Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is a game developed by DICE and published by EA games set to drop March 2, 2010 in North America and Europe. If you are unfamiliar with Battlefield, the series has put its stamp on the land, air, and sea warfare across ginormous maps. What’s exciting about this new Battlefield game is that Bad Company 2 runs on its new Frostbite engine, which makes large scale destructible environments online possible. Destructible buildings were desperately missing from the series from when I played the old Battlefield games and now I have them.
Available for play in the beta is only a Rush challenge on Harbor Coast, which one team defends their laptop/intel from being blown up by the opposing team. The attacking team loses when they lose all their ticks by dying too many times. The defending team loses when all their intel is destroyed by failing to defend each point. Each of piece of intel/base is spread across the map in direct path to the last point. The map is not entirely available to roam from the get go in as each section is blocked off from the rest of the map where the other control points are forcing you go in order. The game is very much open and you can run into buildings and swim in the ocean if you please. However, running to your objective can seem like a chore that rewards you with the fun action to be had at your destination.
The game looks absolutely stunning, the bright golden desert shines and textures are sharp even up close. As your tank drives, it leaves trails of desert dust behind while buildings crumble and are even brought down entirely, taking everyone out along with it. In order to do this, you must take out the support beams in each building. This is much easier planting C4 around the beams. Very fun. As an engineer, you can repair tanks while they fire cheese-like-holes in buildings thanks to the new Frostbite engine. I found this tactic very effective for taking out campers.
I experienced about one to two minor freezes while playing, but the game runs very smoothly around a consistent 30-35 fps even when firefights and destruction gets hectic. It’s definitely not as smooth as Call of Duty, but it’s in beta, so there’s room for improvement. I found the draw distances extremely far, and I saw this is as a sight to behold when your sniping your target hundreds of feet away.
Being a foot soldier in Battlefield can seem daunting when going up against tanks and helicopters, but the range of classes are balanced so that you can actually be effective against tanks with powerful RPGs that take out tanks. Well placed shorts can destroy tanks in one to two hits in the back or side where armor is weaker. There five classes with multiple gun unlocks and there are even perks now. The customization isn’t as deep Call of Duty multiplayer but, again it’s in beta.
The gun-play in Bad Company 2 is a very close mixture of Killzone 2 and Modern Warfare 2. You have the same feeling of weight with the raw speed and accuracy of a Call of Duty game. Guns are not lasers in this game like Call of Duty, so you actually have to fire two to three shot bursts if you want to kill targets at long range, which you will be doing a lot.
Right now players are running around like chickens with their heads cut-off and there is a deep lack of communication. With my experience with Battlefield 2: Modern Combat on PC, this is frightening. Something needs to be done about communication and team work with PSN community which DICE has tried to do.
As far as what’s available to players for team work, is the spot and mark ability available to every player. As long as you can see an enemy, you can mark them with a red triangle over their head which can be seen very well to your team so that they can kill a visible enemy. All you have to do is press select while your cross hair is over an enemy. It’s kind of a cheap way of calling out where the enemy is to your teammates without a mic.
Bad Company is so fun and pleasing to play. I can’t wait until they release more maps in beta or the actually game because they look amazing so far. I also can’t wait to play with friends because getting together with a bunch of buddies and planning out an attack with your squad can be some of the most satisfying experiences that can be had in this game.
Marco Cecilio, NoobFeed