Battlefield: Bad Company 2 – PS3 Review

Reviewed By James Hamblin on March 20, 2010

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 - PS3 Review  | read this item

From time to time game journalists will come under attack for reviewing one title by comparing it to another. Usually, this criticism of their criticism complains that every game should be considered on its own merits, rather than according to some arbitrary yardstick, as this often leads to more commentary on the title that’s not under review rather than the one that is. That last point, at least, is a completely valid one, but beyond it the rest of the argument is absolute rubbish. No game exists in a vacuum – although insert here your own witty aside about a terrible game of your choice sucking enough it could do – and the whole purpose of a review is to provide each reader with sufficient information to decide whether a particular title is right for them; something that’s incredibly difficult to do without the context of comparisons with its contemporaries.

In the case of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 it’s a task that’s made virtually impossible by the game itself. In many different ways, some obviously more intentional than others, BC2 all but goads you into putting it head-to-head with the standard-bearer in the military, first-person-shooter genre, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. And rather than this being a classic case of the plucky underdog with little to lose taking a tongue-in-cheek swing at one of its superiors; this is a serious statement of intent from EA’s DICE Studio. They’re daring to take pot-shots at the behemoth that is Modern Warfare because they believe that they’ve now got a franchise that can give it a serious run for its vast sums of money; and the resulting firefight is one that, happily for gamers, ends in a split-decision.

As in the original game, BC2’s most bankable assets remain the four characters who make up B-Company. And following an intriguing epilogue that flashes back to a covert U.S. mission in 1944 to introduce you to the mysterious ‘black weapon’, which emanates a sound so terrifying it might as well be the brown note, it isn’t long before you’re back in the present day as Private Preston Marlowe, accompanying Sweetwater, Haggard and the war-weary Serge, on a mission, predominantly set in South America, to try to prevent the device falling into the wrong hands. Aided this time around by hippie helicopter pilot Flynn, who constantly seems to be holding a one-man Woodstock in his whirlybird.

An unorthodox, dishevelled bunch of misfits with a natural inclination for insubordination they’re the ideal band of brothers for this type of all-action feature. And while BC2’s slightly more serious plot means there’s less latitude for them to go off-reservation this time around – i.e. they’re not off on some Three Kings-style jaunt boosting war gold in Eastern Europe – the chemistry between their abrasive personalities remains. It’s sufficiently evident in cut-scenes, but the real moments of joy are hidden away in the breaks in the action. Pause for a moment during the handily provided downtimes as you trek from one staged battle to the next and you’ll be treated to the entertaining back-and-forth of their verbal buckshot which covers such wide ranging topics as exploding barrels, South Americastan, Harrison Ford’s identity crisis and the best scene from Predator.

Those stage battles are frequently the intense type of firefights you’d expect to find in a game like Bad Company 2; and while you’ll certainly be doing your fair share of storming bases and securing intel, these activities are also broken up by the standard special forces selection box of alternative activities – driving a tank, piloting a UAV drone, manning a helicopter’s mini-gun – and some enjoyably inventive set-pieces. One of these hands you three related objectives in a single area allowing you to choose which order you tackle them in, while another sees you infiltrating an enemy camp during a thunder storm and a third has you descending a mountain in a blizzard, moving from shelter to shelter and fighting the elements as much as the enemies as ice-crystals slowly encrust the edges of the screen, encroaching on your vision as you rapidly freeze to death.

The added depth and drama to Bad Company’s action is, once again, provided by the destructible environments, which are now more complex than ever. Building materials and frameworks in particular feature similarly complex physical properties to the ones they have the real world, meaning that when the bullets and bombs start to fly concrete and masonry crumbles, wood snaps, steel bends and structures even collapse entirely as your surroundings rapidly deteriorate into war zones before your very eyes.

