Bad Company 2

[Zoombie]

So, I've beaten the main campaign to Bad Company 2 and have been playing the hell out of multiplayer. And here is what I think!

The short summery is "Like Modern Warfare 2...but with the suck and fail removed and replaced by win, awesome, and funny."

The suck and fail in this case being single player. Whereas MW2 is stupid, over the top, and has boring and flat characters, Bad Company 2 is stupid, over the top, and has hilarious and interesting characters. Its SHOCKING how much difference there is between the boring mcbland group of faceless American marines and the crew of Bad Company: Explosion-oh-phile Haggarth, nerdy know it all Sweetwater, perpetually two days away from retirement Sarge, and of course, the usually silent (except for when he's not) protagonist, Marlow.

These guys are what elevate singleplayer from a pretty good gunwank to a really quite excellent gunwank. Combining this with an engaging action, a coherent narrative involving the theft of a top secret Russian E.M.P bomb, and LOTS of jokes at Modern Warfare 2's expense, and you got a winner!

Multiplayer is JAM PACKED ACTION GOODNESS! Shit blows up, tits go upwardly inclined, bullets whiz and fly, and streamlined, improved gameplay takes old Battlefield hats and makes them spiffy.

Working together is made easier by squad spawing and the ability to "pain" targets by pressing Q while aiming at them, allowing a good squadmember to shout out locations of enemy snipers, tanks, and helicopters. A good team has multiple squads working together to fight the enemy, and can really dominate and murderinate an enemy team.

However, the game CAN be frustrating when your other players are slack jawed idiots who can't work their keyboards or figure out how to DRIVE A FUCKING HELICOPTER!

Also, GOD! If you are GOING to jump out, WARN THE OTHER PEOPLE FIRST!

Anywho, there remain lingering problems involving connection issues (sometimes finding a game is more aggravating than not) and the game requires a beefy rig to play. But its beautiful, its explody, its funny and its FUN.

And unlike Modern Warfare 2, it does not take itself super seriously.

Also, it has AMAZING sound design. The crack of bullets, the screams of soldiers, the bangs and booms of explosions...epic, I tell you.

I'm jonesing to play more right now.

I think I will...

Who cares if class is tomorrow, I tells ya...

[jckkeith]

It's pretty fun so far but I'm having a hard time playing it over mutliplayer. I just finished the mission that starts on the helicopter gun. The destruction and solid gunplay are still enough for me to enjoy it, though. My only complaint is that I don't find the story interesting at all and I don't seem to get the charm of the characters...but who gives a shit out story when you can blow holes in buildings.

The tone of singleplayer is completely different, seems a lot more Full Metal Jacket. While the humor of Bad Company was just kind of amusing at best, I thought it was a pleasant change of pace compared to other shooters. Don't know how I feel about this change. As long as it manages to maintain that sense of individuality I guess I won't mind. But what ultimately matters is if they've updated the AI, the one most glaring flaw of the first game. I probably like first one more.

[Zoombie]

I've been having a blast with multiplayer...when it works, its seriously kick-awesome.

[robeiae]

My son plays this game. He's pretty good. You might run into him on multiplayer, Zoombie. He uses my handle: robeiae.

[Dommo]

The only few gripes I have with the multiplayer are as follows.

Classes need some re-balancing. Seriously, 75% of the people shouldn't be medics and recon. Medics are just stupidly good, because if you get a few of them running in a herd, they can continuously revive each other. Plus the final upgraded machine gun just rapes everyone, and it's ACCURATE even at a pretty long range. The medic shouldn't be better asskicking than the assault class.

The lack of being able to go prone. It always feels like the cover only goes about shoulder high when you crouch, so basically you end up getting head shotted.

Engineers need more ammo. 90 rounds is NOT enough when your little peashooter burns through a magazine in .00001 seconds flat, and it always feels like just to kill someone you've got to put 20 rounds in his ass. This means that unless you're near some dead people that you can salvage or an assault class, you're going to be chronically running out of ammunition It's less of a problem if you've got the ammo upgrade, but still I'd rather use that upgrade slot for something a little better(more grenades etc.)

Helicopters IF shot by an unguided RPG shouldn't allow for the crew to bail out. I'm getting pretty damned good as the engineer with the RPG, and when I splash a helo with my RPG it pisses me off when I see everyone make it out alive(especially when it's a LONG shot, isla innocente and I nail the bastard just as he takes off). Locked on missiles are another story though, since once someone tags the helicopter it's pretty trivial to shoot it down, and I think in that case letting people "eject" makes some sense.

Otherwise this game is pretty damned fun. Having dedicated servers makes the online play about 3x better than MW2, and it's a lot less time consuming trying to find a good place to play.

[Zoombie]

Yes, god, I lost a game because we held all the positions on the map and the other team just sniped us all to death.

Fuckers.

[Dommo]

It can be pretty frustrating. I mean all holding checkpoints does is speed up respawn, however, if the other team is actually pretty good skill wise with Recon/Medics, they can basically keep on resurrecting their guys without burning up respawn tickets. This can lead to a situation where they can still win games that against a team that, while skill inferior, is playing tactically better. This is especially the case on maps where vehicles aren't that prevalent, because vehicles basically can rape defenders, provided you've got like 2 engineers riding a long (basically impossible to kill a bradley/tank).

[Zoombie]

Well, that's where recon comes in: To pick off infantry and gum up the enemy. It makes everyone else's job easier when the enemy are getting shot by snipers.

I don't think you should be able to win a GAME that way, though...

If that makes sense.

[Dommo]

The problem is that if recon are working with medics, and they're better skill wise than your team, you're in trouble if you don't have vehicles EVEN if you're "doing it right" by taking objectives. I've seen us hold all three objectives for like an entire game, and still lose by 20 because the other team just picked us apart with Recon and Medics. It's hard to deal with the snipers when they're picking you off one at a time, and then when you pop them, they get rezzed by medic and the other team doesn't lose a ticket.

To actually hold objectives you NEED to have engineers/assault because they can actually knock holes in buildings, and allow you to deny your opponents cover (basically you chop down every tree/building that faces your opponents spawn). This works great at keeping the assholes from taking your stuff, but if they just say "fuck it" and focus on killing you instead, you'll still lose. I think this is really only an issue on maps that don't have much in the way of vehicles (vehicles basically nullify this combo, since you can then camp their spawn and dispose of them pretty quickly).

The problem I've got is that the medic needs to be hosed down. Recon by itself, is just a nuisance, but if they can keep getting regenerated for no penalty endlessly, they can be a real pain in the ass. If they limited medics to being able to use a defrib once and it was gone, then I wouldn't hate them so much. But it pisses me off when the enemy is like fucking horde of living dead that just refuse to stay down.

[Zoombie]

Maybe you only can rez once?

[Dommo]

I think what would fix the medic is if they made it take 10 seconds to resurrect someone (think comparable to an engineer fixing a tank). This would keep the zombie army from never losing numbers. This would basically nerf down the "cluster of medic" types of attacks where they just keep on resurrecting each other endlessly.

I once squaded up with 3 other medics, and we just stayed together, and I think I only had to respawn like twice in the course of a rush map. Seriously. That's fucked up. I must have croaked like 10 or 12 times at least suicidally trying to set bombs.

[Zoombie]

Yes, yes, the 10 second thing should work.

[tarcanus]

My roommate's been play BFBC2 since it was released and loves it, but I'm not really convinced, yet. I've been playing MAG.