Review: Battlefield Bad Company 2

WAR. In capital letters. That's what Battlefield Bad Company 2 tries to achieve. Was it successful?

Find out, below the cut!

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Let's start with single-player shall we. In short?

Sucks. Butt.

The end.

Why? Basically, the characters are annoying and the script is poorly written, the writers seeming to think they are the greatest comedians on earth.

Furthermore, the construction of the game is like something out of the 90s, which is to say, completely out-dated and poorly done. Enemies pop out of invisible spawn points after you pass predictably placed triggers. Let me illustrate with an example. In one level I noticed a tripwire trap in the grass and attempt to jump over to avoid setting it off. I clearly jump to clear it, but the game doesn't let me. It says "No, you MUST trip the wire, otherwise we can't start the next set piece in which all hell breaks loose, and you must shoot more shit".

That is not good gaming and is just one in many horrific experiences I've had with the single-player campaign. Sure, Modern Warfare 2's got moments like that too, but they are better masked and the action so explosively distracting that it doesn't really matter. But when you can clearly see the tripwire and want to avoid it, it's frustrating that the game is so lazily restrictive.


The cutscenes are jarring as they occur at the most unnecessary of times, breaking up the gameplay too much. Dying is also a chore because then you have to go back to the loading screen for some time, whilst checkpoints are too far apart. It gets annoying have to play through scripted set pieces again.

S0 I was absolutely disappointed with the single-player. A waste of time. And undoubtedly, this will bring down the score of the entire game, which is a shame.

Because multiplayer is pretty damn good.

As I said at the start, this is WAR. It seriously is. With the beautiful, richly detailed and robust Frostbite Engine, DICE has created an experience of war that is unlike anything you'd have experienced before.

With the new graphics engine, everything is so pitch perfect in ambience. Dust kicks up with billowing winds, trees are lush and the sun is sweltering. Water shimmers and is truly wet, and guns kick back with nasty recoil. In the distance, there is the incessant cracks of gunfire, and if you stand next to a tank, BOOM. In fact, there's so much BOOM in the game. Battle chatter is also a constant in your ear, squads shouting accomplished objectives, incoming threats, cries for medics and back-up, reloading, etc. This ties in to how great sound is in this game too.


Which brings me to my next point. The graphics engine is not only one of the best out there right now (it's lush jungles come close to the Cry and Dunia Engines in fidelity) but it's also got DESTRUCTABILITY. Which is necessary in WAR.

If you don't know how such an engine works, here's a quick lecture from Professor Junch. Basically, with most engines, at least simpler ones, if they wanted to show destructability, it was a case of replacing assets of a house with a broken house as soon as hits upon the building were registered. But see, doing this is just an artificial representation of destruction that could not truly be considered accurate/realistic.

With the Frostbite Engine, where you hit is what will come apart. Walls, fences, boxes, vehicles. And this is amazing not just because it looks great when buildings fall apart with constant shelling from tanks, mortars, grenades, etc. but also because this changes the battlefield dynamically every round. Need to quickly get from point A to point B? Just shoot a hole in the wall and run right through. But if you're taking cover in a house, don't think you're completely safe. All it takes are a few well-placed shots from a tank and your hidey-hole is reduced to rubble.

Combat is decent, although it appears a lot less "realistic" in the sense that you really need to pump an enemy full of lead to bring him down. I get that this game needs their players to have quantifiable hitpoints but I think in a war game, shooting someone in the chest would drop them pretty fast. It especially sucks if you're a low level sniper trying to make good kills. I should really play the hardcore mode, but there just aren't enough people playing on those particular servers.

Like that other big war shooter, DICE has got a rewards system going. Experience is earned separately for each class. So play enough times with the Recon, and see your snipers upgraded etc. Play as a medic, and get more healing abilities and weapons unlocked there. Which means the classes you neglect will remain crap throughout, which is fine. There's also a lot of rewarding on the battlefield, anything from killing an enemy, assisting in kills, capturing flags, etc.


Which brings me to my next point on death, fun, and stress levels. Undoubtedly, with any shooter, it takes awhile to get a hang of the gameplay, mechanics, in order to be proficient with it. You see, as I've mentioned many times before about Modern Warfare 2, that game is seriously ruthless in its competitivity. People play for themselves even if it's a team deathmatch. It's always about being on top of the leaderboard, pwning others, and keeping your death count down. Unlocking the next big toy to kill more people with. It's an extremely stressful way of playing the game, but Modern Warfare 2 does perpetuate that.

But I didn't feel that with Bad Company 2's multiplayer. As good as I was at MW2, I had a lot of getting used to with BC2, and undoubtedly, going up against tanks and more enemies meant dying more often. It didn't matter so much to me. In WAR, being cannon fodder was just inevitable. But every time you die, you push harder, take out one more enemy, and then go down fighting again. Then respawn to start all over again. It doesn't matter so much because you truly feel like you're fighting for your side, rather than yourself.

If you die defending a capture point, that's just good play. This game does team play very well. From easy points gained from ammo dumping or reviving teammates, to objectives that are clearly marked on your HUD, this game really compels you to do your bit for the war effort. In the Battlefields of old, I loved forgoing the whole fighting thing and just jumping in a jeep and driving across vast open spaces, the wind in my hair. But this game really encourages you to keep the focus on the fight.

Sure, the maps are just as big, and traversing across large spaces is a chore but DICE has streamlined the experience now by allowing you to respawn within squads, and if they are fighting at hotspots, it keeps the action flowing. There is never a dull moment, and everyone is somewhere doing something.


Vehicles are great fun, and they drive well. No complaints there. There's a decent variety of maps and undoubtedly, DICE will have more coming. And there are really just three distinct modes on offer, conquest and rush are just different versions of attacking and defending specific points, whilst squad-play is a more focused, small affair pitting two teams of four against one another. Squad-play is much easier in making kills and being an important player on the team, because there are so few others to compete with. In a massive 32-player kill-fest, it takes a lot to be the stand-out legendary hero of your team.

The only gripe I have about the game is that connections to online games is quite iffy. It takes a long time to refresh a server browser (like, a really long time) and when you do, expect a few failed connections or drop-outs. Modern Warfare 2 in comparison has a more robust multiplayer framework which means you spend less time worrying about connecting, and more time playing. DICE needs to make it a lot better so that it becomes less of a chore wanting to just get into a decent multiplayer game. That said, once you're in, it's all good. Map changes happen within the server so you don't have to worry about reconnecting, etc. Just keep playing and soon you'll realize that time has passed and the real world has sunk under the sea.

In conclusion, compared to Modern Warfare 2's paintball shooter in which a handful of ruthless, cold gamers scurry about small maps pwning each other, Bad Company 2 is your true war shooter. This is war as frighteningly epic and intense as it gets. Running with a whole bunch of your squad towards more explosions, gunfire and just as determined as the enemy is nothing short of exhilarating. Battlefield is back, and it's as awesome as 1942 was eight years ago. Worth getting for the multiplayer experience. Just forget that the single-player ever existed.