Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Seeing as I’ve been playing a lot more PS3 games as of late I decided it might be a good idea to do a short review after I finish each one. After all, it makes my blog look busy instead of on the cusp of death.

This is in no way a copy of my girlfriends blog in any way… I swear it’s a completely original idea. >> Yeah…

Anyway the first game I’m going to review is Bad Company 2 which I recently finished, although not on my own PSN profile so I’ll be playing it again to get the trophies. 

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is, unsurprisingly, the sequel to Battlefield: Bad Company and brought to us from the Electronic Arts. Having never played the first game I can’t really contrast the two but I’m sure I’ll get to it eventually.

Graphically Bad Company 2 (BC2) is rendered quite beautifully in my opinion. Some of the landscapes are breathtaking while the gun fights happening around you can be graphically intense. There are some small gripes however; some of the weapons can appear rather flat. That is to say they’re lacking in raised detail. However if you get very immersed into the game you probably won’t notice. Another gripe is that there have been many reports of bad screen tear within the single player campaign but none in the multiplayer. I’ll admit I didn’t notice any when I played through the campaign but my girlfriend has noticed quite a bit so watch out for that.
Rumors that the game is clogged with dust are, in my opinion, greatly exaggerated. While a quantity of dust can be thrown up from the destructible terrain it’s not so bad as to obscure game play. In my opinion it adds a nice realistic feature to the game.

Game play is also good and can get quite intense at times. You operate as part of a squad so there’s usually three other guys with you at all times. They’re handy to have around, although you have little choice, but they can get in the way sometimes. Each level is large enough to allow you to choose your own way of dealing with the enemy and there’s a wide variety of weapons available to suit your own tastes as well. One well publicized feature is entirely destructible terrain which can be a nice feature but at the same time can also be a minor annoyance.  Taking cover can become quite difficult; several times I took cover inside a house only to have the wall stripped away by a heavy machine gun or rocket propelled grenade. The best option is to keep moving; don’t stay in one place for too long or the building could collapse around you… literally. The single player campaign is rather engaging and the storyline is pretty good. There’s nothing worse than a first or third person shooter with a poor storyline. *cough*Left 4 Dead*cough*

I did mention this was a first person shooter? Well it is, although you can switch to the third person whilst operating vehicles. That’s another thing I should mention; many of the vehicles you find in the game can be used to your advantage which has its ups and downs. When you hop into a vehicle your squad members will join you if they can, they’ll man any mounted weapons on the vehicle and fire their own if possible. So the upside of hopping into a vehicle is mobile firepower.
The downside? It’s all two easy for your vehicle to get heavily damaged quickly forcing you to abandon it before you’re killed in a fireball of contempt and wasted time.

 
The multiplayer in BC2 is very fun, much better than any CoD game in fact. Large maps, plenty of vehicles including the classic “how the f**k do I fly this helicopter”, but… there’s always a but. Like many FPS games you’ll run into the problem of camping snipers. It’s an FPS wide epidemic I’m afraid, one without a cure.

Trophy support for the game is in place also. I found that trophies weren’t to difficult to achieve in the single player campaign so if you’re a trophy hunter you’ll enjoy that. Be warned though that many of the trophies can only be acquired through playing the multiplayer but that is getting true of many games these days.

My verdict? If you’re into first person shooters then Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is definitely worth a look. The same can be said if you’re looking for good multiplayer games as well. Price wise I’d play no more than €40 for the game and even then I’d hope for less.