my bfbc2 review

My battlefield bad company 2 review…..
well guys ive just finished the single player campaign of this game and thought it was time to write up a review…



Bfbc2 is a EA Digital Illusions CE (DICE) developed game published by EA, this is my first try of a battlefield game and I have to say they have done a wonderful job of bringing together a top class tactical shooter.

it is a direct sequel to battlefield bad company and is set some years after the events of that game…the game itself has a very good single player which combines a good sense of humor with a slightly serious main story which has enough twists and turns to make for a very enjoyable play through.



The game offers different unit types as well as a huge array of vehicles I think there are 15 vehicles, including new additions, such as the UH-60 Black Hawk, a quad bike, a two-man patrol boat, a personal watercraft, an AA-gun mounted on a light tank, and a UAV helicopter controlled via computer.

The single player story revolves around the team trying to recover a secret weapon and then capture the militant leader, and is set in locations from South America and the mountainous regions along the borders of Russia, although isn’t the longest single player campaign out there, to me it was still very decent and took around 10-12 hours to beat it trying to complete all the bonus objectives offered which involve searching out and destroying m-com sites and finding unlockable weapons.









Unfortunately…..and yes there is one……..i tried the Multi Player element of the game and now the single player campaign is a distant memory………this game is the perfect MP platform and to be honest I personally haven’t played a better online FPS to date.

Multiplayer has a variety of different game types and you can find yourself in a game with anywhere from 8-32 players:

Rush: Players must defend or destroy pairs of M-COM stations for as long as the attacking teams respawn tickets hold out. An M-COM station can be destroyed by planting a charge, using conventional weapons or when a building is collapsed down on it.

Conquest: Players must capture and hold flags for as long as the enemy respawn tickets hold out. Every kill makes the enemy lose one ticket, and enemy tickets constantly decrease when a team controls more than half of the flags on the map. Vehicles unlock as control points are held.

Squad Rush: Rush mode played with only two opposing squads and one M-COM station.

Squad Deathmatch: Four squads and one Infantry Fighting Vehicle roam the map. First squad to fifty kills wins.

MP also allows players to choose from a set of weapon kits before each spawn, of which there are four: Assault, Engineer, Recon, and Medic In addition to the hand grenades and sidearms standard for all classes, each class also has an initial primary weapon and a pair of gadgets unique to that class, as well as that one can upgrade and unlock specific weapons to that class which allows for a lot of choice as to what role you will play with-in your class and squad…





..unlocks come about from earning XP for a specific class by getting kills and achieving objectives and I find it a very nice way to unlock new content.
The game play is fast and very tactical, with a huge emphasis on team work and working well and a four man squad……..

there are some really cool little insignificant features within the MP, for example when you knife some one you receive their dog tags as a trophy, also you can gain badges for completing in game goals, ie: points,objectives, headshots etc.



the game servers have a number of different settings some being normal with maps and ammo count etc, and some that are hardcore, including no huds, more weapon damage, etc

This game does have dedicated servers and although there are some bugs with connections and occasional punkbuster boots is a breath of fresh air.

The maps are huge, well designed and varied making for fun battles in a wide range of geographical situations..

The graphics are simply exquisite with fully destructible environments, intensifying the tactical elements of the game, a fantastic physics and although the lighting is a little bright in a couple of the maps...




















namely the snow stages and desert it is possible to change the settings to reduce brightness etc, its amazing the see someone fly at you after been blown away from a granade or rocket, or see building come tumbling down around a enemy.....





As well as that the sound effects are simply out of this world, by far being the best I have experienced in a game, The game utilizes Dolby Digital and the score was composed by Mikael Karlsson.

Basically this game is near perfect and if they iron out the few bugs that are around will complete this masterpiece……..

I give this game a 9/10….in its present state and if the connection and punkbuster bugs are fixed will up my score to 9.5/10……..it is by far the best FPS ive played and I would recommend the game to newbie’s and seasoned like.

*NOTE* Map-pack 2 has been made live which adds Conquest mode for Arica Harbor and Rush mode for Laguna Presa.


