Battlefield: Bad Company 2
( And just like that, I'm back to less obscure, far more modern games.) Hey, look at that! Battlefield 3 is coming out kinda soon (I think about two months is soon), so this blog is instantly relevant! All I have to do is suck up to this game's fanbase and...wait, I can't do that. Gimme a second. OK. Now then, why can't I do that? Well, simply because I think this game is pretty good....but it could definitely be improved in some major ways. I'll just ask you to imagine the "DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUNNNN", since it's so obvious that linking it would be overly insulting.However, I will make up for that lack of insult by bullshitting around about the story instead of telling you about the actual game. Well, where do I start? How about World War II? That's where the game starts...before it realizes that WW2 shooters are so 2005. Caught in a video game faux pas, Bad Company 2 then shifts to modern day(ish) South America. Is there any relevance between these two events? Yes, in fact: a super-weapon that 60 years of weapons development have not been able to top, mainly because it's been such a well-hidden secret until now. Oh, and the Russians are involved, because I'm mistaken in thinking that the Cold War ended. If you've spotted a theme, yet, then congrats, genius! How long did it take you to figure out that this was essentially an action movie? I'd complain about all the dumb clichés, but I won't. Why? Well, because I just did. Also, because they really don't harm the game too damn much. The story still gets the job done, what with the "Metal Gear becomes a shootout" level and the the final level of the first Modern Warfare (that sound is every Battlefield fan collectively despising me), the soundtrack sounds like Star Wars in all the right ways, and the characters are pretty cool, I guess. There's the nerdy guy, the Commie hippie liberal (all according to the game (what did you expect?)) helicopter guy, the black leader guy, and some others. The only major complaint I have against the story is the ending. Without spoiling anything, it sets itself up for a sequel. Rrrrgggghhh.
EXCEPT, for one problem: actually switching weapons. Maybe I should elaborate. I don't mean the act of pressing the button that switches weapons; DICE would have to go out of their way to fuck that up. I'm talking about the motivation to switch weapons. As in, "there is none." (OK, each weapon does have an achievement for getting 50 kills on it, but none of them have this name (I'd like all of them to have that name), so that's fucked.) I literally got through the entire game using only two weapons, and even then, I was mostly using the same one: the assault rifle. If any major army started making the guns that the Bad Company 2 (I assume that's what they call themselves) uses, then world domination would take about a month. It can snipe, it can fire grenades, it does decent damage, it's reasonably accurate, and you'll never use another weapon after grabbing it. Sad, because none of the other weapons are really that bad. (Let me just clear up that plot hole now: the game sometimes forces you to use another weapon until you can switch to the assault rifle.) Sure, rockets apply gravity to themselves just to fuck with you, and the shotgun apparently follows Unreal Tournament 2004 logic (how do you snipe with birdshot?), but I'm willing to ignore every last bit of that for the sniping. Oh fuck, is the sniping in this game amazing! The rest of the Bad Company 2 can usually handle the other guys fairly well, leaving you all the time in the world to pick guys off from afar. And it doesn't exactly hurt that the levels always seem designed to let you camp in one spot and pick those guys off from afar again.
Oh, and I should probably explain that part, too: this game has pretty cool level design. It really knows how to make a decent shooter level: create a linear corridor, splash some graphics on it, throw some enemies in there, and maybe some explodium. Wait, that last one brings up a major part of the game: destructible environments. Do you see that? Yes, that. You can destroy it. It actually adds a lot to the cover-based shooter formula, not only because you can blow up your enemy's cover and let Bad Company 2 have at it, but because you'll be scrambling for cover as that wooden fence collapses into a state of nothingness. But don't think that this game is all shooting; it's just 99% shooting. Hey, look at that: 1%. What's that other 1%? A lot of driving, for one. That's always cool. And...finding warmth in a frozen tundra? Does anybody else remember this really weird and kinda gimmicky level? And....no, wait, that's mostly it. Driving, a tundra thing, and enough bullets to make Sylvester Stallone proud. Yea, that about sums up Bad Company 2.
Review Synopsis
- It's like an action movie you can play! (Coincidentally, that seems to be the design philosophy for a lot of FPSeseseses. When will we see a playable romantic comedy...outside Japan?)
- The shooting's solid, but almost all of it's done with the same weapon.
- Oh, and there are parts where you don't shoot, I guess.
You know what else sums up Bad Company 2? This:
Legend of Hero Tonma
( You know, I should really play that one song from Karate Kid, but I've rules to uphold.) You know the song. The one about being the best around, and history repeating itself. That's the one I want to focus on, mainly because if this continues anymore, I'll have to restart the computer that is life and possibly call a tech guy to look at my programs to...where was I going with really fucking stupid metaphor? Oh, right: repeat of the last blog. Remember how I did something about an obscure, average platformer last time? Guess what I'm doing here? Hint: it's not cliché action movie.
Wait, I forgot something: there really isn't. This is a really easy game. In the first level alone, I gained more power than any mere mortal should ever have. Combine that with the fact that the TurboGrafx-16 was probably the only console ever to come with turbo buttons standard (somebody at NEC must have fucking loved puns), and everything will die. EVERYTHING! That includes bosses, whom I might as well call "enemies limited to one screen." A lot of the time, I could just stand in one spot and hold the fire button until the boss dies. Sure, some of them may require you to jump a few times, but that's the one constant throughout the game. The really, really short game. Hell, it took me longer to write this than it did to beat the game I'm covering. (Mainly because I've been focusing too much on my Temple of Elemental Evil thing.) Then again, I can't be too mad at it. It's not like it gets anything wrong, and I've the odd feeling that some of you may have grown up with this game. My verdict, then? Refer to the first paragraph, and then read this entire thing again. Forever and ever and ever.
Review Synopsis
- It's a moderately OK platformer with a neat little power-up system.
- All you need to beat this game are tape and a decent attention span.
- A short blog for a short game.
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