Battlefield Bad Company 2

A WEEK of total playtime and thousands of murders later I'm ready to finally review EPIC's latest game, Battlefield Bad Company 2. I have to be honest, Bad Company 1 did nothing for me. I thought it was interesting and enjoyed their "gold rush" game mode, but after investing a dozen hours into the demo I felt it had ran its course and moved on to geener pastures.

Fast forward to 2010 and I notice a demo for Bad Company 2 on the Xbox dashboard. By the end of the night I had pre-ordered the game and was trying to confirm a midnight launch at my local retailer.

Overview

Battlefield Bad Company 2 is a class based multiplayer first person shooter with a single player mode. The game's big new feature is "Destruction 2.0" that allows for pretty much anything you see to be reduced to ash. Trees, buildings, boxes, walls, fences... they all come down with the right encouragement. Enemy camping a doorway? Make a shiny NEW doorway in the wall he's sitting next to! Now you get a kill and a fresh new entryway. Hit that same building with enough firepower and it will fall to the ground killing everyone inside. If you don't play online, stop reading right here and move on. The single player campaign took me all of an afternoon to run through and it was nothing to write home about. To be perfectly honest I can't remember a whole lot about the single player and it hasn't been a month since I finished it. Multiplayer is mostly objective based and involves a ton of vehicle combat. There is a "squad deathmatch" mode, but with the other two modes "Rush" (with it's 4v4, vehicle-less variant "Squad Rush") and "Conquest" you most likely won't see much deathmatch.

Facts and Features

Single Player

Like I said above... it lasted all of 4 or 5 hours. If you're handy with an FPS and can remember enemy placements you'll do just fine and be through the story rather quickly. What's interesting to note about the single player is that Epic did not opt to throw endless waves of enemies at you until you cross invisible barriers like Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4. Once you kill who's there, you move on. This tends to feel more satisfying to me, but it does bring down the intensity when you know you can pop out and blast a few guys, duck back behind cover and repeat the process until you have a much more manageable force to deal with. The AI did some pretty impressive things, so there were those moments when I'd duck behind a building to reload and all of a sudden the guy I was shooting at was gone only to remove my helmet from behind with a 7.62 round, but again... it took me 4 hours to go from beginning to end.

Epic also included the ol' "find 20 hidden things" achievements into the campaign. All that means to me is that I'll never have 1,000 gamerpoints from this game. STOP IT! It doesn't add to replayability or game hours. I don't want to find cog tags, newspapers, torches, statues, toys, etc. I want to focus on the game, not the floor textures.

I really wanted to go deeper on the single player... but I'm finding myself adjusting my mp3 playlist more than typing... AND the only reason I ever played it was because the online servers were a little shaky the fist week... so I'll just throw out some adjectives and move on:

Short

Funny

Lighthearted

Short

Cool level design

Interesting Story

Short

Online Multiplayer

Epic goes in a very different direction than most other games in this department. Rooms max out at 24 players, so you can have up to 12 people per team. That may be a couple more than some games or a few less than others, but the REAL difference is that every team is made up of "squads" that are groups of up to four people. Those four people can use voice chat with each other, but not the rest of the team. You can't hear the other eight players... just the three in your squad. The burden of trying to communicate with the other eight players is carried by the action button. On the 360 the action button is the "back" button. You can use the back button to give commands to the other players in the form of in game voice (aka voice actors used to record the audio of the game) that is combined with graphical notices in the HUD and can even mark things in the world. Sounds scary and awkward, but you'll grow into it.

The next huge difference here is that when you die you get the option on where you would like to spawn. You have at least one static choice (called your deployment) which is where the whole team starts out the round. This is also where your team's vehicles will traditionally spawn. The other choices you have are the other members of your squad. That means if your buddy just snuck around behind the other team and is ready to unleash death you can join in on the madness immediately without worrying about how he got there. Flanking maneuvers and spawn timing are now art. Are you alone in a great place? Let your squad know to spawn in on you and go in with backup.

