Review: Battlefield Bad Company 2

Players: 1 Campaign, Upto 24 in Multi-player (Xbox 360 and PS3) and upto 32 (PC)
Platform(s): Xbox 360, PC, PS3
Developer: DICE
Publisher: EA (Elctronic Arts)
Rating: 9/10
Good Points: Excellent single player campaign, superb sound and graphics, entertaining and humorus AI, good weapons
Bad Points: Little emhasis on single player with only 8 to 9 hours of campaign mode game play,
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Bad Company 2 is the second game in the long-running Battlefield series and features both a single player campaign and an on-line multi-player.
Just as with the first Bad Company the single player campaign has been superbly done, My only criticism is that the 8 to 9 hours of game play just is'nt long enough, and it's a pity that so much empahsis has been put on the on-line multiplayer game as not every player who buys the game will want to play the game online, maybe the way forward would be put more emphasis on the single player campaign for those that want to play the game, as with most games nowadays its always the single player side of things that suffers due to almost all DLC only ever catering for multiplayer, which leaves the single player side of things with little or no replay value at all, maybe multiplayer games should be done in the same way that Battlefield 1943 was done, via download.




BF: BC2 continues the storyline from the first Bad Company, and you still have the same comical main characters, a group of wise-cracking squaddies, this time round though there is no gold to find, You still have to find and collect weapons though, which is a good incentive due to the weapons (collectables) you find being added to the weapons drops so you can change your loadout to suit in game,
You control one member of the squad with the other three being A.I controlled,.unfortunalty there is no co-op option as this would be the perfect game to play with your mates, The AI, Unlike in many games are actuall quite good, and they will actually kill enemies on a regular basis rather than go into an A Team type moment (lots of shooting but no killing) if you are taking cover while healing, and if left alone im sure the AI would go on and clear many of the areas for you, another good aspect of the AI is that they don't get hurt or die so your not spending precious campaign play time putting yourself in danger to healing them if they are down. Throughout the campaign you will hear arguments in the background between your comrades, some of which are actually funny and it all helps with setting the in-game atmosphere as you soon start to bond with the your new (or re-acquainted if you played BFBC) best mates.

Although some of the maps in BC2 are vast open areas there are still some levels where game play is very linear and if you step out of these areas (or combat zone) for 10 seconds or more the game will kill you and unlike the original Bad Company you cannot just simply enter a vehicle and take it for a spin or use it instead of yomping to your goal on foot, But when you are lucky enough to use a vehicle such as a quad bike, tank or jeep not only do you get to drive but you also get to take out enemies with mounted grenade launchers or the main gun of the tank whch all adds to the experience.


As with most games the enemy AI seems to seek out the player rather than go for your comrades, I've read some reviewers slating this as "over boosting the enemy AI's aiming capablilites", But try to imagine a game where the enemy AI never targets you, where is the game play or skill in a game like that? I'd much rather have a load of enemies gunning for me than just picking enemies off as if they were fish in a barrel.
While reviewing this game I set the games difficulty to Hard as this was the highest setting, and although some of it was challenging it was still easy compared to say "Veteran" difficulty on the Call of Duty series, maybe EA / Dice need to add an extra more challenging difficulty on the next game.
The game's sound and graphics are second to none, and the echo effects and abiance of war make it all the more realistic, as with the original Bad Company the sound effects such for things as sound delay from an explosion in the distance or the sounds of a near miss that makes your character go deaf from shell shock (similar to another of EA's masterpieces Medal Of Honour) are just superb with graphics to match where explosions create massive fireballs that cover the battlefield in smoke clouds, the look and sound of explosions ripping through walls mixed with loud and aggressive sounding weapons is awesome.

Multi-player
BC2's multi-player is just as good as the original Bad Company on-line experience, and it is split into three modes: Conquest, Rush, Squad Death-match, and Squad Rush.
Squad Death-match has four squads of four players in each team, the winners are the first to get to 50 kills.
Rush and Conquest are both 24-player modes (PC version has 32) these modes offer the normal Battlefield experiences. In Conquest, two teams start with 100 reinforcements (Player Spawns) and you have to get as many enemy kills as possible, so that your enemies reinforcements are used up by players re-spawning, your main goal here is to capture and hold three points on the map.
Rush Mode differs slightly as you have to attempt to destroy several pairs of M-COM stations throughout the map while the other team tries to defend them.games in these modes normally take around 30-45 minutes.

Rush/Conquest also feature extended matches, these maps are massive and contain a mixture of close quarters and open world environments that encourage the use of different weapons as well as tactics for large open areas as well as urban fighting,
Bad Company 2 as with the original has four classes, these include: Assault, Engineer, Medic, and Re-con, all of which have a choice of weaponry to use with new weapons being unlocked by earning XP and progressing through the ranks.
In multi-player the teams are divided into four-player squads. and instead of spawning at a base when you are killed you can choose spawn near to your squad-mates, which can have its problems if your chosen squad-mate is in a fire-fight, but its better than being killed at the hands of the lowly camping spawn-killer.
BF BC2 as a lot of on-line games uses a matchmaking system that automatically inserts you with other players who are not in a squad with their mates, BF BC2 multi-player doesn't seem to encourage much teamwork, and in most games you will find every player doing his/her own thing.

There are many similarities to Modern Warfare 2, One thing that is obvious is the developers sometimes humorous obsession with their main competition, this comes in many forms, such as the winter / Snow scenes, the inclusion of an airborne mission using black and white heat cameras


(similar to both COD4 and MW2) the inclusion of a map that looks very similar to MW2's Favela map and even a blatant remark during a cut scene that has a dig at "pussies with heart beat monitors on their guns" Which I'm sure will upset some of the more hardcore MW 2 fans.


Bad Company 2 has succeeded in being a good sequel to the original Bad Company game, and a good addition to the Battlefield series. But EA and DICE both need to really emphasis the single-player experience though, The campaign, although good, fails on both length of play and also on replay value, unless more campaign levels are added via DLC, which is unlikely as the emphasis seems to be on competing with MW 2's multi-player rather than single player replay value. This is where games such as Fable II and Fallout 3 take the lead, although in a different genre these games clearly concentrate on game play and re-playability (In Fallout 3 I had over 160 hrs of entertaining game play compared to BF BC2's 9 hrs.) and catering for the single player with DLC campaigns, rather than worry about another games online mode, if a game is good it will sell itself or by word of mouth and reputation alone just as MW2 did last year..