I absolutely loved 2008’s Battlefield: Bad Company first person shooter from developer DICE (the same guys behind the phenomenal Mirror’s Edge), and pleasingly I enjoyed the 2010 Battlefield: Bad Company 2 outing almost just as much!
It turns out that Preston, Sweets, Hags and Sarge didn’t get very far with their stolen gold at the end of the first game, and this time they’re back, placed in the Special Activities Division, tasked with retrieving a very, very dangerous scalar weapon developed by Japan during World War II! But to get it back, they are going to have to face off against some very dangerous foes, the most deadly being without a doubt Colonel Arkady Kirilenko, leader of the Russian Army!
What follows is a good couple of hours worth of unrelenting blasting and destruction, as you travel through a cornucopia of varied landscapes, blowing apart buildings and structures and in general just wreaking havoc amongst some rather trigger happy Russian soldiers.
There is a fair amount of weapons to collect and use, split into the normal groups of long range, high explosive, assault, and close quarters, though it must be stressed that the selection at the same time isn’t all that huge. The game cheats by adding either a red dot scope or say extra damage or magazine space and then calls it a new gun. In addition to the varied weapons also comes a nice selection of vehicles to be commandeered and driven around, from big battle tanks all the way through to AT bikes.
The story is particularly engaging, and if you’ve played through the original game, then you’ll immediately feel at home amongst all the often humorous team banter between the various squad members. Plenty of cutscenes are used to drive the single player campaign along, and at the end of it, you’re left with a pretty decent story that got told, with one or two rather unexpected surprises!
Visually Bad Company 2 is nothing less that stunning. Gorgeous landscapes abound, smooth character animations and the addition of pretty much completely destructible structures and landscape fixtures make for a very immersive experience. Of course, this is helped by a brilliantly fitting soundtrack with strong voice acting and even stronger sound effects.
Of course, a first person shooter without multi-player is almost a lost cause these days and thankfully Bad Company 2 comes with one of the best multiplayer systems around, featuring fantastic maps and an even better array of vehicles to add to the insane level of destruction that already abounds.
All in all I highly recommend this game if you just need to sit down after a long day at work, jerk at a trigger and maniacally laugh as you plow pretty much everyone, and everything, down in front of you in a hail of flying bullets!
Definitely worth picking up then.
Related Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_company_2