There is a class based system that allows you to choose from four "kits":

• Assault: Assault rifles with a choice of grenade launchers, rifle mounted shotguns, or smoke grenades. Killing fools at medium to long range is why you'd pick this class. Your specialty is supplying your team with ammunition. NOTE: If you select a primary weapon that does not allow an under-barrel attachment (ex. Shotguns can't use grenade launchers) then the assault kit can bring C4 charges which can be devastating to armor and buildings.
• Engineer: SMGs for up close and personal action. Anti-Armor equipment (rocket launchers, Anti-Tank mines, etc). Specialty is the repair tool which is an impact wrench that repairs friendly armor or destroys enemy armor (or faces... see achievement "The Dentist")
• Medic: LMGs for secondary assault roles and to maintain pressure on enemies while all the other classes are reloading (or dead). Specialty is two part. 1. You drop medic packs that heal your team. 2. You can revive downed teammates with defibrillator paddles. Most game modes are based on "respawn tickets" so reviving a downed teammate means he won't have to use one of the tickets to continue the fight.
• Recon: Sniper rifles so you can sit in a bush a mile away and not be a credit to your team (can you tell I've had some run ins with people who don't work towards objectives running this kit?). Specialty is motion mines that bring enemies close to the mine up on your team's HUD and give an audible warning that trouble is near by. Recon players can also use a mortar strike that is basically a targeted air strike that takes down buildings, armor, and dudes pretty effectively.

Each kit earns points towards kit specific unlocks as you earn points using the kit (kit kit kit kit kit... didn't say kit enough in that sentence). Those points go towards your overall score that also is tied to unlocks. You don't start out with your specialty items until you've earned a few hundred points in each kit. Once you go further down the road you'll get things like a red dot sight, 4x scope, heavier barrels to increase accuracy, silencer upgrades, etc. Your rank unlocks "all kit" weapons like shotguns and rifles that cannot use grenade launchers or optics. Once your rank is in your 20s you should have everything unlocked and are now out on your own in the world with all the tools you'll ever get... but don't worry about how long it takes to rank up. You can even finish all the unlocks for your favorite class first so you have everything the veterans have quickly.

I don't believe there is any sort of "prestige mode" or anything. The max level is 50 and you're done. There is a "veteran level" which is based on how many games you've registered on EA.com from the battlefield series... and there are tons of them. Having a veteran rank unlocks the final weapon... the M1 garand. You can do it without paying any money for any other game because PC demos and the free game "Battlefield: Heroes" count. I haven't done this yet, so I don't want to go into a lot of detail, but if you ask my friend Google real nice he might tell you what to do.

Game Modes

Squad Deathmatch - In this mode you compete with up to 3 other squads of 4 to see who can get 50 kills first. Pretty basic mode if you've played any other FPS. The spawn system has virtually eliminated spawn camping from the game all together, but in SDM it's GONE. That doesn't meant you won't get blasted .001 seconds after you spawn... it just means that it's your fault.

Conquest - 12v12 mode where both teams start out with 120 respawn tickets with the goal of reducing the other team's tickets to zero. There are 3 or 4 flags per map that when captured give you another choice of spawn location and bleed tickets off from the other team. Capturing the flag for the first time also starts a new vehicle spawn in most cases. This is pretty much a really cool way to play deathmatch and also have objectives to screw around with.

Rush - 12v12 mode where the two teams are designated Attackers and Defenders. The attackers have 75 respawn tickets to destroy two "MCOM" stations by either planting a bomb (any class can do it by holding B next to the MCOM), using explosives to damage the MCOM, or by bringing down the building housing the MCOM. Once the first set of two MCOMs are destroyed the map zooms out, the defenders get a new deployment location and there are a fresh set of MCOMs to destroy. Once the final set of MCOMs go down or the attackers use up their 75 tickets the game is over. There is also SQUAD RUSH which is a 4v4 variant. This mode only has one MCOM per location and two locations per map. A hard fought Rush game can take over an hour. Squad rush is much quicker with rounds lasting between 10 minutes and a half hour.

Opinions

First impressions

When you first fire up the game you'll be thrown into a world of people who seem to "get it" with you on the outside going, "Man... and I was really good at Call of Duty." I know that's where I was when I first brought Bad Company 2 home. The game modes are complicated if you've never played them. I swear it was a week before I had anyone explain to me how stupid conquest is scored. If you don't allow yourself to be bad at this game for a lot longer than you're used to then you're not going to enjoy yourself. I am sure a lot of people hopped right and did well, but I wasn't one of them. It took me having a whole lot of frustrating rounds in a row before anything clicked at all. I know a lot of the games leading up to this point have very flat learning curves, and if that's all you know then you're going to drop this before it gets good. Trust me, it takes time, but it's worth it.

