Alex Walker runs for (destructible) cover

When many games jumped on the ‘best games of the decade’ wagon a couple of months back, the amnesia displayed by some critics completely astounded me. Sure, there were some shoe-ins like Deus Ex and the Half-Life series, but why didn’t the Battlefield series get a bigger leg-up? I mean, we’re talking here about games that provided you with complete variety. You could, quite literally, shoot someone driving a jeep in the head, hop in, drive to the enemy base, then steal a plane, bomb them from behind, land on an aircraft carrier and switch into a little lifeboat – to repeat it all over again.

Admittedly, the games aren’t for everyone. Some people don’t like calculating the Coriolis Effect into their sniping, and that’s fine. But even the worst ADD sufferers would have to admit they enjoy the intense variety of gameplay that a single round of any Battlefield game can produce. While Bad Company 2 has some aggravating bugs and authentication issues – which at times made me walk away from my computer – that essence of variety and fun is still here in bucket loads.

Ah, Battlefield. It’s good to be home.

PUSSY HEARTBEAT SENSORS

Just so you know, I’m playing the PC version, which is an immediate improvement on the original (since it was a console only game). Being on the PC opens up a whole new world of problems, namely Punkbuster and the EA authentication servers, which seem to work far less often than they should. I started the game with the campaign mode, because I couldn’t connect to EA for a whole day after I purchased the game. Guess that public Beta really smoothed out all those problems, hey DICE?
During the campaign, you play the role of Preston Marlowe in Bad Company, a four-man-team that can only really be described as a death squad. Every member of the original cast is in BC2, and the witty banter that set Bad Company apart from other shooters is still there.

Non-firing guy is the odd one out

In fact, if it weren’t for the banter between missions, the single-player experience would be a total disappointment. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Russian terrorist wants to get his hands on doomsday-style weapon that launches an EMP that spreads over hundreds of miles. Russian terrorist wants to detonate said weapon in the United States. People in combat gear get free trips around the world to shoot Russian terrorist and his friends to stop said plot. Yawn.

It’s a bit like looking at the food served in your local nursing home (obviously, you frequent some strange eateries – Ed). The soup looks like garbage, and the only interesting thing about meal time is watching the residents eat. In gaming terms, that means playing through a series of generic set pieces at light speed. And while there’s the odd joke or reference to make you smile (snowmobiles are for pussies!) it’s still not worth the $85 I paid for it.

TANKS FOR THE EASY SUB-HEADING

Thankfully, the multiplayer is far more focused – and definitely worth the price of admission. As you’d expect, DICE has nailed the tactical, teamwork-based gameplay that makes Battlefield so great. Bad Company 2 doesn’t actively force gamers to work together, but as you play you’ll find that people are naturally drawn towards a cooperative style of play. Quite often I found other players waiting around for people to hop into jeeps or man the guns on a helicopter, which is a refreshing change from the bait-fest that you get from Counter-Strike or Call of Duty.

For PC, there are four modes out of the box. Conquest is the standard Battlefield mode where you hold control points to win the game. Unlike the original, this mode doesn’t come as an add-on. In squad deathmatch, four squads of four players fight it out to be the first to 50 kills. There’s a Rush mode as well, where one team defends a set of stations against the other. Squad Rush is the same, but with eight players instead of 32.

"Sarge, intelligence suggests they have a pallet of Cocoa Pops in there!"

Squad Rush is noticeable for the fact that console owners won’t get to play it for 30 days unless they pre-ordered the game. PC owners get Squad Rush straight away, but they’re handicapped as well: if you don’t buy the Limited Edition, you only get access to eight maps instead of the full ten. It’s a strategy to counter trade-ins, and if you do take the plunge and buy the full edition you also get access to a couple of extra rifles and some vehicle upgrades. They’re all perks that you could unlock in the game normally, but having a stronger pistol or better tank armour early on can make the world of difference.

Gameplay aside, DICE has done a damn good job of making Bad Company 2 look attractive. The facial details in particular are phenomenal, and the draw distance – one of the most critical features in a game with landscapes as vast as this – is superb. Even turning the settings to the very minimum, then editing the configuration files to turn them down even further, doesn’t hinder your ability to pick players off several kilometres away. If you’ve got a beast of a computer, you’re in for a treat.

Sound effects are also impressive, as even on my Plantronics USB Audio the sound is quite something. Explosions muffle the sound in your vicinity, and you can actually hear gunfire from long distances. I can hear bullets hitting the ground, and tank shells whistling past my face. It’s incredible, and I’m playing on relatively low settings.

"I...can't go prone, man. Sorry."

WAITER, THERE’S A BUG IN MY SOUP

(*PC specific complaints below – the multiplayer for consoles works quite well)

Unfortunately, while the multiplayer is superb and the single-player works (let’s not forget that this is the first Battlefield PC game to actually feature a proper campaign, as opposed to a Quake 3: Arena style bot-fest) it’s all let down by EA’s paranoid authentication system (not including the various other bugs that are about as comforting as a prostate test).

When you want to play multiplayer, you first need an EA account, so you click on the Login button. That takes a while. Then you’re directed to register or login, which involves more waiting. Once you have an EA account, you need to select your soldier name. Another wait. After that, you can open the server browser. Let me warn you now, the server browser is worse than watching a Rush Hour movie marathon. It is just painful, and it defies belief that something so bad could have passed through their internal testing AND a public beta.

Anyway, you open up the server browser. More waiting. Want to add servers to your favourites to get into games faster? Sure, you can do that, except sometimes the servers won’t add themselves to your browser. When it works, the server will add to the favourites list in a matter of seconds. When it doesn’t, the game will just sit there. I waited five minutes – I actually timed it – until I got bored and just gave up.

The better way is to use the search query to reduce the list of servers and work from there, but the query is case-sensitive and doesn’t allow for similar matches. For example, searching ‘Gamearena’ or ‘gamearena’ won’t find any server, but the string ‘GameArena’ will. Even worse is the unreliability of the EA servers, which will often drop out when you’re in the process of trying to join a server. You’ll finally find the server you want to play on, click join, and then nothing happens. You can’t login via the server browser, so you have to close it and go through the login process again.

The scenario I’ve described isn’t a one-off thing either, but some lucky people have escaped the madness. Regardless of the technical reasons behind it, this shouldn’t be happening from one of the world’s largest publishers. It’s embarrassing and infuriating.

Still, the fact that I’ve put so much effort into organising multiplayer matches (and gritting my teeth through the process) means that the magic is there, and when you do get some games going all connection frustrations are (almost) forgotten. The single player is okay, but the multi is where it’s at. If you loved the first Bad Company, then this is definitely worth grabbing. 

A typical stroll through your local battlefield

Interesting Fact:
This isn’t so much of a fact but a quip: a lot of people have derided DICE for their decision to omit the ability to lie prone in the game. It’s not that it wasn’t included – it was available in the beta, but was since removed. It’s a smart decision by DICE, and a brave one as well. A prone option would have absolutely broken BC2, and in an era when courage by developers is increasingly rare, we should applaud companies when they show a little bit of spine.