The good people over at EA were nice enough to send me up a beta code for their multiplayer beta for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on the PS3.  The beta release comes on the heels of the MW2 launch, which may not be a coincidence. Gamers seem to be moving away from the space marine to the real marines nowadays and Bad Company 2 looks to pick up where its older brother left off. If this beta is any indication of what is to come next year in the full release (haha, I said full release), consider me counting the days. This game is going to be excellent.

War themed FPS are becoming a dime a dozen these days. No one does it better than Activision when it is JUST a soldier and his wits. When it comes to a full multiplayer scope with vehicles, drones, and teamwork, Bad Company 2 takes the reins. The game mode we were allowed to play was much like last year’s “Get the Gold Chest” variant, except this time, you had to blow something up. Same animal, just makes more sense. The game builds off of the Frostbite engine which lets you blow up basically 90% of what you see. The graphics here pop. I was floored to see how real the game looks and the details of  the maps to the vehicles to the individual guns. They did not miss a thing.

It is hard to assemble a team in a beta where people are doing whatever they can do to explore the map, class types, and vehicles. The match is not a deathmatch, but more of a Conquest mode, which is fun, if everyone is trying to accomplish the same goal. In the beta, everyone, including myself, just wanted to explore. The maps are HUGE. If you want to be a sniper, there are hills to hide in. If you want to ride a tank straight into the shit, go for it.

If my crystal ball is working properly, and it usually is, this will be the multiplayer game to play next year. People will get tired of MW2 because it does get repetitive. BC2 is a huge sandbox where your shovel is a machine gun and bucket is a tank. I look forward to playing there a ton next year when the full game drops on us. As always, there will be surprises that we don’t know about yet plus new game modes and maps as well. See you on the playground next March.