Min system requirements: Operating System: Windows XP Windows Vista or Windows 7, CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo @2 GHZ ,(recommended quadcore) Memory: 2 GB RAM, Hard Drive Space: 10GB for disc version or 15GB for digital version, Graphics Hardware: GeForce 7800 GT / ATI X1900 with 256 MB VRAM - DirectX 9 DirectX (recommended: GeForce GTX 260/ ATI Radeon 4870 with 512 MB VRAM) - DirectX 10 Sound Hardware DirectX 9.0c compliant Sound card Network 1 Mbit/s internet connection for online play.

So this doesn’t do justice to the game, but hopefully it gives a taste of what bfbc2 has to offer…hope to see you playing soon.

 

Great review! I'm really considering getting this title and the review I think has helped me decide. I play MP mainly so this one sounds perfect.
ahh dedicated servers FTW!

 

Yeah it really is a great game. I just wished their were a few more perks or unlocks. The gun damages could also be a bit more varied as well. Like for instance most of the really good guns you get early on -- Scar,M1911,XM8.

Btw here is a damage chart someone in another forum made. It shows how un-unique the weapons really are. Its my only gripe.

http://denkirson.xanga.com/722757523/bad-company-2/

 

I love this game but my performance is awful on my Clevo M860etu.
I have a Q9000 @2ghz and GTX260m @ 600/1500/900 and no matter what settings I get 15-35fps on 32man servers

anyone managed to get decent FPS on a laptop?

So far I have tried: dx9, dx10, diff res and settings, physix on/off and still no joy.
Playing it on my desktop i5 750 @2.66ghz and ati 5770 I got 40-90fps at 1080p all high, I cant work out what wrong with the laptop

 

I think it might be the resolution. If/when I get this I surely won't run in full 1920x1080. Our systems are very alike and I'd probably run in 1280x720 Max or lower even. Then again I always aim for a constant 60fps for competitive gaming so I'm willing to play in 1024x640 if I have to!

 

i have the same machine as you clevo M860eTU but i have the P9700 C2D cpu so really you should be getting better FPS i run mine at native screen res of 1680x1050 and i get around the same FPS as you, maybe slightly higher i seem to average in the high 30's and sometimes drop down to the low 20's, i dont experience any lag due to this.....so not sure whats up with you mate sorry.

 

very interesting chart, i guess i dont mind it as much, mainly its finally nice to play a game where everyone is on a equal footing, rather than it being ruined by overpowered weapons or classes, like a tubing scavanger pro, dangerclose class etc...........

it really means that skill is what will get you the kills, not some perk, and that for me makes it a better game than most.......

 

Thanks for the feedback. I am going to try some different driver version to see if that may resolve it for me. I really am scratching my head over this one

 

overclock your cpu

 

I cant on my clevo without a pin mod

besides do you think the Q9000 at 2ghz is the bottleneck? Looking at task manager I have 1 core at 95-100% and the other 3 at 50-60%

Do you think an i7 720qm would be better? as I am thinking of getting a W870cu

 

I do not know if its a cpu bottleneck but it was worth testing. So you cant use setfsb on that machine? My old W90 pushed the Q9000 to 2.7ghz without a sweat.

Anyways its common on large online multiplayer games to start to hog a cpu badly due to tracking all those physics, the net code, and the positions and things of that nature. The gpu only has to render what is on screen so it should not be much harder be it a 8 player game or 32 players unless everybody is on screen at once and going crazy, but as a game gets larger in number of players the cpu still has to track and work with the data of every player on screen or not.

The i7 720qm is nice because if the game was only dual core it would overclock itself with turbo boost but its not a huge upgrade over the Q9000

I think with good code the Q9000 would do fine at stock but if P9700 is getting the same or slightly higher frames its a good sign that maybe the cpu usage is not every well designed in the game.

I dont have the game or I would do some testing to see how demanding it is on the cpu/gpu for you.

 

Thanks mate. I tried setfsb but no joy. It really sucks as like you say I am sure there is plenty of headroom in the chip.

I will try playing on some low player count servers and check my fps. that may help point the finger at cpu or gpu

 

Yeah I bought this game and forgot to let it download last night so bleh, won't be able to try it until tomorrow.

 

ziddy123, could you possibly try a 32 man server and let me know what fps you get?

 

Maybe later this week. You can check the G73 thread, I know there are a few BC2 players there. I think they were getting 58 FPS average on highest settings during Beta, but not sure now.

