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Battlefield Bad Company 2 PC Single-Player First Impressions March 02, 2010 Jacob Vandy |
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Summary: Vandy's been busily taking out bad guys in DICE's latest shooter, Bad Company 2. The game has been pitched to gamers disappointed with Modern Warfare 2, but does it succeed? Check out Vandy's first impressions of the single-player campaign in this article!
 Welcome to Bad Company | Page:: ( 1 / 4 ) |
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You play as Marlowe, your highly-skilled jack-of-all-trades that fills the role of that go-to guy every video game needs. You’re joined by Sweetwater the egghead, and Haggard the trigger-happy redneck, as well as Sarge, the only one crazy enough to have signed up for his position. The resulting combination is a group that is entirely unconventional, yet undeniably capable of incredible feats.
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The story unfolds with a prologue that takes place during the final stages of World War II. The Japanese have developed an incredible weapon of mass destruction, and your team of commandos is tasked with extracting a defecting scientist who knows how it works. Fast-forward to the near future; the weapon has long since disappeared and tensions between the US and Russia are high. Bad Company discovers that the enemy plans on utilizing the decades-old technology to facilitate a full-scale invasion, and so embarks on a journey across three continents to find it before they do.
For the first time on the PC, a Battlefield game features a single-player mode that consists of more than offline bot skirmishes. You will tread frozen tundra, desert plains, steamy jungles, and everywhere in between with your smart-ass squad mates in tow. There are plenty of vehicles to ride, explosions to see, and nameless bad guys to kill, but it begs the question: Is it any good?
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| ”I’ve gotta save me some cheerleaders!” | Page:: ( 2 / 4 ) |
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Right off the bat, you’re reminded of Bad Company’s most well-known trait: destructible environments. Nearly every house, wall, tower, sign, and tree is able to be blown apart when sufficient force is applied. New in this iteration is the possibility that a building will collapse completely once most of its structural supports (i.e. walls) are removed. This is an awesome feature, simultaneously looking very cool and opening up a plethora of tactical options. While you can certainly destroy the enemy’s cover or even bring it crashing down on him, you should also be prepared to haul ass when they try to return the favor.
There are some downsides to this mechanic, however. For one, it is way too easy to destroy things. You could argue that it makes it more dynamic and action-oriented to have an entire side of a house be blown off by a single grenade or rocket, but on the other hand, it’s rather harrowing to realize that most cover is essentially paper-thin – even a steady stream of bullets will break through many objects. It also seems that by making destructible objects so flimsy, it resulted in a wall breaking from less damage than can be sustained without dying. In other words, you can blow a huge hole in a wall with an RPG, but the guy that was standing just on the other side will still be alive. Finally, debris from explosions disappears very quickly, which simply doesn’t look good.
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Scripted events are fine and dandy when they blend seamlessly with everything else that is going on, but enemies spawning in plain sight or a particular radio tower falling on a vehicle that I already destroyed are just cases of shoddy programming. The latter would’ve been fantastic if I had caused it by shooting the explosive barrels at the base of the tower, but they remained intact. Another contrived sequence involves a flaming truck barreling down a narrow passage straight toward you with no room to escape; I turned around and tried to run back, but I heard Sarge yell “Shoot it!” I did, and two bullets caused it to come to a screeching halt, passing through me without collision. Afterward, I noticed the small drainage ditch that would’ve made a far less asinine solution had I ducked into it.
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| ”Look at all this scary shit!” | Page:: ( 3 / 4 ) |
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The visuals in Bad Company 2 are pretty impressive. Backdrops are nearly photo-realistic and create some epic set-pieces when combined with crisp environment textures, dense foliage, and fancy reflective water. Characters are exquisitely detailed, while sprites and particle effects create explosions that are as awesome to see as they are to cause. Shadowing is mostly good except for jagged edges, particularly on self-shadows. The wide selection of weapons is modeled accurately but many end up looking bland because of poor textures. Keep in mind that the game was reviewed using a GeForce GTX 275 GPU.
Unfortunately, and contrary to developer promises, you can’t yet adjust the field of view! There is no in-game option and no setting in the config files that I could find. It seems, for now, the only way is to do a custom resolution work-around that either results in playing with black bars at the top and bottom of the screen or in windowed mode. I can only assume that this is planned for inclusion in an upcoming patch. On the bright side, you’re probably used to tight FOVs from playing other recent games…
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The first thing I noticed when watching trailers of the game were the sound effects. They’re all very realistic and high quality, especially gunfire and how it echoes depending on where the bullet starts and stops its flight. Explosions sound good, too, and while there’s no shell-shock effect per se, one that happens danger close causes this weird “bl-ooOOOP” noise. While interesting and different from the usual ringing, I’m not sure how realistic that is.
The only problem is everything is mixed rather poorly. First of all, I need to crank up the volume when I play because it’s so quiet compared to other games. Then the soundtrack often doesn’t have the desired effect because you can barely hear it! For example, there’s a scene where there’s supposed to be this major fanfare because of the squad rallying, but with the music subdued, the moment falls flat.
| Other thoughts | Page:: ( 4 / 4 ) |
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BC2’s controls leave some things to be desired, literally. I don’t understand the inability to lay prone. When I snipe or if cover is scarce, I want to be able to hit the deck and reduce my profile. I’d also like to toggle crouch to save my pinky some unnecessary strain. Granted, stealth is a joke, much like weapon recoil, so there isn’t much point in crouching, but still. And what is going on with these first-person shooters not letting you lean anymore? Goddamn it… Quick save would aid in eliminating some tediousness because, as it is, you will be repeating certain tricky parts over and over to the point of memorizing enemy locations and focusing on the “perfect run.”
I really like that they give you a choice of online or disc authentication. You can activate over the web and not have to put the disc in ever again, or simply keep the disc in the drive if you don’t have an internet connection. This is a refreshing change from the strict anti-piracy measures we’ve been hearing of lately. Technically, it could be used to play the game on at least two computers at the same time, but with freedom comes responsibility.
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Overall, the single-player portion of Bad Company 2 is a nice bonus and would make a moderately enjoyable diversion, perhaps for when you get disconnected from a server and EA network refuses to let you sign in. It also assists in familiarizing you with controls, vehicles, and weapons that you will be using for multiplayer, like a boot camp of sorts. The campaign lasts a decent 6-8 hours, but I wouldn’t recommend buying the game for this part alone, as the real meat is in the online play. Be sure to tune in later this week for my thoughts on that and the conclusion of this review.