Okay Geek Farm
PC Review: Battlefield Bad Company 2
Alex Tretrop
The original Bad Company was fun and memorable, mostly due to the antics of the squad you played. Add in a fairly good destruction engine and you had a solid experience that you could enjoy from start to finish, with an additional fun multiplayer that brought on more to the experience. So because of this I was more than pumped for Battlefield Bad Company 2, and now that it's out I'll explain why I think it's a must own.
Story
Taking a radical departure from the first game, Bad Company 2 ditches the silly antics of B Company for a more serious, but still funny story. This is where, in my opinion, the game takes a big hit square to the forehead. What made the original so much fun to play through was because two things: the great cast of characters, and the way things blew up. While the latter remains intact, your squad in Bad Company 2 lacks any sort of emotion that made them such great characters in the first game... at first. While it's possible to hear the funny dialogue, it usually happens in between the enormous gun fights you have, reducing the funny moments to quick snippets of dialog. It sounds weird to say that a modern day shooter takes itself too seriously but that's exactly what Bad Company 2 does. There are certainly some stand out characters, like your pacifist hippie helicopter pilot, and while the memorable dialog is toned down quite a bit, there are some brilliantly made conversations between your squad that brings you back to the first game's nonchalant attitude.
When you're actually engaged in the story, you'll find it's a fairly generic tale of how Russians have found some generic super weapon and are trying to terrorize the world with it. None of it is particularly memorable storywise, except for when you stop and listen to some conversations that your squad has that can be missed very easily, which is very unfortunate. The story, contrary to the first game, is nothing special. It's at its best when you listen to B Company make subtle hints at how Modern Warfare sucks (which to my pleased surprise they did quite a bit).
Gameplay
Some smart design decisions elevate the single player experience to being worth enduring the bad story. Bad Company 2's campaign can be summed up in very few words: if you like shooters and things blowing up then this game is for you, especially if you were left unsatisfied or got bored of Modern Warfare 2. You have a great set of weapons, vehicles, air strikes, and other tricks in your possession that make everything feel a lot more realistic, especially in the audio section. While I felt like Modern Warfare 2, Medal of Honor, and other run of the mill shooters have some very unrealistic and sometimes useless weapons, Bad Company 2 has a great number of powerful guns that all feel like they belong. The story takes advantage of this by leaving crates, usually near checkpoints in levels, where you can choose any two guns you want, provided you've picked it up once in the campaign off a dead corpse or ammo crate.
The gameplay gets noticeably more fun when you decide to jump into multiplayer, where you can definitely tell DICE spent most of their time polishing. Battlefield has always had a special place in my heart, with some of my most treasured moments taking place in Battlefield 2 & Battlefield 1942. Bad Company 2, teaches us that DICE believe in the PC crowd - an area where Infinity Ward and other developers shove crappy ports over to. For starters, DICE understands the simple fact that dedicated servers are the best way to experience a PC multiplayer game; lag is effectively eliminated from the multiplayer entirely, making this a great reason to pick this game up on PC. And not to mention that DICE tailor made every menu, control, and gameplay mechanic for the PC version. On the consoles, however, the matchmaking is also solid - throwing you into games fast and easily, although there have been many connection issues that EA is still hard at work fixing.
Multiplayer
The multiplayer experience can hold up to 32 people fighting for control points, placing charges at M-Com stations, or just some regular old Squad Deathmatch. What's a squad? Well when you join an online game in Bad Company 2 you can opt to join a squad, which will give you special bonuses if you work with them, giving you extra incentives to play with friends. You can spawn on your squad members at anytime, as long as they are alive and completing objectives, such as securing a flag. A small addition that you may find insignificant at first is the ability to mark a player or objective to your team, showing where that pesky sniper is hiding, or giving you the opportunity to easily tell your squad that you should go flank the base instead of running straight through the enemy tanks. You may think it unimportant at first, but you earn bonus exp. if a team mate does something related to what you pointed out. Found that annoying sniper camping your spawn? If you mark him and an ally shoots him he will get double exp, and you will too for giving the order! This, along with some gigantic maps, make it almost impossible to stay in one location with it even encouraging snipers to move around once in a while.
