I have to admit, I used to be a bona fide Battlefield junkie. In
fact, IGN played so much Battlefield 1942 that some of the editors took
to living in the office. I honestly wasn't as big a fan of most of the
sequels until Bad Company came around. So when DICE announced the PC
beta for Bad Company 2 yesterday, I was first in line to download it
and, consequently, the first to endure the pre-release connectivity
issues. Things have smoothed out since then and I've been able to play
through a few rounds of the PC demo. If this is a sign of things to
come, we might have to think about breaking out the IGN sleeping bags
again.
The new beta map is Port Valdez, the harbor at the southernmost
end of the Trans Alaskan Pipeline. The Russians are dropping in to take
the port from the Americans and neither side is willing to give up.
From the initial plane drops, the Russians will advance through
snow-covered hills and industrial urban areas as they seek out US M-COM
stations. Port Valdez supports the Rush game mode, so the US will have
to defend their stations until the Russians run out of respawn tickets.
The map has a great flow to it and plays out in three waves. In
the first, the Russians drop in by air, which is pretty thrilling to
see no matter which side of the battle you're on. Pathfinders have
already set a few vehicles in place for the Russians to use, and it's
no trouble to jump on the armored vehicle or one of the new quads and
get right into the action. The first line of M-COM stations is at a
construction site on the outskirts of the US defenses, so a coordinated
attack can usually get things progressing nicely.
Port Valdez is a nice mix of infantry and vehicle combat.
The
quads are a great new addition to the game for a number of reasons.
First, they give the attacking players a lot of added mobility without
necessarily making those players particularly threatening to the
defenders. After all, it's not much trouble to take one of these out
with a quick grenade shot. On the other hand, it does give fast and
sneaky players a chance to get around behind the defenders and attack
them from the rear while their attention is being held by the frontal
assaults. Of course, thanks to the rough terrain, it can be hard for
the quads to get anywhere without being out in the open, so they'll
have to rely on speed rather than stealth to avoid danger.
The second wave progresses into the port itself where there are
more opportunities for close cover and more changes to appreciate the
game's destructible environments. It seems like things can quickly get
out of hand here and the collapsing cover opens up some dangerous lines
of sight for the recon players. From there, you'll pass on to the final
set of M-COM stations, which the US will defend with some pretty
serious hardware. I've played a couple of games that just sort of hung
at this point with the defenders waiting as the attackers' tickets just
withered away.
All this action takes place in a narrow corridor between the
ocean and the mountains. It focuses the action nicely and offers a nice
bit of variation with lots of building cover for close-in fighting and
a few open streets and tall hills for the sniping crowd. Fortunately,
the attackers are given a bit of a safe zone where they can gather
without being spawn camped.
The final pair of M-COM stations are well protected.
Overall,
the beta has a good feel, despite the sometimes laggy servers and
as-yet unoptimized visuals and performance. Some of the lag issues seem
less of a problem today, even in the larger PC matches with a full
complement of 32 players. The physics for the vehicles and the
destructible environments feel right, with the sort of dramatized
realism that the series has been known for.
Hit detection seems fairly solid and I rarely felt the annoying
separation you seomtimes get between the weapons and targets. It's a
bit of an indefinable characteristic but there's a credible sense of
weight and connection to the firefights here, so you really get a sense
that you're hitting your targets, especially at short ranges. Add in
the fact that it only takes a couple of hits to kill someone, and it
makes it even more intense.
Of course, there are the usual Battlefield concessions, like
rockets not really feeling lethal enough in enclosed spaces, and
vehicles getting strangely hung up on the environments, and soldiers
who haven't been trained to lie down, but all those issues don't seem
to matter once the action begins to heat up.
If you're curious about the game, which is due out in March,
you can grab the demo now on Xbox Live or get a code for IGN's
Fileplanet beta by pre-ordering the game.
Author by:
Steve Butts 
