by ChiefJimbolaya

©2010 Aaron Klein

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is the latest installment of DICE’s Battlefield series, and a direct sequel to… you guessed it, Bad Company. Since 2002 with the release of Battlefield 1942 on the PC, the franchise has revolutionized multiplayer gaming with the addition of progressive stat tracking and large-scale battles occurring simultaneously on land, air and sea.

Multiplayer

In Bad Company 2, up to 24 people can play one of several flavours of multiplayer. Rush mode has one team defending several objectives while the attacking team tries to destroy them using only 75 lives. In Conquest mode two teams fight over control of several strategic points on the map. Squad Deathmatch is more traditional and needs no explanation.

Players on each team are divided into squads of four, and are able to re-spawn on living squad mates to maintain an effective front line and build a sense of camaraderie. Players can “shout out” enemy locations to their team by pressing the select/back button and marking visible enemies.

• Battlefield Bad Company 2 Multiplayer Rush

The teamwork required to succeed provides an engaging and purposeful multiplayer experience that is often lacking in the aimless wandering and camping of the traditional “deathmatch,” multiplayer games.

In multiplayer matches, players choose from one of four classes. The typical soldier with assault rifles, the engineer with rocket launchers and ability to repair vehicles, the medic who can heal and revive teammates, and the recon sniper who can call in mortar strikes. If those options don’t suite you, feel free to hop in a gunboat, a tank, a helicopter or an ATV and wreck havoc on the opponents’ base.

For each class, weapons and abilities are unlocked by gaining experience points for valor on the battlefield, a system DICE pioneered with earlier installments in the Battlefield franchise.

The maps are less likes video game levels and more like set pieces. The background and foreground merge seamlessly to give an impression of depth and freedom of movement. They are long and wide enough to give the player multiple paths to an objective, yet linear enough to maintain pacing.

Everything in the game is destructible, driving a realistic approach to combat. Hiding in a house and shooting out the window only works for so long before a tank blows the whole wall down on you. Fierce multiplayer games will see entire complexes leveled in the firefight, with smoke and debris marring the horizon.

Singleplayer

The action in the single-player campaign is paced to maintain suspense. Lively firefights interrupted by periods of relative safety used to develop character and plot.

The story is about as mediocre as can be expected for a first-person shooter, but the characters are developed wonderfully with individual interests and goals. The members of Bad Company are rich, even if they are cliché.

The player takes the role of the rookie in a squad of soldiers hopping across South America in search of a Russian WMD and a plan to disrupt a scheme to invade the United States.

The plot gets kind of ridiculous when you stop to consider why the military would put the fate of the nation in the hands of four soldiers and a hippy helicopter pilot, but the vistas, casual banter of squad mates and explosive enemy encounters are good enough to forgive the narrative absurdities.

While going through the 10-or-so-hour-long single-player campaign is fun, the real draw is the multiplayer. While it will be a long, uphill battle to unseat Modern Warfare 2 as the king of first-person shooters, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has the pedigree and chomp to get it done.

“9/10

©2010 Aaron Klein

For OXCGN’s showdown review of Bad Company 2 Vs. Modern Warfare 2 click here.

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Filed under: 3rd Party Games, Console gaming, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 3rd Party Games, Xbox 360 Game Reviews, Xbox 360 News Tagged: | Battlefield, Battlefield Bad Company 2, Battlefield Bad Company 2 review, DICE, Digital Illusions CE, EA, Modern Warfare 2