Another excellent feature in multiplayer is the destructibility; Everything in Bad Company can be blown up in single player or multiplayer. One of your enemies take cover in a house? Fire a grenade launcher or an RPG and blow up the foundations of the house to watch it come crumbling down on your enemy. Maybe one of the houses has an M-Com Station your team wants to blow up. Instead of running in, planting a charge, and making sure it detonates, you can just blow the house up with a tank, instantly destroying the objective. It's truly fascinating to see how much you have to adapt to when that cover you were hiding behind isn't there anymore, or that awesome sniping position on top of a roof has been demolished since the entire house is now gone. As the game goes on multiplayer levels get more and more leveled, changing them and forcing you to adapt to the different situations. Considering the levels can be massive or even sometimes diminutive depending on the mode your playing, it almost literally means that no two battles play out the same.
Bad Company 2's multiplayer modes are also very diverse and interesting, with something fun for everyone. Do you like the tactical feel of Modern Warfare 2's multiplayer? Then Squad Rush and Squad Deathmatch were made for you. In Squad Deathmatch instead of it being one large team, it's only you and the three other people in your squad against three other squads on a smaller map with nothing else on it - except for one tank that the squads can all kill each other over. Squad Rush is essentially the same thing except using the Rush gametype. What is Rush? If you played the original Bad Company this is essentially an improved Gold Rush mode, and for those that haven't played it, it's an Attack/Defense gametype with Battlefield's destructibility being a huge feature. In it, attackers spawn parachuting out of a plane and try to destroy sets of 2 M-Com stations. Once you do, your team gains that base and a new area of the map opens up where the defenders are outfitted with a much more defendable base. Since the attackers earn the defenses old base, it's interesting to see if your team can try to preserve the base as much as they can while they assault it, or if they just blow everything up and deal with the smoldering ash you get as a base. Finally, there's Conquest which is your typical capture the territories game mode on a usually enourmous map, making for long hours of fun.
Everything in the multiplayer is polished to near perfection, especially on PC where DICE shows off that, in my humble opinion, PC versions are always typically better provided you put the effort (I'm looking at you Modern Warfare 2 and your crappy port). Oh and don't fret if you get it on the console, everything is as polished as it can get, with fluid controls you can actually tolerate on the consoles. Although the EA servers have been taken down many times, it seems EA is constantly trying to fix this as fast as they can.
Audio/ Visuals
In a single word: Gorgeous. No matter what system you play it on DICE pushes the Frostbite engine to the limit, and with the support for DirectX 11 graphics cards on PC you will definitely stop and stare at the complexity of some of the single and multiplayer levels. Not one level looks bad, and while the single player levels never seem to leave the jungle-esque environment, the draw distance in particular is amazing with you're capable of literally seeing mountains in the distance.
In the audio department the sound will most likely be the thing that strikes you when you start playing. If I said that Bad Company 2 has some of the best sound design in a war game that I've ever heard since games like the original Call of Duty, would you believe me? Many won't, but the truth of it is that the sound is absolutely amazing. From an RPG hitting the ground next to you and muffling the noises around you, to you actually hearing the difference between shooting a gun in the open or shooting it inside of a crate. This is made even better if you turn on the war tapes options. It really is a treat for your ears to experience.
Final Thoughts
Bad Company 2 takes the series in a different direction, but it's one that overall improves the core game dramatically. While the single player doesn't feel nearly as interesting and compelling as the original Bad Company, with your squad feeling lifeless and generic, it's worth experiencing for some very fun set piece battles, thinly veiled Modern Warfare jokes, and some great visuals and sound design that is off the charts. The multiplayer, however, is definitely where you and your friends will be spending most of your time. The game feels much more like an improved and revised version of Battlefield 2, with tons of maps, from expansive and sprawling, to small and frantic. Add in the excellent destructibility and jaw dropping sound design and you have a recipe for a game that I will be playing for a long time.
Although there are tons of issues in single player Bad Company 2 is a testament to how fun a game can be. DICE even treated the PC version right, with dedicated servers, eliminating lag, adding crazy amounts ofcustomization along with support for DirectX 11. It's proved singlehandedly that the PC market isn't dead, and of course that Modern Warfare 2 is not nearly a perfect as people believe it to be! No matter what system you own you owe it to yourself, if you enjoy shooters, to pick up a copy of Bad Company 2.
