you know when a enemy is in that general area.
Squads:
Squads are very very important in this game, each squad can hold 4 players. Each player in the squad is a spawn point if alive, so basically you can infiltrate say behind the enemy base have your 3 buddies spawn on you and do a covert sneak attack. The main thing to remember is to balance your squad to increase your chances of success. Sometimes we run with a 2 assault, 1 medic one engineer. This gives you a good balanced squad for attacking. Recon, if played right is a great class to have in your squad as well I have ran into some super annoying snipers who use all their tools and don’t just sit and hide in a tree or building. These guys can really change the tide of the battle so if you find a good one congrats. The major problem is there is a lot of ass hats out there who just sit back and do nothing.
Game Modes:
Conquest: A capture the flag type game, the more bases you control the quicker the tickets for the team go down.
Rush: You are an attacker or defender, each stage you have to either defend or attack mcom bases, if your bases get destroyed it unlocks the next stage of bases to attack or defend and you continue. If you successfully defend the bases while the attackers tickets expire you win.
Squad Rush: Rush mode played with only two opposing squads and one M-COM station.
Squad Deathmatch: Four squads and one Infantry Fighting Vehicle roam the map. First squad to fifty kills wins.
Destructible environment:
This is one detail that really makes this game different each time. There is nothing more exciting than seeing guys in a building and you taking the whole damn thing down and killing everyone inside. That type of atmosphere you just don’t get in every game. If you know a guy is hiding inside a building, load up your grenade launcher blow a damn hole in the building and shoot him in the face.
Audio:
The sound in this game is just awesome, I don’t think I’ve encountered a game with such detailed sound, you can really hear the direction from which bullets come and you can pin point where firefights are happening based on sound. Also the banter between your team is pretty cool too, when you shoot someone you will hear your team mate yell, “Holy shit nice shot man” O “motherfucker where is that god damn sniper!” It really adds to the immersion of the game. Grab a good set of headphones it will really help your game out, in the clip below I actually heard the guys entering the building, that is why I moved to the steps to shoot them. See Below.
Some Launch Issues:
BFBC2 has not been without its problems, the launch has created connection issues, kicks and other various issues. While we have been able to play quite a bit the game was down in the early going quite a bit causing a bit of frustration in the community. The Console versions didn’t seem as badly hit by glitches as the PC version but they also had some connection and launch issues. While this kind of brought the game down a bit you have to kind of expect some issues in the first couple weeks of the game. In addition the game does need some time of balancing mechanism in it, you really need to check on the game ahead of time before you jump it see if your team is getting pounded. The problem is you can get a lot of guys switching teams and you can get stuck on a total crap team and it will just make your life miserable. Hopefully this can be addressed on the PC version but I’m pretty sure it can’t as I remember this being a issue in the Battlefield 2 Series as well. It does suck but you can eliminate this if you find a good server and or buddies to play on consistently. As of me typing this the servers across all platforms had some issues Dice responded quickly saying they were restarting servers and monitoring the situation. It is one area they should of done better after all this was a super hyped game with a very long beta, you would think with the amount of time they had they would of had the infrastructure in place to handle the load.
Conclusion:
Battlefield BC2 has raised the bar with this title, the multiplayer alone is worth the price of the game. Once all the bugs and glitches are ironed out this game will be a excellent shooter for years to come.
Geek Gaming Score: 94/100