There are a lot of adjustments you'll make right off the bat, but the most important thing I realized was that you can't play every round the same way. Just because you like a weapon doesn't mean it's what you are going to bring out every round. Some rounds will simply require you to use a different kit and it's not the same for every person. I had a discussion the other night with a friend of mine on xbox live about what kits he uses based on what map he's playing and his list was nothing like mine even though we both have similar outlooks for each map. YOU will have to figure out what works for YOU in each situation and change it up OFTEN until it clicks. Then, when you think you have it all figured out you're going to have to change it all again to match up with your squad's strengths and weaknesses. You may have a medic that's keeping everyone alive and they are going to need ammo... but nobody's playing assault. You'll find yourself more useful and have more fun as a result if you force yourself to fill rolls and step outside of your comfort zone from time to time. Why? Because your squad will be more effective and you'll WIN ROUNDS.

Along those same lines, there are no lone wolves here. The game gives out a series of "pins" for things you do in round. For example if you kill four people with explosives you'll get an explosive pin that is worth 100 points. There is a pin called the "Ace Pin" for the highest scoring player in the round. There is also a pin called "Gold Squad Pin" for the highest scoring squad. I've received the ace pin dozens of times during losing efforts, but I can't remember earning the Gold Squad pin and losing. Basically, it all comes down to teamwork. People that work together have more success and by extension, more fun.

Weapons and Hit Detection

I feel strongly that hit detection is the single most important part of any shooter. If you fire a gun at someone and it doesn't hit, why should you keep firing the gun? Just play something where it does what it says it does. Well, Battlefield Bad Company 2 does one hell of a job with hit detection. So far I haven't found a single situation where a bullet will not register properly. The only problem is the knife. From time to time the knife will just do its own thing regardless of what you're trying to get it to do. Sure, you're saying, "Hey, knife. I'd like you to penetrate vital organs of this sniper in front of us with his back turned." What the knife hears is, "HURRR SWING AND MISS? SURE!"

This is the also the first game where you can take a non damaging shot to the helmet. I've seen it happen multiple times where I've had a round plink my helmet, known I was hit, but did not have any damage. I've also shot for a tiny sliver of helmet only to hear the classic PLINK! and have no hit indicator. I thought it was a mistake at first, but when you think about it, a shot grazing a helmet SHOULDN'T kill you. Also, it truly adds to the immersion when out of nowhere you hear a shot coming and then PLINK! but you're still alive. Talk about a scramble... your whole squad is going to be in a panic to find that dude before the next shot is six inches lower.

I would like to give a round of applause to EPIC for being the first game I've played in this century to take their own stance on the effectiveness of weapons and their ranges. I know that my old man has killed a deer from over 6" away with a shotgun... so does EPIC. You can finally take a shot at someone 100 yards away and get the kill. You can also opt to load slugs into your shotgun of choice and hit as if it was a rifle. I'm not a gun nerd, but I know that I'm tired of every weapon behaving exactly the same in every game just because that's how it was in the previous blockbuster hit.

Another popular weapon they took their own stance on, which should make a lot of people want to sing songs and write poems, is the grenade launcher. If you think you're going to get a ton of kills by dropping ammo packs to yourself and firing endless grenade rounds all over the place while running and jumping like a maniac... guess again. There are people who will try and have a little bit of success, but they are nowhere near as effective as they are in other games. I find myself using the 40mm grenade launcher more as a can opener than a weapon. Is there some squishy goodness on the other side of that wall? Let's find out! BLAMO! Oh look, there he is. It says right in the 40mm's description that it's mostly used as a force multiplier and a way to break up groups of enemies. That's pretty accurate seeing as I'd never switch to it in a firefight unless I was trying to kill a couple guys who were bunched up. Even in THAT situation you're looking at a kill and a pair of assists instead of three kills. The same goes for the RPG. It's not the insta-tripple-kill monster it was in Call of Duty. It's a great way to take out armor and buildings, but it takes a pretty tricky shot to be devastating to foot soldiers... unless you're hiding behind the wall he's aiming at.

The only explosives that are truly a threat to personnel are rounds from the good ol Hot Carl. The Carl Gustaf launcher is not what you want fired at you if you are on foot. It's got great splash damage, travels fast, and will make you rage if you are killed multiple times by one. They stink against vehicles, so hop in that Bradley assault vehicle and show that dude what's what.

When you spend time with each weapon within a kit you're going to find that they all behave slightly differently and that it's all going to come down to your personal preference as to which you like the best. That, my friends, is weapon balance. Sure, you're going to see a ton of similar loadouts, but a lot of people like the same music too. I've heard plenty of rumors of this gun being "nerfed" or that one, but we'll see how that all turns out as time goes on.

