A little game called Mass Effect 2 came out this week, and it’s pretty hard to stop playing it. Even for sleep. So clearly there’ll be a good review of it coming up when I finish it. Still, I am committed to my job here, so I regularly check the new demos to see what I can preview. And after a dry spell, it’s time for a bash at Battlefield Bad Company 2. The multiplayer, at least.

The multiplayer demo gives you one map, the name of which escapes me, and one mode Rush, which is essentially just Gold Rush from the first game but… ya know, without the gold. The mode pits two teams against each other, the attackers and the defenders, whose role is to attack the two crates in a given area, or defend said crates. It’s simple stuff really, but it can get pretty hectic when there’s a whole load of people going for the same crate. If both boxes get destroyed, you move onto the next HQ, and so on and so forth until either the attackers lose all their respawn tickets or all the crates are destroyed.

The controls are like every other FPS out there, which is no bad thing, since it makes it easier to transfer over. There are some choices that are a little weird; the melee button is RB instead of clicking the right stick, which crouches, or pressing B, which is used to swap classes with a dead body. Aside from that, everything else is pretty standard, so it should be easy to transition from CoD to this. The matches themselves are pretty hectic and exciting, with vehicles making themselves useable yet again. The tanks can be a little overpowered at times, but a well placed rocket seemed to take care of one pretty swiftly (and won me the match, too) so it’s not all bad. The weapons are varied and interesting, and each class has a different gadget they can use to make things more exciting, so there’s plenty of fun to be had no matter what class you choose.

One annoyance here is the new experience system. In the first Bad Company, you earned experience and levelled up, and with each new level you could unlock one new weapon or gadget for whichever class you wanted. Here, the experience you gain in game goes towards levelling up the class you’re playing as, so if you swap between them too much you’ll find yourself with a collection of weak classes compared to those who focus entirely on a specific class. There are still some bugs present in the game too. After spawning on the attacking side, you fly down to the ground via parachute. Except one time when I just fell straight down. Still, it’s early days yet, so this will surely be fixed by launch day.

Graphics are pretty damn sweet. Thanks to the Frostbite 2.0 engine, the walls of buildings are blown out in a matter of seconds, which makes traversing the map much more fun and fast. The character models look good, the vehicles are impressive, and just in general everything looks spick and span. I didn’t even notice any graphical bugs while playing, although some lag led to some pretty nasty popping up of characters. But hey, can’t complain about lag. That’s like moaning about the sky being blue all the time.

Sound is pretty minimalistic, which makes for some tense atmosphere. A total lack of soundtrack, punctuated by distant cries from your teammates and a ton of explosions left right and centre is something that should be experience by everyone. All the sounds work and are well made, and there really isn’t much else to say about them than that.
Overall, BC2 is shaping up to be a wonderful online experience. Hopefully the single player will be able to deliver the same kind of humour and fun that the first game did, rather than getting “too serious” as most people are worried about. Definitely look into this if you’re a fan of shooting people. In video games of course. If you shoot people in real life, please, turn yourself in.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 comes out March 2nd for the Americans, or March 5th if you’re in Europe.

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