I’ve put this off for way too long, but I managed to beat the single player campaign of Bad Company 2. I got sidetracked by Final Fantasy XIII. Now with that done, I should really get my ass in gear.

BC2’s story is much more concise than the first game. Which I welcomed heartily. That combined with the characters made this game far more enjoyable from a story standpoint, with the exception of a few issues, some minor and some pretty fricking frustrating.

I enjoyed the use of a prologue stage as a tutorial. Logically, B-Company would be up do snuff, and “retraining” them would be extremely redundant. Plus this serviced quite well in getting me interested in this story. Something mysterious is always a good grabber.

It’s good to see all the members of B-Company back. Just sitting in the jungles talking about Predator. Even the pilot driving our helicopter felt like a lifelong member of B-Company.

So once again, B-Company gets stuck in the middle of something that should be way over their heads, but in their own unorthodox way, they’ll pull through. That’s what I like best about these games, these guys just go in and get it done. I would say no nonsense, but that goes out the window the moment Haggard opens his mouth, yet when the nitty gets gritty even he steps up and brings his A-Game. Or should that be B-Game?

I found myself fumbling around the controller far less this time around, but I do miss the manual heal. I always tend to die easily in Battlefield games. In the first Bad Company, I used the heal to get healed and fall back to regroup on the enemy. Without that mechanic, I had to have about half the response time to decide whether or not I should fall back. Which led to me dieing quite a lot.

Dieing wouldn’t have been so bad if the checkpoints were more forgiving. Sometimes I would lose 20 - 25 minutes of progression because I got picked off. Sure, if I ran through a stage, I might be able to make it, but I always felt compelled to make sure I do a good sweep of the area, which ends up being time consuming. I liked in the previous game that I respawned, but the battle continued. It worked to keep the general flow of the game moving plus it caused me to swear a lot less.

Though, the vehicles did feel a lot tighter this time around. I can’t remember specifically how they felt in the first Bad Company, but I do know that the first time in this game where I got to drive a jeep for a long distance I was driving like a pro. That was probably the longest I ever went without being killed.

I knew I should’ve written this sooner. I’m drawing a blank on all fronts. There was plenty more little things I came across as I played the game, but I just can’t remember them now. Few months into the year and I’m already slacking. At least I managed to write something though. Till next time.