Vehicles

Something I've never been a fan of in any FPS has been vehicles. I think my beef with a tank is that I'm never able to get the results I need when I use it and I spend way too much time trying to counter them instead of using my guns to get kills. For the most part, Battlefield Bad Company 2 does a pretty good job of balancing the vehicles with the ground combat, but that only goes as far as Atacama Desert... which I'll get to later...

You have six basic vehicle groups: Cars, Light Tanks, Heavy Tanks, Watercraft, Mounted Weapons, and Helicopters. They are pretty much self explanatory with a few exceptions. Cars include an ATV and Helicopters include a tiny remote controlled helicopter called a UAV. Any actual vehicle can have a second player jump in a secondary gunner spot or just tag along for the ride. Any vehicle can get a road kill by running over an opponent... yes, even the UAV. You can equip vehicle specialties (READ: Perks) that change their behavior slightly, but if you can picture a tank and how it behaves, you know what's up.

When the game first launched it was near impossible to take down vehicles with any regularity. If you were on Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 you know what it was like the first time someone called in a Harrier. You don't have any rockets that "lock onto" any vehicles by themselves, but you can hit a target with a tracer dart pistol and then follow that up by holding your rocket's reticle over the little orange box that comes up on the target until you get a distance marker on your screen. At that point you're all locked up and ready to fire with great accuracy. That being said, you won't use it anywhere near as often as you think you will. Most times you'll be planting mines, free firing shoulder mounted rockets, taking aim with mounted guns or attaching C4. The tracer darts are great, but so is timing up your shots and does not require so much time in the open.

Move ahead a few weeks and now everyone has their favorite way of dealing with vehicles... and everyone's got much better at using them. When you add it all up you end up with tank hulls and helicopter parts everywhere and people taking the shoe leather express. This has also put a ton of the emphasis on your squad's engineer(s). If you have a couple smart engineers around they can keep a single tank up and running through a pretty serious attack and give you a massive armor advantage. Combine that with a driver and gunner who are on point and you now have a strong weapon that you've EARNED... not just a murder button you acquired by being the first guy to get there.

I still have problems with helicopters from time to time, but most of that comes from people spending the whole round trying to steal the opposing team's helicopter while trying to maintain ours in the air instead of going for objectives. Helicopters are so fun and tempting to get into that some people will even go so far as to HELP the enemy push us back until there is a helicopter available just so they can get some helicopter time. If you end up in a round against a top knotch helicopter pilot you'll know it... and it can be extremely frustrating. Firstly, it's frustrating because you keep dieing. Secondly, it's frustrating because EPIC decided that we didn't need a training map to practice flying the things. That means if you want to get better you have to take the chopper and fly it poorly during live play. If you want to start a private match you have to have at least 8 players... so that's out of the question too unless you've got 7 friends who are cool with letting you practice killing them. I tend to just keep my distance and put shots on enemy choppers. PROTIP: Get that long barrel tank on a hill and hit that SOB chopper pilot with a tank round between his eyes for great justice.

To wrap up this vehicles section, if you're having trouble with enemy armor, work together with your squad to maximize your anti armor capabilities and stick with it. If you have two engineers, a medic, and an assault running together focusing on some stubborn tank who won't die you'll get him eventually and save your whole team a load of grief. This is another example of a time when teamwork and possibly stepping out of your comfort zone will lead to having more fun and winning more rounds.

Community and Online Experience

Plug in your microphone. Put on your headset. Work together. If you don't, you're like 75% of the players online. Too many people are either so uncomfortable with their performance in this game that they don't say a word or they have been brow beaten to death by all the simple games they've played over the past five years and don't even know what teamwork is anymore. The people that I've run across that have their headsets on and microphones clicked on have been great. I've already made significantly more friends in BFBC2 than I made in all the years I played the three previous Call of Duty games.

The nice part about being online in Bad Company 2 is that you don't hear all the childish nonsense you hear playing in other games. You only have 3 other dudes you can talk to at any point. As of this post I haven't even wanted to mute anyone but one guy who's microphone was throwing so much high pitched noise I had to take my headphones off to save my hearing. There's no lobby to go back into after the round and hear about how much you got "owned' or for someone to complain about how you "don't have any skill." You are COMPLETELY isolated from everyone but your squad. Of course that means if they aren't working with you that you're going to have to find another squad or sit talking to yourself all round, but hey, I haven't wanted to choke anyone in a few weeks.

