Battlefield: Bad Company 2: Reviewed (PS3, 360)

This year will see a whole deluge of FPS titles coming to the gaming arena but the beginning of March brings a direct competitor to Modern Warfare 2 to the fore.

Although, the scene has been somewhat dominated by a certain Infinity Ward title I have found that this franchise is fast becoming stale with no new innovation.  There is a gap appearing in the market and EA are making serious headway into filling that void.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 picks up the Battlefield franchise again and leads the charge, head first into this war with a slightly witty, more cinematic and beautiful looking game.  Now, I wasn’t a massive fan of the first game due to the main protagonists being annoying in their delivery of witty remarks as well as a wooden storyline and more open gameplay.  That said, the multiplayer delivered innovation, teamwork and something that held the original Bad Company game together giving you vast amounts of fun.

Bad Company 2 in campaign now offers a solid driven storyline that has a cinematic quality and more focus has been put on the mission structure.  Starting out in 1944, a group of soldiers went on a mission to capture some weaponry that remains in military myth.  This weapon has turned up again in the present day and your squad has been tasked to recover the weapon and bring it into safe hands.  Cue dynamic set pieces that put you into the heart of battle on many different levels with the action not letting up one bit.  Dynamic destruction modelling of buildings, yet again, see their presence shown as you clamber around trying to find cover from incoming rocket and mortar attacks as well as gunfire.

Various guns can also be collected along the way, not only to use there and then but also go into the supply drops that can be found at various points along the way.  The movement is typical battlefield fare and if you think you can run and strafe ala Call Of Duty then you’re in for a sharp shock.  The movement feels more like Killzone with body physics playing a part.  If you run then you will not be moving to either side, only being able to do so when you slow down.  The aiming and firing feel really fluid with easier levels having a slight auto aim to lock onto the enemy.  Don’t be put off by this though as there is so much going on you welcome it almost immediately to help you through.

Various chapters require various tasks for you to complete.  From driving tanks into towns, to racing through enemy infested areas on quads its all there but one concern with this is that it jumps from scene to scene a little too much which breaks the flow of the story and immersion somewhat.  More essence has been put on giving the game a more realistic feel with a prime example being split away from your team in a blizzard.  The idea is to get to your team mats before hypothermia sets in.  As you progress and cannot get into a building or near some fire, created by yourself or not your breathing gets heavier, your mask ices up and you start to slow down.  Finding cover is essential here as your life slips away from you.

Another massive improvement in the game is the sound.  The cracking of gunfire is sublime and every weapon has a realistic noise to it.  If you’re in a tunnel or inside then the echoes that are reproduced add that little extra depth to proceedings.  Overall, the campaign will take around 6ish hours to complete on an easy level but is not trying to be overly complicated or pretentious like its competitor.  It is what it is, a solid story that will give you depth and immersion without you feeling cheated by the end of it.  After all, these types of games are not based on the storyline for longevity but the multiplayer elemements of the game.  Those pure story driven fps’s are left to games like Bioshock which are solely judged on their stories.

Moving onto the biggest part of the game and something that DICE knows how to nail perfectly.  Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare has held onto the FPS multiplayer crown for a while now and I may be sounding a little evangelical here but DICE, with Battlefield: Bad Company 2 have roundhouse kicked that crown off, trod the rusty little thing into the ground and created the best jeweled crown you have seen yet.

This element of the game is as perfect as I have seen so far.  One thing that DICE knows well is how to make well balanced maps with a lot of scope for team work, communication and pure fun.  No room for the one man hero here.  Everyone has their tasks and everyone has their place.  Whether you choose a medic class or an engineer class you all have your roles and one thing that this multiplayer shouts loud is that you’re no more important than your team mates.  If you go in all guns blazing like COD then you will lose, its as simple as that.  With 24 player online, you are working with 11 other players to complete your goal and only after a few games I can see that Bad Company 2 is more of a mature game than MW2.  Defending a base in rush and I jumped onto one of the mounted machine guns.  Within seconds I was joined by a sniper to protect me whilst I done some damage to some incoming tanks.  It’s instinctive to want to aid one of your team mates even if you have never spoken to them before.  Can you say the same about COD unless you’re in a team you know?  I think not!

There is a basic unlock system in play too, the more you rank up the more you unlock and so on.  There is nothing here that switches the balance to heavily towards one team or another by using these “perks”  No Nuclear warheads and all that crap just plain old sight unlocks and things that will help you improve your combat but team work will always shine through.

Points are awarded for your play from kills/streaks to blowing up tanks, helicoptors etc which helps you rank up and unlock new weapons.  The only problem I have with the multiplayer, and it may be me, but it has issues with the host dropping out.  Nobody likes a loser and nothing is more frustrating than having a host on the team that is losing and doesn’t like the way it is all going.  I invested 19 minutes of my time and were winning the battle in the final push when I got a network error and was brought back to the menu screen looking for another game.  Please DICE, if you only do one thing, please let the game look for a new host if one drops because he doesn’t like what has happened.

Overall Battlefield: Bad Company 2 should send a shockwave through the FPS gaming community unless people are still blinded by how stale the Call Of Duty has started to become.  There is room for both mind you but I am here to tell you that this game beats it hands down on every level and every area.  Infinity Ward and Activision rented the FPS room from EA and DICE but the landlords have raised the rent and evicted the tenants from its property.