First Impressions: Battlefield: Bad Company 2

I mentioned in my post about Battlefield 1943 last year that I have a long and happy association with the Battlefield series, although I managed to miss out on the first Bad Company game because of various other things in my life. That didn't stop me being very excited to try out the multiplayer demo of Bad Company 2 when it hit Xbox Live a little while ago, and for the duration that it was running it stopped me playing Modern Warfare 2.

My experience with the demo was enough for me to recommend it on this site, but now that the full game is out and I've had a chance to play it a bit, I thought it was time that I backed up that recommendation with an early review.

At release, it seems that EA were having some problems with the servers that were supporting multiplayer games on the Xbox 360 (they seem more stable now), so I started out playing the offline campaign. What you get with the single player is basically a very good first person shooter. The story and characters give it a bit more personality than comparable titles. However the thing that really sets it apart from the competition is the destructable environments. Where other games may give you the option to go to the left or right of a structure, BFBC2 lets you blast a hole straight through the middle.

The first time I reached a challenging point in the game (i.e. I died a few times before I progressed), I'd tried to attack the enemy twice be going around the front of a building. After two failures, I tried to go round the back and again failed. On my fourth attempt, I entered the building and climbed up to the attic, intending to snipe at the enemy, except I found that the single window didn't give me a view in the right direction. Rather than head back downstairs, I just popped a suitable hole in the roof with a grenade and took out the targets with my rifle. It was a satisfying incident.

The multiplayer really is a different game to the single player campaign. That's not a bad thing - it just means that you're getting two great games for the price of one. BFBC2 online features the same ranking mechanic as Modern Warfare 2. You unlock new and more powerful weapons and kit as you rank up. It is fair to say that unless you are just good at this kind of game, you can't just jump in and expect to rank up in your first match. The difficulty curve is quite steep to begin with.

One thing that I would suggest to people who are struggling to rack up any kills to begin with is this: if you spot the enemy and point them out to the rest of your team, you can get points for an assist. On the Xbox 360, this is done by pressing the Back button on your controller when an opposing soldier or vehicle is in your sights. When you've done that, a little indicator will appear above them, and they'll appear on the mini-map for your team mates. An assist isn't nearly as good as a kill, points-wise, but it does help towards your total, and may help you to feel like you're helping the team a bit and not being a total noob.

In the multiplayer again, the destructable environment makes a huge difference to the gameplay. You'll find that multiple playthroughs on the same map can be unique experiences as tanks and explosives flatten buildings and change the available cover. The additional use of vehicles and UAV drones also add spice to the mix, and for me make this game more enjoyable than Modern Warfare 2. There's nothing quite as impressive as a bunch of people jumping in a helicopter and working together to take on the opposing forces. [A quick note to the people who excitedly jump into a helicopter, lose control of it when transitioning into forward motion and crash into the first building - if you let go of the controls, they auto-hover - try to make use of that knowledge and not waste the aircraft.]

That's about all I've got to say for now. I haven't had a huge amount of time to play the game just yet, partly because I'm still very much into my Assassin's Creed 2 addiction (that's a fantastic game too, by the way - I thought the first one was too repetitive, as much as I wanted to love it, but the sequel is fantastic!), plus I have a lot of other pulls on my time. BFBC2 isn't totally perfect, but then what is? If you weren't sure whether you could justify the investment over just carrying on playing Modern Warfare 2, I think I've made my position clear. :-)