Bad Company 2 is the latest game from DICE/EA that takes part in EA’s struggle to take back dominance in what they believe to be rightfully theirs, the first-person shooter genre. When the last time they feel like they had said dominance I am not sure.
You play as Preston Marlowe, a member of a four-man military squad known as B-Company. It’s where they put the misfits, and apparently their branch of the military only has four misfits. After the first game ending with your squad getting away with some trucks full of gold you’re all back for another adventure. I don’t think they mention why exactly you’re back shooting people.
Is this game what EA has been looking for to take the FPS throne from Modern Warfare 2?
YAY :
- The destruction is great. Guy hiding behind a corner of a building? Blow it up! I’ve never been to war, but it seems more war-like than other FPS’s do. Some of the best moments are when you’re hiding behind a wall and you have to run out of the way because it gets blown up by a tank and you hear that sound that you’d supposedly hear after something near you has just exploded. There’s a lot of nice touches in the details.
- The ‘bad’ company you have with you can be quite entertaining, especially in the cutscenes. A lot of the stuff Haggard said had me laughing. If you stop the action for a couple minutes and just look around, the other guys will start conversations about random topics, like ‘fiddy cent’. The blatant anti-Modern Warfare joke is pretty hilarious too.
- The meat is in the multiplayer. I think this is only the second game under the Battlefield name to have a single-player campaign. While the campaign to the first game wasn’t bad, and this campaign is better, the focus here is really the multiplayer. There’s three basic modes. Rush (search and destroy), Conquest (capture points), and Squad Deathmatch. Each mode gives you the choice to be assault, medic, engineer, or recon(sniper). You gain class specific perks the better you do within each one. There’s also an abundance of vehicles, like ATV’s, Helicopters, and Tanks. I appreciate the teamwork needed to be successful in a squad/class based shooter like this. It’s a lot of fun.
NAY :
- While your NPC buddies may be humorous to listen to and bullet sponges, if there’s around 15 enemies onscreen you’re probably going to have to kill 10-12 of them. It’s not that they have a problem shooting enemies, it just seems like DICE made it so their bullets barely hurt anyone. Like I said though, they do often serve as valuable decoys/bullet sponges and can’t die.
- Possible Spoiler – I don’t mean to spoil anything for people who haven’t played the campaign yet, but there is a moment in it like Modern Warfare 2 where an EMP-like device goes off and it’s supposed to have killed all tech in the area. However, unlike Modern Warfare 2 my gun with a red dot sight still has the red dot, and when I look into my air-strike binoculars it shows the interface, but just says “System Offline”. Shouldn’t those not even work?
- The vehicle sections in the campaign, especially in comparison to the multiplayer, are mostly slow and tedious. Maybe because you’re the only human player controlling any aspect of them. Why they couldn’t have made this game at least two-player co-op I don’t understand.
- Issues have recently been plaguing the multiplayer and effecting the ability of players to even find games. I didn’t run into any such issues myself, but when a large number of people can’t access the mode you built the game around that’s a big deal.
Bad Company 2 is a good game, but I still don’t think it has what it takes to take over the FPS throne from Modern Warfare 2. The campaign is good, but not nearly as engaging as Modern Warfare 2′s. And while the multiplayer is very good and what most people will buy it for, I don’t see it taking a big bite out of current online FPS’s, especially with all the issues that have been hampering it around its launch. I’m not even really a Modern Warfare 2 fan, yet I feel I have to say “Sorry EA, maybe next time.”
Or at least until they get Vince Zampella and Jason West back (this is a complete guess) after their recent Activision fiasco and have them head a studio/new FPS.
