'Running, jumping, climbing trees, putting on make-up when you’re up there!’
This bizarre but hilarious skit by Eddie Izzard about wanting to be in the army, minus the make-up, is the perfect anecdote for the feeling of adventure that all young boys surely feel at some stage; that need for an adventure, an excuse to chase friends with a cap gun. It’s what drives us all in our early years to break away from our mothers’ apron strings and go and see the world, or council estate in which we live. Izzard is describing a world where every street corner, every alley and lane brings a sense of new danger and ultimately excitement. This anecdote was the first thing I thought of when booting up my first online game of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and perfectly sums up the game for me.
BC2, more than any other FPS I have yet played, carries all the excitement of those young attempts at adventure and danger and there are many, many reasons for this.
The online mode sees you take control of one of four types of soldier. You can be an assault troop, medic, sniper or an engineer, each comes with there own specific weaponry and skill sets and you can either switch between these mid-game or you can stick with one particular type. During combat you gain experience for carrying out objectives and gunning down enemies and this will lead to levelling up and the unlocking of new weapons and skill upgrades. For example, snipers earn the ability to call in mortar strikes while engineers will grow to fix vehicles that have taken damage. All fairly straight forward stuff then. What makes this aspect of the online game such a great addition is the pacing of the levels and the balance between the character types. The rewards are heaped on you fast enough to keep you playing but slow enough that when they do come, they feel well earned. This also leads to a great sense of being wet behind the ears when first starting off with no skills and bog-standard weaponry. Having said this though, the game never feels unfair whichever specialist you chose to be. Although snipers can be a real pain when taking enemy positions, the feeling of reward when you sneak up on one and put a well placed knife in his back and thus steal his dog tags makes it all worthwhile.
The game is fought out over a variety of game modes, mainly being Rush mode which sees an attacking team try to destroy communications stations while defenders hold them off. Conquest mode sees you capturing and holding as many flags as possible while time ticks down faster or slower varied by how many flags you hold, and there is also a group death match mode. It is the Rush and Conquest modes that will take up the majority of your time though and both are executed brilliantly. This is thanks mainly to the fantastic maps which see you fighting through built up town areas, claustrophobic woodland and rocky deserts.
Of course, none of this would matter if these online battles weren’t backed up by the tight controls and game mechanics. The use of vehicles throughout multiplayer adds real drama to the game. To hear the metal on metal scrape of an approaching tank brings real fear into the play, and to watch as players scatter in all directions searching for cover when faced with a helicopter gunship is truly hilarious. Also, the need for team work to win battles leads to a genuine camaraderie between players who ultimately, have been chosen at random.
The key element to this online experience though and the trump card of Bad Company is the use of terrain destruction. This is brilliantly implemented into the online mode. Such a feature could lead to frame rate drops in busy games but this never occurs and it really does add to the battles. Almost nowhere is safe for cover. If a tank is chasing you, holing up inside a small building will do little to help as this will surely be razed to the ground within seconds of you taking up position, killing you in the process. Blowing holes in walls and leaving craters where shells hit leaves the map looking like a genuine war zone post match and it is truly brilliant. If a sniper is giving you trouble from a watch tower, a well placed grenade will not only kill the sniper but also leave the tower in an un-usable state. Fantastic! So, the use of destruction becomes a tactical tool as well as a graphical effect.
All these features together with the great controls and graphics from one player add up to make Bad Company 2 the best online multiplayer I have experienced this generation. If you’re looking for a well-balanced FPS with genuinely exciting combat that can give you that youthful running, jumping, climbing trees (putting on make-up if you’re that way inclined) sense of fun then this is it.
[9]