 

thanks mate, will go and take a look

 

we seem to have gone off topic regarding the gameplay itself here, oh well such is life.
review has been slightly updated with some more multiplayer screen shots coming soon.

enjoy the game.

 

much much better than my "short" review

 

This game actually runs quite well on the G51, just overclock the CPU a bit and it runs well.

And I agree, awesome game! Loving it.

 

Yeah sorry to derail the thread. I really do love the game, I am just desperate to be playing it with decent settings

 

You know what's the drawback of BC2?

The server filter system...they need a low ping filter. Being in the land down under combined with the slow "Waiting for servers" message would help players find low ping servers. The play now button just randomly joins a game, even with a 300ms ping haha

 

+1 on the game. Good review of the game and yes it is definitly worth buying. I bought it without it any experience in bf games and since launch daye I havent played 1 single minute of SP, just MP. You get the hang of it very fast.

On my machine, see specs below, I run it fluently @ 1680x1050 with all details on high (except shadows and HBAO). Look on steam forums for gossamer's launcher. You get the chance to set up some options that are not available ingame.

 

I find if i click all the filters except ranked server, it comes back 10x quicker, i have never had a problem using it this way!

 

I have the Asus G73 and it seems this game was made for the machine! Running at full 1920x1080 resolution with all the settings maxed except for HBAO off, AA and AF at their minimum (as they seemed to make no difference at this resolution). The average is 35-45 fps on 32 person maps and actually stay quite steady even through very explosive situations. I'm sure if you completely disabled AA and AF through driver settings it might go higher. I find it strange that you can't completely disable them through the in game settings.

I expect performance to go up as newer drivers are released for ATI GPU's as well as some work on DICE's end with their servers.

 

I tried it for only a short while. Don't know why my performance was higher than person above, maybe it was the map. My high was 59, my low was 43. Hope that helps. First time playing this kind of squad vs squad, been playing MMOs and Co-Ops. Frankly, I am terrible, horrible. This will be an interesting learning curve.

Using Catalyst 10.3 Previews.

My Settings:

1080p
All settings high except shadow on medium. Medium shadow still has dynamic shadowing.
V-Sync Off
HDBAO or w/e it's called Off, makes stuff look fuzzy and weird.
Sound: Headphones (Honestly people who use mic and speakers are the biggest @ssmongers in online gaming).

 

game review updated with some more multiplayer screenshots etc

 

Yeah I found that out. But then again I'm an impatient man, wanting to get to one server as quick as possible without having to click many buttons

 

Ok so I played BC2 multiplayer today for a few hours.

This would be my first into multi-player FPS of this type. I've always played RTS single player campaign, never did the MP, never had interest. I like Co-Op games like Borderlands/Killing Floor. I enjoyed MMORPG, played the korean ones like Silkroad Online, Cabal, etc. Then did WoW, and damn, the raiding is addictive. And tried Mass Effect 2, couldn't get enough of that, so I'll be playing a second round sometime later when it will be more enjoyable again later. Because of ME2, I want to play Dragon Age now.

So that's my background. After playing BC2, I got really bored. Is it just me, but just shooting at people running on a map is kinda boring? Oh I learned I'm terrible and it will take some learning.

But some things I learned in BC2. There is no sense of purpose. The only drive it seems I see is for the achievements and rankings. And these achievements and rankings are not driven by achieving map objectives.

I noticed out of the 23 times I died, I was killed repeatedly by the same 4 people. I noticed each time I died it was around the same area where I would spawn.

I then noticed my teammates did the same thing. They found a spot. Have their sniper rifle out, and just camp that spot the entire time.

BTW over half the time I died it was me crouching behind cover, and the cover being blown up. Destructive environment pretty awesome, but dying from it makes me think... hmm what should have I done differently to find cover? .......

I noticed the people who die the most were assault class moving about the map.

I'm starting to think, I'm probably not going to enjoy this game no matter how many hours I play and regret buying this game. See this is a problem with gaming, you pay $50 to find out you don't like it and you are screwed....

I understand my experience is heavily influenced by the fact how I'm bad at this. But I don't have that much motivation to get good at is, as it's just shooting at crouched or moving objectives...

The team aspect to this game seems almost meaningless. It's not like the team aspect of WoW raiding. You need a certain number of each class, each class has a role. If they don't do that role you fail. In Bad Company 2 if your squad fails or not, doesn't seem to matter, as the achievements and unlocks are based on your own personal score...which defeats the point of teamplay to me.

