Battlefield founder, DICE, has demonstrated a substantial and fundamental understanding of what makes a multiplayer first-person shooter successful: teamwork. This is more than just a simple ‘work together, please’, too. This is evolutionary theory at work — an inescapable interdependence in the name of survival. And this, folks, is why Bad Company 2 is arguably the best team-centric shooter on the market.
Everybody is given incentive to co-operate. If you heal my wounds, I’ll re-stock your flagging ammunition supplies. And if we work together to survive, we can spread our genes onto the next generation. Or, in this case, storm and successfully hold the opposing team’s capture point. However, survival and victory is just one incentive.
For every significant action – it might be a kill, repairing a vehicle, reviving a downed ally – experience points are earned. If you stick a particular class, for example, said points unlock upgrades and weapons specific to that class. Besides serving the functional purpose of upping your game, they undoubtedly act as a form of street cred – the medic brandishing the MG3 – the highest available weapon for that class (at least in Bad Company 2, pre-downloadable content) – is likely to have to have saved more than a few battalion’s worth of polygonal lives over the course of his or her career.
And the game’s single-player component isn’t too shabby, either. Following a squad of unlikely heroes, Bad Company 2’s campaign is a solid and substantial trek (with a particularly unexpected beginning), littered with vehicular segments, and the occasional helicopter stand-off. Something’s missing, though. The humorous, lighthearted element of it’s predecessor appears to be missing-in-action by comparison, and, bizarrely, so is it’s trademark musical theme. Otherwise, Bad Company 2 keeps the locals and objectives just varied enough to elude any sense of fatigue and tedium. It’s well worth playing.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2’s balance between large-scale vehicular encounters and small-scale intimate fire fights keeps the well-worn battlefield-esque formula from becoming stagnant. It’s multiplayer environment ensures you a sense of something greater whilst providing a sense of place and that, even as a single soldier, you still have a vital and influential role to play.
DICE’s interpretation on a well-established formula invites limitations, however. Communication, at least on the Xbox 360, is limited to voice-chat within player-created squads. Traditional game types, such as capture the flag, are absent. And because the Battlefield servers are managed by Electronic Arts, their quality can be inconsistent, with the occasional bout of connectivity issues rearing their unwanted heads.
Whilst it’s hardly ‘a game forgotten’, it’s a game that, especially given it’s cheaper price point, shouldn’t be overlooked in favor of its recently-released and soon-to-be-released contemporaries.
