One Month & a bit later! An honest second review! Multiplayer only!
Well luckily the connection issues did largely get resolved (still a few issues mind you) within the first couple of weeks. So I thought, since it's now been just over a month now, that I would more closely examine the multiplayer game and report my findings back here.
Well it's been an interesting month playing Bad Company's 2 multiplayer. And for the most part I would have to say that, in this first month I have deeply enjoyed the multiplayer of this game. I have managed to get my soldier up to rank 26, and I have also managed to unlock all the weapons and specializations for each of the games classes. For the better half of the month I have stuck to playing the conquest mode, firstly I just enjoy it more, secondly because I feel that the rush mode of the multiplayer can be a lot more frustrating to play than conquest. And your game experience during a rush match, will very much depend on whether or not, you are fortunate to join a server with decent team players. In a Rush match, if you join a team of attackers who are just trying to score enemy kills, or attacking MCOM stations as individuals. The defenders will cut you to pieces! Likewise if you join a defending team, whose players are more focussed on individual kills and actions, rather than supporting each other with ammo, health and revives. The attackers will own your ass!
Conquest on the other hand, is typical Battlefield, and my preferred poison! I prefer to play on Hardcore servers only, or servers without the Kill Cam. Personally, I just don't think Kill Cam's are good, now people might start screaming "that's because you're a CAMPER". Well yes, and no! Now I agree with most people who are playing BC 2 currently, there are way too many snipers. Although I have to admit, it was the first class I chose, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time and long distance kills with the M24 rifle. These days I spend more time as the assault class, I just prefer to be closer to the action. And that's what bothers me about the Kill Cam, if you are defending a spawn point from a really good position, as soon as you kill a guy. The games up, you need to move and quickly, because a savvy player will be straight there to knife you in the back. To me it just reduces tactical advantage too much in favour of your fallen killed enemy. I remember in Battlefield 2 being killed by a defender, and because I didn't know where the shot came from. The next time I attacked the position, I did so more carefully and purposefully, trying to figure out the most likely place the guy was.
That brings me nicely on to one of my major gripes with BC 2's multiplayer, the map size! The maps are more battle arena than battlefield. Gone are the vast landscapes of previous Battlefields, replaced by tiny urbanised towns or villages. Due to the small size of the maps, game play has become more of frantic fire fight similar to that of COD, as opposed to the long tactical engagements seen in previous Battlefield games. This simply means that the average match is a lot shorter, usually only lasting around 15 mins per round. Also some of the maps are just really poorly designed, and just promote the old baseraping antics, Laguna Alta springs to mind. With its horrible bottlenecks around both of the uncap bases! Not to mention the horrid graphical effect concerning either the sun glare as seen on the Atacama Desert map, or the snow drift effect on the White Pass map. These effects make it almost impossible at times to see more than 3ft in front of you.
My next major concern with this game, is ironically the players! If you're going to play this game, be prepared to encounter a whole lot of skulduggery! Every hack imaginable is currently being used by players in this game, wall hack, aimbot (most common I've seen), not to mention invisible glitching and invincibility. Trust me! I've been killed by a shotgun from half a screen away, something I've tried to emulate myself with the same weapon and the increased distance ability for shotguns. And I've never been able to replicate it to this day! Players one shot killing you with pistols is another fine example, especially considering the same shot from an assault rifle still requires a burst of around 3 bullets.
A couple of other concerns, for example team switching to the winning team mid battle are also prevalent on most servers at the moment. You may say that you can't blame the game or the developers for any of these things, well actually yes you can! As it stands Punkbuster does not work with the game, and all servers have to switch it off in order for players to even be able to join. Thus the back door is well and truly left open for the aforementioned cheaters and lowest of the low players! Secondly auto team balancing does not work, even though server messages pop up during gameplay, warning that teams are about to be balanced. I have yet to be switched teams forcefully by the server in order to balance the teams. However I have been on team of 19 vs 13, and autobalance was supposed to be active! These are all issues derived from the development side of the game, and really should be at the top of the list for the developers to fix asap.
Lastly, new players beware! If you're new to this game and are just about to enter the fray. Be warned, you will probably give this multiplayer about an hour of play. After that you'll likely find yourself so frustrated, not only with the above issues (which are bad enough), but you will probably find the huge difference between your weapon damage and effectiveness, vs that of the higher rank players extemely unfair. Unless you go sniper initially, you will easily find yourself pumping clips into enemies, which seemingly cause no damage to them at all. Only for them to turn around, fire twice and shoot you dead, extreme patience and calm is required to progress in the multiplayer portion of this game from this time onwards. Even for a high rank player, this game can at times, be more frustrating than fun. And unless you go sniper, you will easily find your KD ratio as a new player will be well into the negatives! I created a new soldier just the other day to test this theory. I choose the engineer and assault classes, with only access to the default weapons. And boy did I die, alot! As the engineer with the pathetic stock sub machine gun. I managed to achieve a KD ratio of 4 to 12, on the plus side I did manage to get 2 kill assist pins! These are granted when you cause the majority of the damage to the enemy, only somebody else gets the final shots! Such is the problem a new player will have with the default class weapons, they just lack any real killing potential, unless of course the enemy has already been injured by another player. In which case, you may be able to steal the odd kill with your pea shooter of a gun!
A recent patch has just been released and the server browser UI has been improved slightly, it now allows you to search for hardcore only games etc, and seemingly keeps your filter settings from your last session too. Apparently some balancing issues concerning weapons have been addressed, according to the latest patch report! To be honest I haven't noticed that much difference. I've still been sniped from half way across the map by an M60 wielding medic, not to mention the infinite grenade fest (affectionately known as newbtubers), that the assault class players can lay down using their ammo resupply boxes!
As I stated in my original review, I really wanted to give this game a solid 8.5! But the issues above, especially the small map size and cheating, means this game stills falls incredibly short! In fact I must admit, after a month and a half of play, and unlocking all of the weapons and the like. I really have become bored of this multiplayer already, and yet I was still playing Battlefield 2 and 2142 up until this was released around 4 years! I just feel that with this game, the only thing left for me to do, is to try and collect awards and combat pins! I have most of them now anyway, and trying to get 200 knife kills, well itjust does not interest me in the slightest to be honest.
There's just something missing from this game!
Besides an obvious patch to address all the cheating and balancing issues, that is!
Lets just hope Battlefield 3, will bring back the battlefields! And do away with these goldfish bowl arenas of death.