Accessible and addictive, EA's servers are sure to be ringing with the sounds of crumbling building's for years to come.
After a brief prologue level to set-up the absurd storyline, we find Bad Company in Alaska where commanding officer, Sarge, is enjoying his last tour of duty. Nothing is mentioned of the truckload of gold they aquired at the end of the first game, but it looks like things didn't go quite according to plan. It's here your reintroduced to the team, including Marlowe and Sweetwater who's exploits will keep you laughing over the course of the adventure.
Soon enough you'll be blasting your way through occupied towns and villages, using grenades, RPG's and conveinently placed fuel barells to blow chunks out of enemy fortifications. This is how Bad Company 2 plays from start to finish, so it's just as well the act of destroying buildings is such great fun. Soldiers taking cover are just a single grenade launcher shot from exposure. Snipers posts and fixed guns can be blown apart with a well placed rocket. You can even fell entire building's by blowing away their support columns. From Alaska to your eventual exploits across South America, this formula is replicated over and over. And you'll be pleased to know it never gets old.
Quite how you blow up stuff is up to you. Bad Company 2 has a large range of fixed and mobile weaponry for you to decimate structures with. Every unlockable weapon from the multiplayer can be found during the campaign, from shotguns to sniper rifles, machine guns and rocket launchers. Then there are the vehicles which are capable of doing their fair share of damage too. Tanks lay waste to human and cement alike, bursting through jungle fauna and blasting open buildings like rock through cardboard. Chopper-mounted grenade launchers pound on fortifications and APC turrets shred through concrete. The game never leaves you short of ammunition as infinate ammo crates are frequently accessible in the heart of the battlefield. In fact it's often fun to stick around after a firefight and destroy what's left of a town before moving on.
Like the best of teamates, the three amigos you fight alongside are great fun to be around. Oftentimes breaking into impromtu conversations about religion, their ability to speak "Spanglish" and the occasional subtle swipe at the Modern Warfare franchise. Their indiference to the mission highlights just how out of place they feel in a narrative that's failing to take itself seriously. They serve to make the game more entertaining, but simultaneously make the story even less believable. You often wish you were back chasing that truck of gold or doing something equally as ludicrous.
As unbelievable as the story is, the game itself does everything in its power to make you feel you're in the thick of a real battlefield. Audio design is superb throughout. Buildings groan as they buckle under their own weight, firing a weapon indoors creates a hollow crackle and if your too close to a large explosion your eardrums are battered into momentary deafness. The visuals are decent too. Areas are vast and as a result look much better at a distance than under close scrutiny, but that suits the game just fine. You'll battle your way across snowy mountain villages, meandering rainforest riverbanks and vast arid deserts. The problem is you can't help feeling you've been to all these places a thousand times before. There's even a favela level that looks remarkably like something you probably played last year. As you're basically blowing up buildings no matter where you go, it would have been nice to see a bit more creativity in your surroundings. The nail in the coffin is the final level which is lifted wholesale from Call of Duty 4. For all the jokes Bad Company makes about Infinity Ward's game design, it didn't mind taking more than a handful of inspirations.
One inspiration you'll be thankful for is the new multiplayer experience in Bad Company 2 which allows you to level up your online persona while unlocking special features across five classes. In any level you can play as assault, medic, recon or engineer. Playing as a class helps you unlock scecial abilities within that class, as well as raise your overall level. So if you play as a medic you'll eventually unlock the ability to revive fallen comrades, while your overall level might symultaniously unlock extra weapons you can use as any class. This system rewards you for sticking to one class, with the aim of creating an online enviroment of specialists. It also helps to learn each classes nuance, as playing as an engineer who primarilly fixes tanks and plants mines in the heart of the battle, can be very different to a recon who snipes the enemy from afar.
No matter what class you choose, you'll always feel involved in the battles. There are four game modes on offer; Rush, Conquest, Squad Deathmatch and Squad Rush. In Rush one team defends a set of objectives while the opposing team attemps to destroy them by way of detonation or brute force. If the attacking team destroy the points before their respawn tickets run out, the defending team must retreat down the battlefield to a new set of points and the ticket counter is reset. Match quality can vary depending on the decision making of your teammates, but the selection of vast maps on offer are all well designed to ensure victory is never totally out of reach.
If you fancy something a little shorter, squad Rush is similar to this, but with 4 players on each team. Squad Deathmatch also has 4 man teams is but points are gained for kills rather than capturing points. Lastly in Conquest mode your required to capture and hold flags. The enemys tickets will decrease if your holding more than half the flags. These retain the scale of Rush, but are much more frantic as controll of the battlefield can shift unexpectedlyat any point. You always feel in the thick of the action, and with a selection of land, sea and airbourne vehicles at your disposal, game changing surges are the reward for organised teams.
Though it may take you a while to get used to the various game modes and classes, the mechanics of shooting and movement are simple to grasp. Each gun has a recongnisable weight, recoil and range. Grenades are easy to aim, sniper rifles require a timely reload between shots and shotguns are powerful within a certain range. You can highlight incoming enemy forces with a red HUD icon, by pressing the controllers back button (select on PS3). The awkward button press pays off if they're subsequently killed, as you gain XP for successful spots. In fact you gain XP for most things; killing, healing, defending positions, headshots, driving, mending broken vehicles and reviving stricken team-mates. This means you can just as easily enjoy each match without even firing a shot; especially as a medic. Reviving your squadmates and executing the enemy with the very same defibrillator carries a wonderful irony.
No matter what tactic you take, you're better with doing it with friends. If your joining a match in a party, the game puts you in the same squad allowing each player to respawn next to his squad members. This is very effective if your squad has successfully flanked the oposition or are running riot in a chopper. However if you have no friends fear not, as you can opt-in to join a squad with random players. Though you may or may not work as a unit, at least it gives you options each time you respawn.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is the console multiplayer experience fans of the series have been waiting for. Accessible and addictive, EA's dedicated servers are sure to be ringing with the sounds of crumbling building's for years to come. Though the single player campaign is weaker this time around its certainly still worth playing. The rampant, large-scale chaos that defines the online action can be found in no other game available today. Whether or not you have the time to level up an entirely new online persona, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is game shooter fans shouldn't miss out on.
Danny O'Dwyer