Of course, there are plenty of people to play with/against at all hours. I work nights, so I'm usually on after 11PM EST and will regularly stay on until 6AM EST or so. Sometimes I'll find myself in a light room or two, but I have a feeling that EA marks servers to be shut down due to inactivity at certain points and blocks new players from joining. Why? Because I'll join a different room afterwards and there will be squads coming and going from the server on the same map I just left after 10 minutes of running around by myself in the previous server. Again, it's another hunch of mine, but it feels like what's up.

I am hopeful that over time the level of play will rise from everyone who sticks with the game. All the people who'd prefer to keep their headset off and do their own thing will go back from whence they came and more people who enjoy a game that requires teamwork will buy in. I'm sure some people will even give teamwork a try after they prove to themselves that being a selfish piece of crap doesn't get them anywhere too.

Don't get me wrong, there are a ton of good people online. The problem is that there are too many people doing their own thing with blatant disregard for the goal of the round. I still have a great time online and find myself hooking up with cool people from time to time... I just wish it was more often that I get dropped into a squad that's working like a machine than one that's not working at all.

Audio

Best I've ever heard in any game I've ever played. Set your audio to "war tapes," turn up the volume, and try to disagree with me. Period.

Tips and Tricks

and other stuff that took me too long to figure out on my own

• Assault Kit can use c4 if you select a primary weapon that doesn't have an under-barrel attachment.
• Spotting means pointing at a bad guy and pressing the back button. This puts an orange arrow over their head that everyone on your TEAM can see. This works for both vehicles and soldiers. You get a +20 point spot assist for anyone who dies with an orange arrow over their head after you've spotted them. It also makes it very easy to track an enemy who runs behind cover, etc. DO THIS ALL THE TIME. YOU CAN'T SPOT TOO MUCH.
• Spotting has a reload time if you miss. If you hit with the first spot you can spot again immediately after and so on until you miss again. This prevents people from spamming the back button non-stop.
• When you create a squad it defaults to "private" meaning nobody from your team can join your squad. If you aren't waiting on someone else to come fill that last spot you can change the squad to public by pressing start, scrolling down to the word "private" and changing it to "public." You would do better with three squads consisting of four players each instead of six squads of two players each.
• Conquest is scored by respawn tickets. First to zero loses. Medic revives give back tickets and holding flags helps bleed off the other team's tickets. Conquest is a fancy version of deathmatch. Play it as such and don't throw away your lives.
• The repair tool can damage enemy vehicles. You're very hard to hit when you're right up against the tank too.
• Ammo packs refill motion mines. If you're going to insist on playing recon, buddy up with an assault and make sure you've got plenty of ammo packs so you can keep the actual recon coming via motion mines. Ammo packs fill up rockets, grenades, c4, and everything else with an ammo counter too. Don't be afraid to throw a few grenades while you've got an ammo pack at your feet.
• LMGs "stabilize" after a few shots. This means if you hold down the trigger it will hop around for 3 or 4 rounds and then level out and not kick anymore until you stop firing. As long as you're not moving you can mow through dozens of enemies with the trigger held down much better than tapping the trigger in many instances.
• The only way to remove C4 from anything is to blow it up. There is a maximum of six blocks of C4 per player throwing them allowed on the map at once, but once you put your 6 C4 charges on a tank they stay there until they are blown up. Even if you die after planting them, you're still being a credit to the team... just call out that it's wired up and someone should start shooting until the tank goes bye bye. PROTIP: an ATV covered in C4 will do a number on a lot of things.
• You can put down a maximum of SIX anti tank mines... but after they are down they will stay put until blown up even if you change classes.
• Play using the sound setting "War Tapes." You won't regret it. It bumps up the bass and puts emphasis on near by sounds like your breathing, footsteps, the way a gun sounds when fired inside the room you're in, etc. Believe me, you'll love it.

Final Thoughts

Battlefield Bad Company 2 is a MUST BUY. I say MUST BUY because you'll never get to a point where you're comfortably enjoying yourself in a round during the course of a typical rental. You are only cheating yourself if you're a fan of first person shooters and put this game down before you get into a groove. This is the single most satisfying online experience I've had since games dropped the survival game mode. Give Bad Company 2 a couple weeks to sink in and start making sense. Find your way and team up with people you enjoy spending time with. Try out every vehicle in every way you can think of. Try out different weapon combinations. When one game mode gets too frustrating, try a different one. The way each game mode is played is night and day from each other. At least then you'll be frustrated by something new while you're building the skills that will eventually make this the most satisfying experience you've had online.