Battlefield: Bad Company 2

The Good
I am going to jump straight to multiplayer on this one, in short, this game has multiplayer that BEATS Call Of duty to the ground. Honestly. It is the best online experience I have ever had. It has everything you could want, vehicles, destructible environments and all. Most people complain that vehicles are over powered, well, not really. Seeing as the only way to acquire a vehicle is by returning to your start point it is not a problem. Destructible environments add a whole new element to gameplay, remember that the wall the are behind can not always protect you from an explosion and hiding in a building does not make you invulnerable to a tank, it adds such suspense that you have to plan where you go and how to avoid being hit by enemy fire. One note I want to bring up is that the User Interface for the 360 version felt a bit cluttered and troublesome, but that is excusable because it is still functional. Great features like joining a "Squad" and then being able to spawn next to your squadmates in the field also adds allot to the gameplay. I also find that there are allot less children playing this game, most people are mature adults/young adults, and the reason is that children are looking for games like Call Of Duty where you run around and simply kill, that is where BC2 differs. Bad Company 2 requires you to strategize and not just run n' gun.

The Bad
Well, the single player experience is a bit lacking. It uses exactly the same mechanics as the Multiplayer, but that has its flaws. In one mission you where supposed to fight through a large number of enemies to get to a vehicle to escape with your team, I simply went around where the enemy's are and got to vehicle ending the mission, so I essentially skipped a large portion of a map that I was supposed to play through with my team members. Also the game has quite a few minor glitches, like you can start reloading, enter water, and then when you exit the water you are done reloading, witch is a major issue seeing as this also works with weapons like the RPG allowing a player near water to take out a tank in less than 15 seconds. Also it is near impossible to hit flying vehicles with any early explosive weapons, requiring either luck, or a high level player to take them out.

The Bottom Line
The real question is, is this game better than its main competitor, Modern Warfare 2, the short answer, YES, the long answer is whether you are looking for a strategic, difficult, mature experience or a immature 12 year old Run n' fun fest. So gamers looking for more than run n' gun gameplay, pick up Bad Company 2, young gamers looking for Killing, Killing, and screaming over a microphone, please, I beg of you, just play Modern Warfare 2 and leave real gamers alone.

The Good
The weapons, graphics, AI teammates and story were all awesome. It gave me the same feeling I had when I first played CoD4 MW. It was that good. Music was epic as well. Plus, the guns, lots of guns.

As for the story, it is your usual, "save the day from bad guys" thing all over again, but there's so much variety to the levels. There's open areas, urban areas, mountains, snowy cliffs, islands, ATVs... there's so much fun to be had. Your AI teammates are effective and will actually cover your back. I didn't have any pathfinding issues at all.

The Bad
There was no controller support on the PC. This is a minor gripe, as this is better on keyboard and mouse, but the option would've been nice.

The Bottom Line
What more is there to write? This is a single-player masterpiece of an military FPS game. Don't go in looking for a fast-paced run-and-gun game. This is more like the CoD4 style cinematic action gameplay.

The Good

• Good visual effects, graphics and sound.
• Decent story and voice acting.
• Hints of Sci Fi.
• Trademark Multiplayer.
• Physics which includes destructible environments.

The Bad

• Poor dialogues.
• Modern shooter cliches like for e.g. Recharging health.
• Short single player campaign.
• Multiplayer player limited to 32 instead of 64.

The Bottom Line
I used to love the multiplayer focused Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield 2 back in the days. Large scale warfare, vehicles and 64 players on one map was something new and still hasn't really been done. Bad Company however brings a single player campaign and multiplayer more focused on console hardware, which means limitations. Bad Company 2 is the first Bad Company version to be multi-platform and available for Windows. I decided to borrow this one as I knew the campaign will be a 4 hour game max and lack enough time for multiplayer.

BC2's campaign revolves around a semi sci-fi plot about a scalar weapon being produced by the Japanese during WW2. In the present day, four U.S Soldiers are assigned to recover a similar weapon being produced by the Russians. Well the Science fiction is a welcome change in the generic military shooter genre...which is not Crysis.

BC2 starts out in the WW2 where you're playing a flashback of Project Aurora. It's like playing a cutscene with shooting enabled. Then after that chapter it cuts to the present day, where you play Marlowe Preston. Game gets fun at around chapter 3. Some of the challenges bring a rather entertaining experience and mixes well with the shooter formula. Example? The mission where you need to descend a snowy hill with extreme weather conditions and blow up barrels or find a fireplace to prevent freezing to death. The generic shooter gameplay is spiced up with more similar challenges and vehicle driving. Yep it's plagued by modern shooter cliches too like recharging health, annoying zoomed in field of view and Hidden Briefcase mode (in the form of destroying some console panel) .

If you can get past the cringe worthy dialogues you will probably give a fuck about the 4 main characters or you will appreciate the fact that the developers at least tried to make you care. Well they did do a good job with the Graphics and sound, don't want to forget the destructible environments.

Worth buying only for the multiplayer. Rent or borrow if the single player is what you're after as it's nothing more than 6 hours max. This isn't a great game but a quick decent ride. Thankfully this isn't a yearly release like CODicks.