Review: Battlefield: Bad Company 2

EA DICE has returned us to Battlefield: Bad Company with our good friends Sweetwater, Marlowe, Haggard and Redford. Get ready for some shooting, wisecracking, and blowing up EVERYTHING. Is it fun? Is it blast-tastic? Is it worth buying? Is it better than Modern Warfare 2? You can find out after the break.

Bad Company 2 drops us off where the original left off with a few trouble makers, plenty of ammo, and things to blow up. Facing off against the stereotypical bad guys, Russians, Bad Company is off to recover some super weapon the Japanese created in WWII. The plot isn’t really that important. BLOWING STUFF UP is important and Bad Company excels at this. On the surface it’s a pretty standard first person shooter but the game offers a few hooks to players, the clearest is DESTRUCTION! Real destructible buildings. Oh what fun. Screw the red barrels, just use a grenade launcher to level the place! Stuck, pinned down by enemy fire? Need a new way through? Blow a hole in the wall.

That’s where the next few hooks come into the game. It’s realistic. Bad Company 2 is not your average run and gun. Do that and you die…. a lot…. trust me I tried. BC2 adds depth by allowing multiple ways to fight (explode) through situations. With the friendly AI’s helping out in a pinch (most of the time) and the enemy AI proving to be a significant challenge time and time again even on Normal difficulty settings, the gameplay felt far from a series of scripted events. The weapons aren’t extreme or far-fetched either. Being limited to carrying only two weapons at any time added to the general sense of uncertainty that BC2 gives you. You will constantly be questioning are these two weapons the right tools for this section ahead? Is it safe walking through the street or should I clear each building? Are there more baddies than what I can see? Is the path I have chosen the one of least resistance or am I in the killzone? Instead of the general feeling of chaos and adrenaline felt in MW2, BC2 gives players a feeling of tension, uncertainty, forcing them to find a way through the challenge presented to them. It’s not a complete sandbox but you can go about solving a problem any way you choose, depending on the tools you are given.

While it is a great game all around, Bad Company 2 does fall short in a few areas. Graphically the game was impressive but occasionally the foliage would pull disappearing acts, something I don’t expect from a title of this caliber. While trees swaying in the wind is very impressive and a great effect making it very difficult to spot snipers, the trees themselves seems too blocky, more of square or hexagon shaped trunk than a tree trunk. Minor qualms really with the overall graphics. Vehicles are a ton of fun but were slim pickings in single player while they are clutch to multiplayer. Keeping with the disturbing trend of FPS titles these days, the single player campaign of BC2 felt short with token minimal replay value provided in way of unlockable weapons and MCOM stations to destroy. EA is banking on the multiplayer to keep BC2 on the gamer radar, and rightfully so. Multiplayer is where this game really shines.

Multiplayer is classic Battlefield, separated by classes of Assault, Engineer, Medic, and Scout each with their own weapon sets and abilities to unlock. Two key gameplay modes make up the bulk of multiplayer – Rush and Conquest. Rush being the classic attacker/defender scenario and Conquest more a king of the hill mode. Teamplay is important here, a bunch of rogue warriors won’t deliver results. Working together is quick way to win. A huge KUDOS to EA DICE for making Hardcore mode available to ALL multiplayer modes, unlike another big recent FPS. Finding a game and loading up is rarely a problem. If you want to play with just your friends in a bigger game form up a squad and go to town. You can also respawn on your squadmates to keep playing and work together with your friends. Although more maps and game modes would be a welcome addition it’s the huge scale of those options that make online BC2 a winner.

So is it better than MW2? I’m going to shy away from the fanboy wrath and say that it’s really for you to decide. For me BC2 definitely is better than MW2. BC2 has a more realistic feel, requiring a little more thought, tactical finesse, and teamwork. On top of that BC2 also has vehicles, destruction, and squads in multiplayer. The biggest bonus is BC2 doesn’t have the rapid fan kiddies shouting obscenities and sharing their thoughts on your mother (at least that I’ve encountered so far). BC2 lets you play your way, blow stuff up and cracks wise enough to be entertaining but not so much that it become annoying. While the slower tactical gameplay won’t be for every MW2 or Halo fan, BC2 shines as a very well balanced, damned good fun the only short fall is single player could have been given a little more love, but you know what, I’m still going to give the single player another go.