After my vacation a few weeks back, came back looking for something new to try. Watched reviews of the newest releases on Steam and had to try Battlefield: Bad Company 2 as soon as I saw it. Thought I’d be interested in the single player campaign and then maybe get into multiplayer once I got the rust off (haven’t played a dedicated PC shooter in awhile). However, after playing just one level of the campaign I fired up multiplayer and haven’t looked back. I am only going to talk about the multiplayer as that’s all you really should care about.
Before I get into my overall impression – what I’ve noticed that has defined recent online shooters as big successes are all of the the things heavily borrowed from the MMORPG genre. The classes, the specializations, the unlockables, levels, skills – lets just call them the pellets – the same pellets that keep the average WoW player coming back to the lever waiting for their next fix. This trend has already expanded out to every genre.. RTS, strategy etc (even the sims for god sakes). It’s how you give the illusion of content by making the player drool and grind their way to their next tiny milestone – regardless of whether or not that grind consisted of a linear repetition the entire way – it doesn’t matter! Pellet time!
Attacking the pellet centre of the brain (think gambling addiction) is a for sure way to guarantee a sustainable player base – well at least until the pellets run out (end game??). The art/magic of it is making the pellets arrive at a rate that doesn’t seem too fast and easy but not so hard as to make them only attainable by skilled players and thus unenjoyable to the dumb masses. Also having ‘micro-advances’ (1% to this, 2% to that), leading up to a next-tier advance – pellet on a stick so to speak – works nicely.
BC2 utilizes all of this nicely and combines it with a great sandbox shooter to boot. It is the reason you are seeing the servers so packed and people from so many different genres picking it up.
Overview of the game as I know it: you create a soldier on the EA system, find a game server (quite easily done. For PC they upgraded some of the hardware recently and a lot of the ‘lobby’-type performance issues I saw last week are gone) and join a game. There are a bunch of different modes, but I’ve focused primarily on conquest (capture the flagish) and Rush - which seems to be the most team/squad oriented. You can be either Russian or American. When you spawn you can select your class (assault, engineer, medic, recon), select if you want to join a squad and then select a spawn point. You can spawn on either your primary fire base, a captured base (secured by capturing the flag) or a squad mate.
The game looks amazing and plays amazing! Nuff said.
Despite the QQ on the forums about balancing issues, I find all of the classes complement each other nicely and have different utility depending on map, situation and squad composition. Before I break them down, let me talk about the pellets. You have many different areas to work on - all driven off a point based system that accumulates depending on your team/squad/personal performance in each map.
You have 2 types of kits – class specific kits and non-class specific kits. You gain points in your class by playing that class. You unlock your class specific gadgets, specializations and weapons through this mechanism. Your class specific score is a subset of your total score. Non-class specific specs, gadgets, weapons are unlocked by your overall character score. These are more general specializations (ie. being able to run faster) and weapons available regardless of class.
Additionally you have 2 achievement pellets: insignias which are 1 time unlockable achievements gained through play (usually give a very generous amount of points on to your round score when you unlock them) as well as pins which are smaller achievements (small point bonus to your round score). Pins you can not only gain as many times as you want, but also you can achieve them multiple times in a single round (ie. reviving 5 squad members – revive 10 and you get 2 pins and 2 x 200 point bonus to your round score).
Weapons and specs that are used also gain ’stars’. These are related to the pin achievements above. Using your M60 and killing 100 people will gain you a single star next to that weapon in your kit. Killing 200 people will give you another gold star and so on. An aesthetic thing that advertises to your enemy how uber you are with that weapon.
Vehicles are dealt with as their own class, except they gain only specs. You achieve vehicle points by being in a vehicle for the kill (surprise). The achievements are unlocked both by total vehicle score and by your soldier score.
Lastly, your overall point total contributes to your ‘rank’, which gives you your rank level/icon (in addition to the non-specific kit unlocks). This gives opponents and squad mates an idea of how much time you’ve spent playing the game nomnomnomnom.
