Review: Battlefield Bad Company 2

Overview

Storyline

Starting off with a mission set in 1943 the game begins by telling the story of a team sent in to recover some Intel. The events of this mission sets the stage for B company’s latest outing, this time the crew are on the trail of a mysterious weapon developed by the Japanese and now sought after by the Russians.

I don’t want to go too in depth here on what the actual storyline is, as it would spoil the whole game, but the story unfolds slowly and won’t spell it out for you; instead it pieces together and unveils things with a strong narration through Marlow and by the use of several cut scenes.

Gameplay

Bad Company 2 begins by playing out a mission in 1943 before jumping right back to present day, in this time there are so many cut scenes it becomes quite an irritation, there is nothing worse than itching to get on and play a game only to watch a long cut scene. Actually there is something worse and they have done it in Bad Company 2, stopping and starting. You get to play a small part of the game then cut scene, just as it gets going again… cut scene, just as that has finished and you are rocking again, you guessed it there’s another one!

Once over this initial blip at the start of the game I found myself getting quite absorbed into the game. The destructive environments have been stepped up a notch from the first instalment and the explosions have been increased making for some intense gunfights. Collapsed buildings also cause dust to whip up and some of the environments have huge sand storms, which will hide the enemy troops and heighten the experience of gunfights.

The Checkpoint system has also been changed. Instead of being able to carry on where you died (like in the first game) a more traditional checkpoint system is in place. Through my play through on hard I only found a few checkpoints to be a challenge, taking you to far back or they were in place so you could work on a trial and error system to pass the next part of the game.

The structure of the levels is also different from the first, vastly different. Opting for a more linear game the guys at DICE seem to have worked on their set pieces more heavily in Bad Company 2 and lead you into situations – holding your ground, freeing hostages, manning guns and defending positions.

The game almost seems as if its built from corridors that lead into an open room where you are free to navigate in anyway you see fit. These areas are always full of enemies and are loaded with explosives which make for intense high carnage scenarios, often resulting in very little in the way of structures left by the time you have finished. From time to time the corridors lead you onto a set piece or out onto a vast viewpoint giving you the sense of openness and being part of a larger landscape. Its all smoke and mirrors to make the confined playing space feel that much more open and free than it actually is.

The games enemies are also a bit dumbed down. There didn’t seem to be much in the way of intelligent enemy AI and it all seemed very ‘set up’ like everything was a show and you were the main star, in fact the game played out like the latest Rambo film. Unlike some other military shooters out there Bad Company 2 was a smooth ride to complete on hard and I barely struggled. The enemy character models were also far too similar, I must have shot the same looking guy a million times during my play through.

The team AI wasn’t much better. Although it did feel like you were all mucking in and part of a gritty bad ass squad, the guys really were ineffectual and served better as meat shields allowing you to run around and get into a better position, now and again they would also suddenly ‘pop’ up ahead of you on the map.

The macho humour we have all come to know and love from B Company was also toned down and left with a more serious tone in the game, which I will admit I was quite disappointed by. The levels are also littered with weapon crates, like the ones from GRAW, allowing you to choose from any of the weapons you had previously collected – again I felt that this dumbed down the whole experience I have become used to from previous Battlefield games.

Multiplayer is where the action gets really heavy, and it’s clear that’s where DICE expended most of their efforts. There is a wealth of modes to get stuck into, with the most excellent conquest mode (Which was found in Battlefield 1943 XBLA title), being one of my favourites.

It’s clear from the word go that the online modes are a TEAM game. Go into it with the mindset that you are going to be a one-man army and it’s only half as enjoyable as going in as a squad and working across the map together – plus you will die twice as much.

The maps are all tailored to the game modes, so to play them all you need to go into each of the modes on offer. I personally loved the maps, they are very open and the detail in them is superb – I was often getting lost and shot because I got sidetracked with looking around the map and exploring rather than getting on with the mission at hand. The destruction is ever present here, complete with all the high explosive action and destruction that the single player introduced. Vehicles are also more of a feature and are an absolute joy to use, the only time I found it a bit unfair was on one particular map the enemy had two Apache helicopters and there was no real way we could defeat them. The AA guns were effective as long as the helicopter didn’t see you before they were in range of your guns. The lower level ranks of engineer give a RPG that was impossible to actually hit one of them with.

The squad system has been vastly improved and I experienced no problems assembling a team of my friends, we could even start the game and invite people in – space permitting  – and they would be straight into the squad.

There is a huge amount of unlocks that progress through two types of XP: General combat XP and specific XP to the weapons or the class of soldier being used. This does make for some annoying situations where you are up against a much higher ranked player with superior unlocks, but then most games that have an XP system with rewards suffer from this.

The patches and pins are back in full force along with the collection of Dog Tags from people you have stabbed. Bad Company 2 online really is a full package and is worth the price tag just to play this.

Graphics

The level details are great; some of the villages are full of items and buildings that make the whole game feel as though it is alive. There is also some great use of particle effects in the explosions of canisters or the slump of a huge building. Also the environmental effects are worth noting, including the vegetation. In the first game I could always notice the cross hatching effect on the trees where the lighting engine was trying to accurately render them, but in Bad Company 2 I noticed this a lot less.

The Graphics really are top notch especially the textures of the environment, vehicles and clothing but the gun models felt very flat and lacked any real depth to them.

Audio

The audio is simply superb – much like the first game. A very cinematic / epic soundtrack complements the moments in the game and increases the intensity of the situations you find yourself in. The booms, crashes and bangs as a building crumbles adds to the shear joy of ripping apart a building that a squad of enemies were hiding in.

Overall

The single player campaign seems to be a loosely held together sequence of set pieces. Sure there are collectibles and Intel to destroy but it seems to have lost the identity that made Bad Company special, it has taken a step backwards from where the first game left off. The ending of the game is a huge anti climax, which left me feeling empty and very disappointed. About half way through the campaign the ecstasy of blowing stuff off wears thin and the set pieces become samey, like DICE ran out of ideas.

The storyline was interesting and at times showed glimpses of originality, but throughout my play through I couldn’t help but feel the story was an amalgamation of the events and storyline of Modern Warfare – a shame as the game started off showing real promise. Apart from the glorious destruction of the landscape Bad Company as a single player experience loses out to that of Modern Warfare 2, which is more stylish and less generic and more so its predecessor.

Jump online and this game comes alive, it’s just pure brilliance. Focusing on a team game there are so many modes and maps to keep you entertained, including fully destructible environments. I suspect this game will live in my disc drive for a while. Single player becomes a distant memory and feels more like it was only there to introduce you to the world of Battlefield.

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