The State of Gaming - Battlefield Bad Company 2
Modern Warfare 2 has Major Reputational Problems!
Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 2 was released in early November last year. In the intervening period, Infinity Ward have released two patches to fix some major bugs and exploits, but have refused to say anything about DLC or its contents apart from it being released in Spring. Just this week, however, Robert Bowling tweeted that DLC news will be released this week, and in one tweet, mentioned a weird website.
They have to announce some DLC, because there’s a heap of bad press about Infinity Ward and Activision at the moment, surrounding the inglorious removal of the two lead developers, supposedly for insubordination. There’s talk that the DLC can’t be released without these two guys permission, so it’s off to the courts to decide. In the meantime, us gamers all lose faith in MW2, and both Infinity Ward and Activision lose credibility and what little support they have left…
The only way I’m going to return to MW2 is if the DLC is way-out-there awesome!
Introducing Battlefield Bad Company 2
In the meantime, I’ve been playing the new Battlefield release, the second iteration of Bad Company. The same four characters return in a battle against the Russians to stop the deployment of a terrifying weapon on US soil.
The game has a deep (and long) single player campaign, and the usual online multiplayer component.
In short, I love it!
Why?
I think it’s because the maps are large (some extremely large), the action is deep, but spread out, and there are no over-powering aspects like kill streaks. I can slink around as a sniper, and pull off some awesome headshots from across the map. Ok, I could do that in MW2, but sniping across the map involves a lot of skill, as bullet drop needs to be taken into consideration - no more do I aim the crosshairs centre-mass, and squeeze the trigger. I need to estimate the distance, aim off the elevation, and only then take the shot. Headshots are the usual result - well, either that or a hit marker.
Multiplayer also includes various weapons, from quad bikes, to tanks, hummers, AA guns, helicopter gunships, a remote-piloted UAV helicopter, and a Blackhawk with crew-served miniguns in the waist. Lots of personal weapons, launchers, machine guns, grenades, C4etc, all add up to some hectic and confused battles across a completely destructible landscape. There’s little emphasis on KDR ratios, as the missions are objective based. Sometimes, the mission is to capture and blow up M-com stations, or capture points.
The graphics aren’t quite up to par with MW2, but that’s ok, as you’re not there to enjoy the scenery, but to blow it all up! However, the landscape, and the ambience are superbly done - fighting for control of the M-com stations across a hilly, snowy, dark map, or through the middle of the jungle, is just surreal at times.
Ranking up is slow, but this is primarily because I’m only starting, and have still to unlock most of the sniper rifles (and all of the other non-recon weapons for that matter!) - sniping targets across the map, raining mortar rounds on top of tanks, throwing C4 onto vehicles (not to mention collapsing buildings), and spotting targets for the squadmates, is just so addicting, I’m not scoring massively (unlike the demo…) each game.
So far, a thoroughly enjoyable, and refreshing game, given the fiasco that was Modern Warfare 2.
The only issue I have with BF:BC2 is that noone seems to talk in this game… Hmm…
March 16th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
Update 1: Activision has announced that the DLC appropriately titled “Stimulus Package” will be out soon, contain 5 new maps (two of which are already on the MW2 disk, one new map, and two rehashed CoD4 maps), and cost 1200 MS Points.
It’s a slap in the face for the community, given what we’ve had to put up with to date - glitchers, boosters, bugs galore, etc. This DLC isn’t worth 800 points (which is the standard DLC cost these days for map packs), let alone a price-gouging 1200!
Forget it! I’m done with MW2!
Which is why this comment is in the BF:BC2 post! Dice’s next DLC will be free!
Update 2: I played my first real squad games last night, when I hooked up with the XBoxWorld Australia crew to play some Conquest game modes.
Being in a squad who works as a team really adds another dimension to this game! I had some memorable times, sniping and using the crew weapons on the Bradley. I have to say, though, that the other team didn’t use their “back” buttons all that often, as I was left alone to snipe until I ran out of ammo!