Battlefield: Bad company 2
I said in my Bad Company 1 review that I couldn't wait to get my hands
on the sequel. Well, I now have said sequel and it's everything I wanted
it to be and more. Is it the best game ever? Maybe not, but it is the
best in one regard. Thank God I have a PS3 is all I have to say about
that for now.
But really quickly, let's go over the single‐player campaign. This happens not long after the events of the first game, if I remember correctly, it's around 3 months or something like that. Sarge is yet to be retired, Sweetwater is growing tired of fighting, Haggard's missing his Dallas cheerleaders, and Preston Marlowe, otherwise known as YOU, is fighting no longer because he has to, but because he's fighting for his country's freedom. Basically, they're all the same. This time around, though, they're looking for a weapon of mass destruction. And that's about it.
However, one thing pissed me off. Okay, the first mission you start the game at is during WWII and you start hearing something. It's a word. Something like… "fuck". Then we go to Bad Company people and what do I hear? "Fuck". Tell me, WHY in the hell did DICE have to do that. I went through the entire first game being pleased that the word didn't exist, making it more light‐hearted and different from the constant "fucks" of today (well, that just sounds wrong). I say the word, sure, but having them not say it made me feel a little bit happier that they didn't talk like they were from NYC. Now they're just spraying the word everywhere. Even Marlowe starts saying it halfway through the game. This doesn't affect the score of the game, but it just didn't feel right to me.
Still, the campaign is of decent length at around 8 hours and more if you try to find all of the collectible single‐player weapons and plant charges on all of the M‐COM stations in the level. And might I say that the ending is both awesome and humorous. It's better than the first game's campaign, though I didn't get the destructive impulses as I did in the original Bad Company, despite the engine receiving an upgrade to support bringing down houses and whatnot. I noticed that some support parts wouldn't fall down in some buildings though, even when I used 8 or 9 C4 charges on the damn thing.
But here's the real good part: The multiplayer. You know, the thing that the Battlefield series has been all about since the beginning. The thing here is that they perfected getting together with your team mates and tactically kicking ass. Out of the four modes, Conquest is my favorite, as I had figured before I even touched the others. Conquest is the standard Battlefield game mode that's been copied in Star Wars games (Battlefront and it's sequel) and even Lord of the Rings (Conquest is the name of it, actually. Hm...) and has your team trying to capture points on the map and destroying he enemy's base when you have all said points. Meanwhile, you're trying not to have too many casualties as each team has "tickets" (overall lives for the team) and once you run out, even if you have more capture points, your team still loses. You have Rush, which pits the attackers against the defenders. The attackers are trying to destroy M‐Com stations and then blow the hell out of the enemy base. The defenders are, well, defending. The defenders have infinite tickets in this mode while the attackers have a set amount. Then there's Squad Rush which is Rush with both squads going towards the same M‐Com station to make it fly into the next Battlefield game (that's pretty far, you know). Then, of course, you have the Battlefield version of Deathmatch: Squad Deathmatch. This has 4 squads of 4 people going in to try to get the 50 kills the fastest. Damn intense, if you ask me. The only problem here is that if one of the other squads has a high level recon person with an automatic sniper rifle, you're screwed up the ass.
And there's the biggest problem with the online portion: matchmaking can be a bitch. My first match in Conquest had my squads of level 10's and below up against a team with 3/4 of the members being level 22 or higher. That sucks. We got raped (yes, a reviewer said "raped" in a review, but that's how I roll. Now I'm sounding like Brucie from GTA IV) pretty hard. There's also not a ton of maps and obviously not a ton of modes, but the leveling system is fantastic. You gain experience for the kit you're using (assault, engineer, recon, etc.) and can switch it in the middle of the game. Leveling up here gets you new weapons in that kit and new modifiers for your weapons like red dot sight and such) You also get overall experience to rank up, which further gives you items. It takes a very fair amount of time to level yourself up and doing it gives you such a surge of satisfaction that you want to continue playing the game, creating the addictiveness factor.
