Battlefield Bad Company 2 PC Beta Impressions

Author: NovaJinx

Since everyone and their dog pre-ordered the game, I didn’t feel like missing out. I had just gotten back into Battlefield 2142 too, so I thought what the hell.

In the end us Steam customers would get to start downloading the beta client an hour or two after it was officially released, apparently EA did not want to let Valve have the client for pre-loading. By the time I got to boot the game up about three hours after its launch (thanks to extremely clogged Steam servers), it turned out to be utterly unplayable. The client would crash every time I tried opening up the server browser and the Play Now-button was a hellish Russian roulette that 95% of the time would refuse the connection outright or get me as far as the loading screen until the server would boot me out – sometimes crashing the entire client in the process. When it would go through, the servers were so ridiculously laggy no matter what their locations were that the game was practically impossible to play.

Some hours later most Eurofags had given up and gone to sleep and the clutter was all gone – the game would join on almost every attempt and the servers were generally free of lag. Now the Friend list turned out to be the next object of frustration and to the date it has not been fixed – most of the time it doesn’t display anyone no matter what their status is and the friend requests disappear and reappear randomly, so that you end up sending 5 requests just to have one get through.

As far as the gameplay goes, it’s like Battlefield 2 cross-pollinated with Call of Duty. The one and only map available for beta players is essentially a very long tube but suits well for the Rush-game type. I had already gotten tired of the traditional BF conquest-mode which mainly involves sneaking around to capture whichever points are not defended at the moment, degenerating the game into a retarded rat race around the map. Rush-mode makes the game feel more like a military operation it’s supposed to simulate, limiting pointless roaming and making the fighting more objective-focused.

The game has been designed by console gaming terms and that’s quite obvious from the lack of prone position, one-button melee and weak weapons. I really hate lacking the ability to go prone but I don’t really care about melee and weak weapon damage is sort of double edged thing. It is annoying when you have to empty half of a rifle magazine just to kill off one guy but it also makes sniper-whorage much less of an issue. Combined with actual ballistics applied to bullet trajectories, this makes most of the wannabe snipers in game just worthless waste of space. They rarely manage to hit anyone from long range and when they do, the hit is almost never lethal. Snipers are forced to take more of a marksman’s role and follow along the front line instead of sitting on a rock 200 meters away from fighting. Now I wish recon players used the motion detector mines too. They not only reveal all enemy positions around them but also give you spotting points when said bastards are killed within the detection area.

Well, in theory that is. Majority of FPS players being hopeless dumbfucks, there is always a whole bunch of useless snipers gathering around the rocky hilltop next to the first attacker spawn area. I have not even once been killed by someone shooting from up there and that’s no wonder – anyone stupid and ignorant enough to waste their time up there does not possess the skills to achieve headshots from such distance with bullet drop involved. PROTIP from JTFish: Once the first COM-points are destroyed, that area opens up for defenders to access. Run up that hill and knife the living crap out of these losers.

Battlefield 2 already showed that EA and DICE don’t give a fuck about vehicle balance so it will be useless to even complain, but the tank cannon needs some fixing or at least the AT-weapons need to be improved. Right now smart attackers can destroy one of the first defense points by simply sniping it with the tank from their base. The only way to at least theoretically destroy the tank is calling mortar on it, but it’s not like they can’t evade and repair to counter that. Or maybe defenders should be able to repair the points.

Hell yeah, you can defib my heart any day if you know what I’m saying, Assault-tan.

Also, you can crash choppers by simply flying into them with the UAV drone. The drone doesn’t even get destroyed in the process – just ram right into an Apache’s windshield and the whole thing flips, spinning around totally out of control. Sometimes it even explodes outright. As amusing as it is for the UAV operator, it’s pretty damn unfair. I also wish there was something that could be done to the kids who can’t wait for their turn on the UAV and will destroy it when you beat them to the control console – or jump on it, causing you to get a teamkill. Not to mention that many of these losers can’t even fly the thing for shit and get shot down before they even figure out how to guide the missile strike.

How does the game compare to BF2? It’s a lot more intensive and has greater focus on infantry combat. I also like the extensive kit customization and that grinding for unlocks doesn’t take entire days just to get a few basic necessities. EA could’ve done better with the beta though. I’ve seen a lot better releases such as Call of Duty World at War which had next to no client stability or connectivity problems. Also, EA isn’t exactly renowned for listening to the community where it counts and often take months to fix clear exploits. But the game is quite fun as it is, especially if you have a bunch of friends to play as a squad with.

Tags: offtopic, rants, tl;dr