Battlefield Bad Company 2 for PlayStation 3


Of course this game is going to be compared to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 because that game is the king of all shooter games right now and anything that looks remotely close to it will be compare to it and it's rightfully so. LeBron gets compared to Kobe because Kobe is the best player right now and Kobe gets compared to Jordan because Jordan was the last guy to be on top when Kobe was getting his start. The only problem is that this is not the video game equivalent of a LeBron James. If Kobe is #1 and LeBron is #2 then this is more of a Dirk Nowitzki or something. Definitely good and better than most but not the greatest or in line to be the greatest and by a fairly large margin. But back to the game.


Mechanics:

I'll start with just the overall game play mechanics. For the most part, it's an easy transition in game mechanics from COD to this game. The only really noticeable difference is that the melee button is the R2 button opposed to the R3 and the R3 button is used for crouching (there is no prone position, which sucks). The button layout is pretty much standard, Triangle changes your weapons, circle picks stuff up, square reloads, x jumps, it has the more standard L1 to zoom when you aim opposed to the R3 to zoom that Halo uses and L2 throws your grenades. There are no kill streak calls so the d-pad is used for your gadgets, packs or specialty weapons. Standard stuff but the overall aim just seems to be either off or just not precise enough. Unless you're aiming at a stationary enemy with a sniper rifle, you never really fell like your aim and your shot are connecting. Many times I've found myself unloading full clips of an assault rifle on to an enemy a few steps away and nothing seems to hit but on the other hand I've used a handgun and shot a guy across the hall and got a headshot. The best I can describe the aim is that it's not precise. It feels floaty, and trying to hit a moving object while you're moving is either damn near impossible or you'll hit the other person while you're barely pointing at him. Shooting an assault gun while aiming, with a scope, while stationary in Battlefield feels like shooting a light machine gun from the hip in COD. It's always feel like a toss up when you're shooting and that alone will prevent this game from being a major competitor to the COD series.

Other Features:

Vehicles! One thing I've been hearing a lot is "Does Call of Duty have vehicles?" World at War had tanks but Modern Warfare 2 has nothing. For COD I don't think it works that great. For Battlefield, it works, In addition to vehicles being a differentiating feature from the COD games, Battlefield also has destructible environments. The destructible environments really change the way you think when you play because if you try to hide in a building, the walls can be taken down with the tanks or most explosives and that spot will no longer be a place you would want to go back to and hide… Probably because you won't be able to anymore for the duration of the match. In addition to tanks, you can take control of helicopters, uavs, 4 wheelers, armored transport vehicles, and jet skis. Most of the vehicles are just to go to point A to point B though because of the somewhat expansive maps. The controls for the vehicles take some getting used to but are easy enough to learn within one match or so, although I went into a helicopter once and somehow managed to turn it upside down and crash it within 10 seconds of lift off. As I said earlier, there are no kill streak type of call ins, well probably the mortar attack if you want to consider that but that doesn't involve a kill streak, it's a "gadget" and you load out with it and can use it after the meter fills back up when you use it, but basically, what would be a one touch call in in COD, you actually can control in Battlefield. Whether that better or worse is up to you but that's the difference.


Single Player:

I haven't played much of the single player yet but it's pretty much tacked on. It's pretty much what you expect where you shoot whatever that's in front of you until you hit a check point and that's it. It's definitely not a great cinematic epic experience like the Modern Warfare games are known for. This more feels like they took the pieces they can from the online game play and built a single player campaign with it. Let's face it though, you're not buying this for the single player, but if there was a choice between the game having this single player campaign and being full priced or being an online only game and being $10 less, then they should have done that. The only problem with that would have been that they would have lost sales from all the rental stores because then they wouldn't have carried it if it were an online only game.


Online:

Online has 3 different game types

Rush:
In Rush your team either has to destroy or defend two post. There's usually 3 or 4 sets of two post per game and when you destroy two post you move further down the map to the next two post until the end of the game or if you're defending, you have to get 75 kills on the other team before they destroy a set of post or they will progress to the next set and the kill count will be reset back to 75.

Conquest:
Conquest is like Domination in COD where there are spots where you have to take control of. To take control of each spot, it's actually a flag and you basically put your flag up to take control. It's a countdown from 130 I think and I think each point is 5 seconds or something like that so if you hold a position for 5 seconds, that's a point. Hold 3 position for 5 seconds and that's 3 points. Pretty much like Domination in COD.

Squad Death Match:
It's basically a death match but instead of one side versus another side it's one side of two squads vs. another side of two squads with four people per squad. I don't really know the point of that but it doesn't really seem different than a typical death match. The first squad to reach 50 is the winner of the match.

With the only play though, I've had a pretty good experience with thhe connection so far. I've logged about 12 hours online in that game so far and have only had a handful disconnects and the lag is barely noticeable if there happens to even be some. I haven't noticed and of the jerky movements, slowdown or odd "teleportation" that you get in COD at least once a day, so considering that I'm on PSN and I'm not really having problems I'd imagine that XBL would be even better.



Overall:

Overall it's a very good game. The online game play is solid but there are some flaws that can detract from the overall experience. The maps are large and because of that, camping is almost encouraged. I'm usually never a camper but because the maps are so large, you pretty much need to use the sniper rifle until you can get some other good weapons and attachments that can at least make you competitive in a match. Another problem is the spawning. You have a choice of where you can spawn and you can either spawn at your home base, at a "random" spawn point or you can do a "squad spawn" and spawn from the location of one of your team mates. All seem to spawn you in the middle of an enemies crosshairs. The random spawn always seems to spawn you right in the middle of the action and you'll probably be dead within 10 seconds. The base spawn is probably the safest way to spawn but you'll be on the other end of the map and if an enemy can make their way to the base, they can easily camp somewhere around it and just wait until people start popping up and snipe them at will. The squad spawn is a great idea but it can lead to a bunch of cheap kills.

I also have issue with the aiming and hit detection. There have been a number of time where I'm unloading 50 rounds into an enemy that's barely 5 steps away from me and nothing seems to connect and they'll hit me with a headshot with a handgun. I've also thrown grenades right at people on an open field, had them explode and once again nothing happens. As I said earlier, it's a toss up and frustrating at times. To me this is what makes COD a better game overall than this one. It's more of a technical issue rather than a game issue but in this case, it really detracts for the game.

The graphics are a bit ugly as well. It's most likely due to the fact that the maps are so expansive and so much of it is destructible that the visuals had to take dip in quality. It's not that big of a deal but at times it's hard to distinguish a character, especially if they're in some sort of shrubbery.

One more thing I have a big problem with is that there' doesn't seem to be any muting of people in the game. I have this on the PS3 and way less people have headsets compared to the 360, yet there always seems to be one person that had a headset on where every time there's a baby crying, some dude arguing with his girlfriend, or some stupid kid asking if anyone is there. This seems to happen more on squad death match than the other game types but not having the option to mute people dissuades me from playing that game type.

Of course this game is going to be compared to Call of Duty and it's probably not a fair comparison. The best way I can put it is that one is Chess and the other is Checkers. Both are completely different games but play on the same surface. In this case, both games are first person shooters but are completely different experiences. I'm thoroughly enjoying this game, it does have it's flaws but it's still a very solid enjoyable game. If you've played Modern Warfare 2 and have had your fill of that game and need a change, then I highly recommend this game.