I said that DICE perfect kicking ass tactically, though I didn't say they perfected multiplayer overall (that's way too damn hard for anyone to do), just so you guys understand. Getting together with some friends is easy. When you start the game up, you can hit "Play with friends" which let's you do 3 things. The first is joining a friend's game if the room is not full, which can be a good feature but you have to be lucky to get into your buddy's match without a "Server is full" message. The second thing is invite your buddies to your squad of which 3 buddies can join with you. The final thing is set what preferences you want to have. You can set it to Conquest at Laguena Presa (the worst map in the game, though. Taking two steps will result in death from a sniper, I'm telling you) or Squad Deathmatch at White Pass (my personal favorite), which allows you to stick together and find a match that your entire group can fit into. Playing matches with your friends is great as shooting baddies with people you can trust makes the game so much sweeter.
Really quick, let me say this: the multiplayer in this game is the most polished, fun, and addicting multiplayer experience I've ever played, hands down.
Presentation‐wise, the game does fine. The graphics are pretty and they got rid of that damn grain from the first game, making the environments prettier with their environmental variety and very well detailed character models easier to notice and appreciate. However, the PS3's anti‐aliasing issues shine very brightly in this game with jaggies on shadows, power lines, etc. In the auditory department, the game is one of the best. To complement the game's great voice acting (not the best in video game history, but I'm gonna get to that soon), the gunfire sounds better than any game ever before it. Nothing is quite as surreal and pulls you into the experience than to hear your teammates dying yell from across the map and your enemy's round hitting the wood next to your place of cover. Firing off a round in a house especially stands out as the sound seems to reflect off of the wall and back at your eardrums, making it the audio in this game unique and best to reflect the battlefield you're fighting for.
Overall, Bad Company 2 is well worth the money. With the nice length of the campaign and the value of the best multiplayer I've ever been graced to play, it makes this well worth a purchase, despite it's flaws. For added value, you can grab the $15 Bad Company 2 Vietnam expansion pack and play with your baddies on that as well. So, one day you can kill some Koreans and some Russians. What a brave little soldier you are. The best part about it is that it's polished, making everything that. Much. Sweeter.
Score: 9.25
Note: As of January 23, 2011, my BC2 profile has been restarted for some reason. Meaning ALL of the progress I had made has been lost.
But really quickly, let's go over the single‐player campaign. This happens not long after the events of the first game, if I remember correctly, it's around 3 months or something like that. Sarge is yet to be retired, Sweetwater is growing tired of fighting, Haggard's missing his Dallas cheerleaders, and Preston Marlowe, otherwise known as YOU, is fighting no longer because he has to, but because he's fighting for his country's freedom. Basically, they're all the same. This time around, though, they're looking for a weapon of mass destruction. And that's about it.
However, one thing pissed me off. Okay, the first mission you start the game at is during WWII and you start hearing something. It's a word. Something like… "fuck". Then we go to Bad Company people and what do I hear? "Fuck". Tell me, WHY in the hell did DICE have to do that. I went through the entire first game being pleased that the word didn't exist, making it more light‐hearted and different from the constant "fucks" of today (well, that just sounds wrong). I say the word, sure, but having them not say it made me feel a little bit happier that they didn't talk like they were from NYC. Now they're just spraying the word everywhere. Even Marlowe starts saying it halfway through the game. This doesn't affect the score of the game, but it just didn't feel right to me.
Still, the campaign is of decent length at around 8 hours and more if you try to find all of the collectible single‐player weapons and plant charges on all of the M‐COM stations in the level. And might I say that the ending is both awesome and humorous. It's better than the first game's campaign, though I didn't get the destructive impulses as I did in the original Bad Company, despite the engine receiving an upgrade to support bringing down houses and whatnot. I noticed that some support parts wouldn't fall down in some buildings though, even when I used 8 or 9 C4 charges on the damn thing.
