SCOTT'S COMMENTS
I knew the Battlefield: Bad Company beta was coming up, however I wasn’t home when the ever-so-small window of opportunity opened to get in without having to subscribe to fileplanet or the like. It was therefore with great relief that one of my buddies emailed me with a beta key allowing me a glimpse into what DICE has in store for us come June.
First off, let me say that I’ve been a big fan of the Battlefield series, ever since Battlefield 1942 came out of left field and stormed onto the PC gaming scene. Battlefield seemed to be a natural extension of the focus on team based combat that Tribes and Counterstrike had opened up. Battlefield 2 and it’s numerous mods, continued to bring that “big epic battle” style of excitement home to the PC, and also opened up this style of gameplay to the console market as well.
It was therefore with some excitement that I downloaded the beta and fired it up on my Xbox 360. There was some difficulty initially getting into a match, no doubt because the servers were being hammered. When I did finally get into a match, I jumped right in without bothering with such niceties like “kit selection”. What finally greeted me, really was a treat, even to a somewhat jaded gamer like myself.
My initial first impression was that the game looked and handled a lot like the Call of Duty 4. TTK (Time to kill) however is a lot longer than Call of Duty 4, with it sometimes seeming like an eternity to take down an enemy solider. I’m unsure if this could be attributed to lag, bad hit detection, a purposely-long TTK, or a combination of all three. This irritated me as small leaps off a window would take off large amounts of health, but bullets didn’t seem to do as much damage as I would have liked.
Despite this minor irritation, the game is a joy to play for anyone that enjoys infantry based combat. After getting slaughtered a few times I decided to experiment with the different kit selections and I found a lot to like. Players are going to be able to choose between Assault, Demolition, Recon (Sniper), Spec Ops, and Support (medic). All five classes have a variety of weaponry that can be unlocked as you rank up through the game. Your rank carries over from game to game as does your ranking, which creates that “just one more kill” dynamic that is very prevalent in Call of Duty 4. Unfortunately not all weapons will be unlockable through ranking up – some weaponry will require a cash investment over the Xbox Live Marketplace or PS3 Store. While the developers have assured fans that these weapons will not unbalance the game, it is definitely a troubling development. Most FPS’s are modeled on the “level playing field” concept, meaning that all players have access to the same weaponry and it is skill that dictates victory. One can only hope that these “buyable” weapons are indeed balanced, or no doubt fans will be screaming bloody murder.
One other neat team dynamic is the option to spawn with your “squad”. This is very similar to how squad spawning works in Frontlines: Fuel of War, and means that you will never be far away from the action. Currently in the beta there is no way to play with people from your friends list, however EA has assured us that this is a temporary thing for the beta.
We’ve talked a lot about infantry combat, but what about the vehicle mayhem that made the Battlefield series famous to begin with? Vehicles add a whole other dimension to the game and are the biggest way in which the title departs from Call of Duty 4. Like all Battlefield games there are a ton of different vehicles to choose from, and I am happy to report that almost all of them are a blast to use. Vehicle combat seems fairly well balanced, meaning vehicles can do a lot of damage, but are not invincible against infantry, in particular the Demolition class which carries a big rocket launcher. While not indestructible, vehicles like tanks and helicopters do give you the sense of being just that, which is the main reason that they are so much fun to use.
The beta revolves exclusively around a new gametype called “Gold Rush” in which one team defends caches of gold while the other team attempts to destroy them. There are currently 2 maps, one called Oasis, and the other called Ascension. Oasis is your typical Middle Eastern style map, and feels very expansive. Vehicles are littered throughout the map, as are little towns and villages to rampage through. Ascension on the other hand is an up close and personal infantry combat affair, with the attackers attempting to ascend a hill littered with buildings and enemy soldiers.
The game features an all-new engine called Frostbite that is exclusive to the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 meaning the game is going to look different from other titles you have played that use licensed engines. Not only that, the Frostbite engine allows players to literally destroy whole chunks of building walls, and deform the landscape around them as the battle rages on, which really forces players to rethink strategies, as “cover” is often only a temporary thing.
In closing, Battlefield: Bad Company does not disappoint. The game already looks and plays pretty good considering it’s just a beta, and some players such as myself are already counting down the days until the retail version becomes available. Despite my despair over “purchasable” weapons over the Xbox Live Marketplace and Playstation Network Store, I still think that Battlefield: Bad Company is going to be a must own title for anyone with even a remote interest in FPS team based games.
