Battlefield Bad Company 2 – The Geekscape Review
Starting with last generation’s Battlefield 2: Modern Combat and working its way through this generation’s Bad Company and Battlefield 1943, DICE has done a lot of work in order to take its PC sandbox Battlefield franchise and craft it into a sleek and streamlined version that works for the console while not giving up the depth of its PC forefathers. Fortunately, Bad Company 2 seems to be the full realization of all their hard work.
The most obvious achievement for the DICE team is their single player campaign. Both Modern Combat and Bad Company were saddled with single player campaigns that felt like an afterthought to the games multiplayer maps. Bad Company 2, however, has a campaign that actually makes you understand what it means to be a soldier in 222nd battalion’s B company. Bad Company takes you through an impressively rendered globe-trotting journey with origins in World War II in order to keep the bad things out of the hands of the bad guys. It’s not a totally original premise, but what’s important is that your squad actually feels like a totally real and dynamic group of people. While other shooters have characters that face a hail of gun fire with stone faces and silence, Bad Company faces their impossible situation by discussing their favorite scene from Predator. They also do a fair amount of fourth wall breaking commentary and one upping of a certain other modern franchise that deals with warfare….too. The characters are so charming, hilarious, and well-characterized; it’s extremely easy to get attached. So, with a squad that is basically composed entirely of the friends of anyone who claims to be a geek, it’s super easy to forgive plot holes big enough to fly a UH-60 Black Hawk through.
The game play is extremely well done. The levels are more linear than previous efforts, but there is still room to approach certain situations in a number of ways. Being able to destroy 92 percent of the surroundings (no, you’re not going to be able to dig a hole to china with your Saiga12) while having to also calculate for bullet drop does a lot for the game’s realism. The control feels slightly more refined than Battlefield 1943, at least in the respect that vehicles seem to handle better. The enemies in this game are smart and will not hesitate to blow apart your cover or vehicle in order to serve you a lead salad a la Tyler Durden and the rest of Team Mayhem. They certainly offer a good challenge that will keep you on your toes.
There are some slight issues that can be nit-picked at here. I got stuck in the geometry a couple of times. There were some visual glitches, mostly when things got intense. The checkpoints are somewhat far apart and will lead to some frustrating repeats of stages as a result of the more difficult firefights. There’s an odd choice to letterbox some of the cut scenes, which takes you out of the moment. Also, the sound design (which is, frankly, an unparalleled effort in realism) is so good that it unfortunately drowns out some of the interesting dialogue. All these points are extremely minor and don’t take much away from the experience.
Now for the bit you are really concerned about. The multiplayer is wonderful and offers an experience unlike that of Modern Warfare 2. Bad Company 2 is the thinking-man’s multiplayer experience. The game is at its best when teams cooperate to meet objectives. That isn’t to say there isn’t room for the one man army approach, but there is something about alerting your team to the enemy presence so that they can take them down in a rain of bullets and secure a base that is entirely more satisfying.
The multiplayer has several modes of play to choose from. The classic conquest mode is here to play, along with the newer rush (a stage where you destroy satellite uplinks in order to capture base points), squad death match (a 4×4 strictly shooting round), and squad rush (a streamlined 4×4 version of the 24, 32 on pc, player rush mode). Matching the four modes, is the four types of soldier classes to choose from. Assault, Medic, Engineer, and Recon classes all offer different weapons and specializations to compliment the four distinct approaches to game play that generally coincide with the class. These weapons and specializations are earned through out the game, as you gain points for a range of different tasks and achievements.
The multiplayer is generally free of problems of the single player campaign, though I will say that it was an odd choice to have the Medic and Engineer classes start without any means of healing or fixing things. This is also a minor issue, as moving up in rank moves rather quickly, if you’re a team player.
Here’s a pro-tip for the few of you console players that are new to the franchise and are having a hard time leveling up. Learn to play with your thumb over the left analog stick so that you can hit the select or back button on your controller to alert your team to the enemy when you see them while running at the same time. This lets you rack up points for assists while also letting the rest of your team know where the enemy is at. Unfortunately, this might be slightly more difficult for the xbox crowd. This tactic is pretty crucial for the entire game, so players unwilling to contort their hands on the controller should at least keep spotting in mind when they’re safe and cozy in a fox hole.