The 4 classes are fairly standard, though with the specs and weapons allowing for a certain degree of flexibility within. Assault class is your front line soldier. Defined by the use of assault rifles and the attached 40mm grenade launcher (aka the noob tube - point and shoot insta-gibbness), ability to spawn ammunition and the Destruction 2.0 achievement to take out buildings and everything nearby – they are what they are. Engineers use SMGs, have access to RPGs, anti-tank mines and are able to repair vehicles. In the levels where vehicles are a big factor, engineers can be indespensible for quickly eliminating enemy tanks and light armor. Recon troops are your standard sniper unit; camo suit, sniper rifles, motion detector, C4 explosives and the very powerful mortar strike for an area attack strike. Recons are very good at spotting, supporting attacks, flanking (though not as powerful in CC situations) and counter-sniping. The medic - which I’ve spent the most time playing, gets access to the LMG line, defibrilators for reviving freshly killed friendlies and health packs that regen nearby soliders.
Weapons are awesome in their looks, variety as well as the specializations that help to give people something to fit their playstyle. As a medic I use the massively overpowered (? haha), M60 with the red dot sight specialization and the marksman LMG barrel (better accuracy – near the end of the tree, each class gets a marksman spec for their class specific weapon). I experienced it to give the best combo of damage, accuracy and rate of fire – seems to be THE choice for most medics – probably why it is QQ’d about the most. The standard sight sucks and I like the bolt on red dot for quick aquisition rather than the 4x scope. Looking at the MG3 (last medic unlockable weapon) – it trades damage for insane rate of fire. However, because LMGs take a brutally long time to reload combined with the ridiculously high rate of fire – I found myself emptying a full mag too quick and having to reload after 1-2 kills. So kept with my M60. These are the types of decisions you will be working with as each class. Taking a spec to carry more ammo – or doing more damage? Rate of fire or accuracy?
As far as the modes I play: Conquest has you starting off in your main fire base with your team with the intention of capturing various points of interest on the map. You capture the objectives by having friendlies near the flag pole; after a period of time you will raise your flag and have it as a spawn point. Each team starts with 100 points and these slowly decrease on a timer for each objective your enemy has until you reach 0 – in which case you lose. The more objectives you have, the quicker you drain your enemies points. Games involve trading the flags back and forth for fairly hectic and continous (but not overly long!) games. Rush mode rotates teams between attacking and defending a series of objectives that need to be destroyed. Rush demands more team/squad coordination in order to make effective/sustainable attacks or proper defense.
The maps are varied and fun. Almost everything can be turned to rubble. Small arms fire ripping through doors, fences, windows and light walls – while rockets, tank rounds and bombs can demolish entire buildings. All maps contain vehicles – these range from an ATV, humvee, armored personal carriers (BMP, bradley), tanks (abrams, T-90) – to attack helicopers, UAVs piloted from various computer terminals and stationary guns and rocket launchers. Great sandbox feeling, though I would tend to say that the maps might be a little small to get the most use out of some vehicles. Most of the vehicles can fit multiple soldiers which is very cool and brings me to my next point.
Where the game really shines is the use of squads for cooperative play. You can join a squad (5 man team) at the start of the match randomly – pick one that has an empty spot – or create one of your own and have an invite only group for your buddies. All actions performed with your squad (reviving a squad mate, assisting with a kill, avenging etc) give you more points than if you were helping out a random teammate – a high incentive for point-whores. However – the most important aspect is you can use your squadmates as mobile spawn points (ie. if your medic is dead, you can hide out and wait for his timer so he can spawn on you and then continue) – this includes spawning into a vehicle a squadmate is driving. In my experience, most BC2 rounds are turned by a single squad pushing together effectively from objective to objective – leaving the random lone rangers, drunks and hero wannabes helping out simply by being distractions for the enemy. I am not part of an organized clan, nor do I have any ambitions to. Being able to quickly get into a small unit of people and start working together right away is just awesome. So much so that once you get that synergy in your group and are kicking butt, it really becomes apparent how valuable to both your team’s success and your fun factor it is that you find some people who are interested in playing the game as a squad. Within a server I will often squad shop (hop around to other squads) until I find people that are on the same page. It equates to a TON of fun and lots and lots of points.
There you have it. I haven’t been into a shooter for a long time (did not even try MW2) and was skeptical about how I would like it – but Bad Company 2 simply rocks. The multiplayer is rewarding in both gameplay, pellet-factor and the ability to achieve an awesome cooperative experience with little effort.
I recommend this game highly!
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