But here's the real good part: The multiplayer. You know, the thing that the Battlefield series has been all about since the beginning. The thing here is that they perfected getting together with your team mates and tactically kicking ass. Out of the four modes, Conquest is my favorite, as I had figured before I even touched the others. Conquest is the standard Battlefield game mode that's been copied in Star Wars games (Battlefront and it's sequel) and even Lord of the Rings (Conquest is the name of it, actually. Hm...) and has your team trying to capture points on the map and destroying he enemy's base when you have all said points. Meanwhile, you're trying not to have too many casualties as each team has "tickets" (overall lives for the team) and once you run out, even if you have more capture points, your team still loses. You have Rush, which pits the attackers against the defenders. The attackers are trying to destroy M‐Com stations and then blow the hell out of the enemy base. The defenders are, well, defending. The defenders have infinite tickets in this mode while the attackers have a set amount. Then there's Squad Rush which is Rush with both squads going towards the same M‐Com station to make it fly into the next Battlefield game (that's pretty far, you know). Then, of course, you have the Battlefield version of Deathmatch: Squad Deathmatch. This has 4 squads of 4 people going in to try to get the 50 kills the fastest. Damn intense, if you ask me. The only problem here is that if one of the other squads has a high level recon person with an automatic sniper rifle, you're screwed up the ass.
And there's the biggest problem with the online portion: matchmaking can be a bitch. My first match in Conquest had my squads of level 10's and below up against a team with 3/4 of the members being level 22 or higher. That sucks. We got raped (yes, a reviewer said "raped" in a review, but that's how I roll. Now I'm sounding like Brucie from GTA IV) pretty hard. There's also not a ton of maps and obviously not a ton of modes, but the leveling system is fantastic. You gain experience for the kit you're using (assault, engineer, recon, etc.) and can switch it in the middle of the game. Leveling up here gets you new weapons in that kit and new modifiers for your weapons like red dot sight and such) You also get overall experience to rank up, which further gives you items. It takes a very fair amount of time to level yourself up and doing it gives you such a surge of satisfaction that you want to continue playing the game, creating the addictiveness factor.
I said that DICE perfect kicking ass tactically, though I didn't say they perfected multiplayer overall (that's way too damn hard for anyone to do), just so you guys understand. Getting together with some friends is easy. When you start the game up, you can hit "Play with friends" which let's you do 3 things. The first is joining a friend's game if the room is not full, which can be a good feature but you have to be lucky to get into your buddy's match without a "Server is full" message. The second thing is invite your buddies to your squad of which 3 buddies can join with you. The final thing is set what preferences you want to have. You can set it to Conquest at Laguena Presa (the worst map in the game, though. Taking two steps will result in death from a sniper, I'm telling you) or Squad Deathmatch at White Pass (my personal favorite), which allows you to stick together and find a match that your entire group can fit into. Playing matches with your friends is great as shooting baddies with people you can trust makes the game so much sweeter.
Really quick, let me say this: the multiplayer in this game is the most polished, fun, and addicting multiplayer experience I've ever played, hands down.
Presentation‐wise, the game does fine. The graphics are pretty and they got rid of that damn grain from the first game, making the environments prettier with their environmental variety and very well detailed character models easier to notice and appreciate. However, the PS3's anti‐aliasing issues shine very brightly in this game with jaggies on shadows, power lines, etc. In the auditory department, the game is one of the best. To complement the game's great voice acting (not the best in video game history, but I'm gonna get to that soon), the gunfire sounds better than any game ever before it. Nothing is quite as surreal and pulls you into the experience than to hear your teammates dying yell from across the map and your enemy's round hitting the wood next to your place of cover. Firing off a round in a house especially stands out as the sound seems to reflect off of the wall and back at your eardrums, making it the audio in this game unique and best to reflect the battlefield you're fighting for.
Overall, Bad Company 2 is well worth the money. With the nice length of the campaign and the value of the best multiplayer I've ever been graced to play, it makes this well worth a purchase, despite it's flaws. For added value, you can grab the $15 Bad Company 2 Vietnam expansion pack and play with your baddies on that as well. So, one day you can kill some Koreans and some Russians. What a brave little soldier you are. The best part about it is that it's polished, making everything that. Much. Sweeter.
Score: 9.25
Note: As of January 23, 2011, my BC2 profile has been restarted for some reason. Meaning ALL of the progress I had made has been lost.