A Couple of Gamers

New Releases: Bad Company 2

Posted on Feb 28, 2010 by Dave in 360, PS3

Bad Company 2’s multiplayer modes do a better job of distinguishing themselves. Compared to most of their contemporaries, Battlefield games have always been about scale. They were some of the first FPS games to include huge areas—along with the vehicles needed to traverse them—and the results have almost always been both highly positive and positively “big”: tanks square off amongst scurrying infantry intent on securing ground as aircraft dogfights zoomed overhead (all controlled directly by individual players) in massive, sprawling engagements quite worthy of the term “battlefield.”

Bad Company 2, like its predecessor, scales the sheer size and number of players back a bit (from the heights of Battlefield 2’s giant playing fields and 64-player games, for example), opting for a maximum of 24 players per game, as well as settings that segment into smaller play areas. In doing so, to no small credit, they’ve managed to provide a more focused experience without losing the feeling of battlefield scale—a feeling that’s not present in the tighter engagements of Modern Warfare 2, for example.

Besides the usual military combat trimmings, differentiating features like drivable vehicles and destructible environments that seem like extras in the single-player campaign come to centre stage in multiplayer, both by defining the gameplay and providing a bountiful variety of play options. As a result, compared to the campaign, the multiplayer offering seems more fresh—and I’d assume it would seem especially so to those who haven’t played a Battlefield game before.  All in all, if you can manage to get three like-minded soldiers (ideally friends) into your four-player squad, you’ll be rewarded with solid teamwork-centric play and, probably, a few random moments of awe (and quite possibly a few laughs) that I’ve found unique to Battlefield games.

Dave: Sadly, Battlefield doesn’t feature any purely cooperative modes (especially following MW2’s excellent Special Ops modes… I’ll stop comparing them now—I promise).

With top-notch graphics and sound underpinned by solid action, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 isn’t tough to recommend, provided you’re not completely worn out on modern military shooters. But like other games in this genre, those who enjoy playing with others will find the real meat in the multiplayer modes, which are sure to entertain far longer than the campaign and, quite possibly, provide many more unique and memorable moments.