Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Preview

Since 2008’s Battlefield Bad Company, EA DICE has been hard at work growing the Battlefield IP with the download-only Battlefield 1943 and the free-to-play PC game Battlefield Heroes. The next iteration of the Battlefield legacy will be coming to PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 this March in the form of Battlefield Bad Company 2 which has just started its lengthy multiplayer beta test on the PS3, unfortunately pushing back the PC beta until 2010. After my relatively little time with the first Bad Company, it felt like a fairly standard FPS that strayed a bit too far from the Battlefield formula for my liking. Despite being unable to experience any of the single player or story aspects of the game, Bad Company 2 is already proving itself as quite the capable console multiplayer experience.

In terms of graphics, Bad Company 2 is looking great so far. Although it won’t be setting any new benchmarks for PS3 console graphics especially after this fall’s Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, BC2’s graphics are more than fitting of the current-gen standard and are quite impressive considering the epic scale of the battles taking place. Take a gander at the screenshots and feel free to make your own judgments, but keep in mind that these shots are taken from an early beta build of the game and that this is the worst the graphics will look with DICE possibly making some improvements before the game’s retail release. I’ve noticed very few graphical bugs in my time with the beta and those that I have encountered tend to be small, like a tree vanishing from a certain angle or the wreckage of a tank appearing to be an operational tank for a few moments too long before instantly making the transfer to a pile of scarred metal.

The audio is extremely well done and sounds great, even on basic television speakers. Weapon and action sounds match up well and sound realistic. Surround sound and directional balancing is great, allowing for someone running a simple stereo television set-up to detect incoming fire and enemies easily from the left or right side.

With the most important aspect being the gameplay, I must say that it outshines the first Bad Company by far and evolves the Battlefield-style of play that DICE delivered in 2006’s well received PC title Battlefield 2142. In the Rush game mode, the players are given a choice between 4 different classes each of which has over ten specific class unlocks that can be easily customized between spawns. The object of the game is for the attacking team to arm the charges on two objectives (large bombs placed within two buildings) while the defending team does all it can to keep the enemy at bay long enough to diminish their reinforcements. If the attackers are successful, the defenders are forced to fall back and a new portion of the massive map is unlocked with two new objectives for the teams to attack or defend respectively. This formula continues on until either the attacker’s reinforcements are extinguished by the opposing team’s strong defense or all of the objectives are destroyed. It is a fairly straight forward game mode and it works well with the game’s squad dynamics.

Players are separated into squads of four or can go lone-wolf if they so desire. Voice chat works flawlessly, which is great news for those of you playing Battlefield 1943 on the PS3 which has proven rather troublesome when it comes to voice chat. The chat is kept within your squad, saving you from the annoying ramblings of a bothersome teammate but simultaneously preventing you from communicating fully with your team which can have its drawbacks in some of the more hectic situations on the battlefield.

Weapons and gadgets are unlocked through an experience system that has become rather familiar to FPS players since the rise of Modern Warfare. Experience is awarded for everything from kills to vehicle repairs to restocking your teammates with ammunition and is boosted when working with your squadmates which is a great teamwork incentive. Universal weapons can be unlocked in addition to the class-specific weaponry allowing for players to outfit any class with a submachine gun or shotgun, making a sniper into a fast-attack class on the fly.

On the Arica Harbor map (the only included in the current beta build), both teams have access to tanks, machine-gun toting humvees, quads, and a missile-launching UAV helicopter. Beside the vehicles, there are also several stationary machine guns and missile launchers placed throughout the various sections of the map. All of this, coupled with the various outfittings for all four of the classes, leads to huge gameplay possibilities and an extremely dynamic battle experience each time you play the game. Although they are not available at this point in the beta, the full game promises an added variety of land, air, and sea vehicles.

With all of this being said, the beta does have a few shortcomings. As of the current build, parachutes are bugged pretty heavily. After a player pulls the chute, many times it remains deployed and fully inflated even after that player has landed making the player extremely easy for enemies to track down. The UI seems to entirely lack a compass which makes more advanced squad-based maneuvers difficult to coordinate. The terms “left” and “right” lose their meaning when the squad it scattered and staring in different directions where “north” and “east” would retain their value regardless. This would be an easy feature to add and hopefully we’ll see it in the retail release of the game. Lastly, the game fails to properly inform the player when their vehicle is being repaired or they are being healed by a nearby health crate. This can make it extremely frustrating to play as an engineer and attempt to repair the vehicle or heal a player outside of your squad as you don’t have the ability to speak with them over voice chat and they may drive or run away before you can properly repair or heal them. Once again, this would be an easily remedied situation. The addition of a small symbol near the center of the screen is all that would be needed and much like the compass, it seems unlikely that this feature will not be included in the final release.

Ultimately, the single level multiplayer beta that EA DICE has delivered to PS3 gamers feels almost entirely like a game on the verge of its retail release, rather than a game still four months down the line. Time and time again over the last week, I have found myself passing up all of the other games on my PC and PS3, only to jump into the Bad Company 2 beta with a few friends. If so many gamers (like myself and those I game with regularly) will pour well over 10 hours of gameplay in a week of a beta build of a single map not including all of the features promised by the full retail release, that says something great about the game as a whole. Despite a few, relatively minor misses features that could be added well before the game’s final release, the Bad Company 2 beta feels like the next evolution of both the Battlefield formula and the FPS itself. Modern Warfare 2 may have a strong multiplayer competitor come March.

Be on the lookout for more PS3 beta codes on the Battlefield Bad Company 2 Facebook fan page and the game’s official Twitter account (@officialbfbc2). Keep this game on your radar as it will be arriving just in time to consume hours of your life just as the crowd of holiday games is finally beginning to wear thin.