Tomorrow I think I'll start playing Dragon Age. And just stare at Bad Company 2 on my Steam thinking, I wish I could get that $50 back to buy Dragon Age Awakening.

One game I did play a lot of was TF2. That initial advertisements with the video clips of each class hooked me in. Valve really went with humor and I loved it, the look of the game and gameplay. I noticed when I play, there is 1000% more communication among players than in BC2. Because a heavy *requires* a medic for any success, it forces teamwork. Because engineers need to the assistance of pyros to find spies, really helps. The difference in squad based, teamplay in TF2 and BC2 is quite astonishing. The number of times I heard a player in BC2 communicate was an impressive ZERO. Based on reviews I knew I wouldn't like MW2 for reasons above so never tried it. But all these reviews saying how BC2 requires teamplay and there are these objectives peaked my interest and bought it. I did not witness any teamplay or any effort to complete objectives in BC2 so far.

 

It sounds, to me, that first-person-shooters are not your thing. And thats ok, it takes years of playing them to get good and accustomed to ideas such as burst fire, dolphin diving, map awareness. Much like my complete and utter ability to play games such as Dragon Age and find them to be anything more than a grindfest, and more like work after work.

To each his own.

 

Well me thinks you played in the wrong server. The servers that gets you going are the ones that have alot of communications between squads, and the ones with less sniping involved.

But then again maybe BC2 isn't your thing

 

I'd like to find a server like this before I completely write this game off. Problem I had was that I knew I had a lot to learn as my previously gaming experience included nothing like this. But what I had experienced was so boring I don't have the motivation to get better. I'll try different servers today and see what I get.

Most of the time I was thinking, why are they there, where are the other squads, why isn't anyone coordinating. Then I realized, oh they are just camping certain spot for kills.

 

review updated adding slightly more info and 5 new multiplayer screenshots.

 

Know what I have been wondering but cant bring myself to test it. Is if people using lower graphics settings can see better (common in a lot of games) as a sniper when at full zoom its very common for flames, dust, snow, and all these other really highly graphical obstacles to blind/block my view of enemies in the distance.

 

hmmm interesting, it is a little annoying lining up a shot only to have snow or dust roll in and obscure your view..........unless you turn all particle effects off i cant imagine it making a huge difference though....

keep persevering with your sniper mate, remember you have basically unlimited mortar strikes (just a short cool-down) stay back snipe/mortar/snipe/mortar and you will get your unlocks soon enough, one thing i have noticed is people have been complaining a lot abut base-rapers but what they forget often is that it is brought on by there own team, often snipers sit back in there base sniping and mortaring, and there's now way im going to sit back and constantly get picked off.....im going in after them.......

 

Yes, thats why most serious modders, such as the creator of Promod for COD4 remove such things as decals. For instance in cod4 and CSS the higher your FPS the higher your fire rate. Its common sense really when you begin to play in leagues with clanmates competitively.

Their is no doubt that people that play on lower settings, with good equipment = better FPS = better registration = better vision= better KD/R.

 

Got some really really good games in today over 1000 points just pure killing with me and my starter rifle. Now that I have the 12x scope it helps a lot I think.

I just got the spotting scope too.

GOL comes next I have been killed by that one a lot, so it may be a good replacement for the M24, but I am also now at gold stars for the M24 and thats good XP if I stick with it.

About mortars, I used them for a while but it seems like it puts a homing beacon on me when I use it, almost always when I start to use it somebody finds me right away and shoots me. If i do get it off not too often does it really give me the desired effect (most people are on the move) so I changed back to C4 and have not regretted it.

Can take out tanks with some luck (esp hardcore no radar) when I am on a higher position and I know somebody is coming up to get me it acts as a nice migshift claymore.

And it has various other uses from time to time.

 

oh definitely mate, C4 is a very good tool, i personally think its the most effective weapon against tanks, that and antitank mines, but the problem for me is when i recon i hope to never be close enough to a tank to use my C4 effectively making the C4 a unused weapon, that's why i go with mortar......with mortar you have to either preempt where enemies will be or target hot spots.....the GOL Magnum is a awesome weapon i think its the best sniper weapon in the game.