With cover such a temporary ally there’s a distinct fluidity to skirmishes that you don’t find in other FPS’s. While the signature moment, the one everyone will experience, comes when one second you’re firing from the safety of a window and the next you’re crouching comically beneath a non-existent windowsill, completely exposed in a gaping hole in the wall created by an RPG; the destructibility permeates all areas of the fighting creating an interesting offensive/defensive dynamic where the constantly changing battlegrounds require tactics to be continually revised on the fly.

Having so many intricate variables perpetually affecting play does lead to the occasional environmental oddity, such as the way the pieces of structures sometimes become feather light as they collapse, or just disappear entirely. They’re only minor issues but add to the list of these that BC2 suffers from, which also include superhuman squad-mates who soak up bullets and are left unscathed by explosions, an inexplicable lack of any co-op option in the single player and the frequent reusing of enemy types, such as cowboy-hat-man and tracksuit-top-terrorist, who sporadically become stuck, twitching unsettlingly in the last few moments of their extravagant death animations.

BC2 is also prone to some very conspicuous bouts of texture pop in, but these are easily forgiven in the context of what are some of the most stunningly realistic environments ever witnessed in a console FPS. While the first few levels are pretty standard fare, from there on it’s a visual tour-de-force by the Frostbite Engine and the DICE environmental artists. A lush mountain valley, a snow-bound radar base and the giant drainage channels and smouldering skyline of a city in ruin are just a handful of the many highlights, as the game again and again produces landscapes with an attention to detail and depth of field that are nothing short of epic and complemented perfectly by some fantastic sound effects, from the ‘ching-ting’ noise of a single shell case bouncing off the ground, through the sound of rain drops drumming on a tin roof to the percussion of massively powerful mounted weapons firing on a hapless target.

Battlefield was born for multiplayer, and in the time it’s taken the series to reach Bad Company 2, DICE have honed this aspect of the game into a sinewed, highly intelligent beast, where packs of players hunt each other in majestic displays of the realistic, freeform conflicts the most talent developers are now able to provide players with. While at first glance the four modes on offer look feebly small in number, and don’t even include a single player deathmatch option, less definitely provides more in this instance.

While Squad Deathmatch is the venue for the traditionally frenetic battles between four teams of four, Rush, and its stunted and streamlined little brother Squad Rush, pit attackers against defenders, with latter mode relocating both forces to a newly opened expanses of terrain should the aggressors success in destroying the current two objectives. Rounding out the quartet is conquest – two teams fighting over three control points; and which ever flavour of game you find yourself taking part in, the action is always evolving and shifting momentum thanks to the range of available land, seas and air vehicles, the way each map is a vast expanse of possibilities and opportunities, and the ability to use the general and class-specific experience upgrades to your chose solider type – Assault, Engineer, Recon or Medic – to assist your team better by becoming a more rounded and capable fighter.

So, we’ve managed to make it this far without answering the single, most important question for many players – is Bad Company 2 better than Modern Warfare 2? And the answer’s a pretty simple one. Thanks to its beautifully realised environments and charismatic cast BC2’s single player campaign is better paced affair with a more subtle charm; but one that never reaches the globe-trotting, continually attention-grabbing, the-world-is-going-to-explode heights of Infinity Ward’s effort. In terms of multiplayer, MW2 provides one of the most comprehensive packages available, while BC2 delivers a more refined, squad-based experience with the added bonus of its array of vehicular options. The choice then is yours, but the great news is that there is a choice. Competition has a natural tendency to breed innovation and excellence, and in this case the comparisons between Bad Company 2 and Modern Warfare 2 are very welcome as they only server to emphasize how excellent both games are, and how, after all their efforts and exploits, DICE and B-Company are now comfortably relaxing in the V.I.P section of the FPS genre.

[Show as slideshow]

Tags: Bad Company 2, Balltefield, Battlefield Bad Company 2, DICE, EA, Electronic Arts, First Person Shooter, PlayStation 3, PS3, PS3 Review, Review