DICE has done a great job in the past, it looks like Battlefield: Bad Company will continue the tradition, provided these purchasable weapons do not mess up the game balance when Battlefield: Bad Company hits the retail shelves.
Until then you’ll have to excuse me, I’m feeling the siren call of Battlefield: Bad Company calling me back into the trenches.
WAYNE'S COMMENTS
Upon hearing about the recently launched Multiplayer Beta for Battlefield: Bad Company, I as I'm sure many gamers looked for a way to get into the closed Beta. Luckily, we had received an invite code here at msxbox-world and I was downloading and ready to try out the next FPS multiplayer shooter with some degree of enthusiasm.
I'm still trying to take the Beta at face value, as if I'm being honest, I really was not impressed overall. Though I will stress that this is a Beta and may not be representative of the final retail product when released.
The Beta has a few touchy quirks that I really like, for one the visuals do look really nice, but there is the occasional noticeable dip in framerate. You are also able to pick where you spawn, which is a really good feature as the maps are quite big. Though if you spawn at your base there is typically vehicles available so you can get back into the action rather quickly, or you can opt to spawn with you squad and get right back in on the action immediately and attempt to support your team – though more often than not you can spawn in the line of fire. This often proves to be a bit disorientating at first, as you may spawn next to a squad mate who is getting shot up badly by the opposing team, ultimately meaning that you may be taking damage as soon as you spawn. The controller layout is somewhat different to what fans of Halo or Call of Duty 4 might expect, and it's still taking me some time to get accustomed with the control layout (even more so for controlling vehicles). I think I have things down pretty well now, my only real gripe is that when I shoot about 60% of the people I bump into, they just will not die. This could be something to do with the EA servers, but I don't appear to be lagging nor does anyone else in the game during gameplay. Perhaps we just have more health in Bad Company, though I always seem to die quite quickly compared to others.
As well as the two multiplayer maps, the Beta only features one game mode, which has you either playing as an Attacker or Defender. In either case it is upto you and your squad to storm buildings and areas to destroy the gold crates when on the Attacker's side, and to defend the gold crates with the rest of your squad when on the Defending team.
I have not played a Battlefield game before, so was quite looking forward to getting some play time in with the Multiplayer Beta, as I really can get caught up in the multiplayer aspect of these first person shooters. There's just something about Bad Company that isn't cutting it for me though. As I play the Beta I can appreciate some of the finer things which stand out really well, the visuals for one are really sharp with some smooth animation, as well as the larger scale maps. All in all I guess it more closely resembles Call of Duty 4 in the way that you are able to sprint and have secondary fire functionality on some of the weapon classes. For example you can turn your default machine gun into a grenade launcher, and this is what I really like about the Beta (which mostly reminds me of Red Faction as this is the first shooter I played where you could destroy the environment), and that is for the lazy gamer, like myself, if I need to take a short cut (or just can't be assed running through some building) I can quite happily blow a hole in the wall and have available a quick impromptu exit.
From the two multiplayer levels available in the Battlefield Beta, it seems that everything within a level can happily be obliterated, this includes lots of trees, fences, buildings and of course vehicles.
The vehicles themselves handle really well, you can even ride as a passenger alongside random gamers or even as a gunner in a tank, jeep or helicopter. The Beta would no doubt be more enjoyable when playing with groups of friends, not everyone seems so willing to communicate in the Beta though, which often means you can either charge in like Rambo (and die) or try and follow and support someone that looks like he has at least an inkling of what he is doing.
Though from Scott's thoughts, it seems maybe I am just not quite “getting it”. From my experience I do feel that Battlefield: Bad Company will more than likely delight fans of the Battlefield series of games, for me though it unfortunately just doesn't quite cut it. The only thing that really has me down is how difficult it seems to kill enemies when on foot with normal weaponry. In a tank I can quite easily kill plenty of players before being blown to bits, as you would probably expect.
I was looking forward to the release of Bad Company, and it's certainly something I will keep my eye on, but the Beta has kind of killed that anticipation for me. I am now more interested to see what the full game has to offer in regards to a campaign, perhaps some kind of story driven co-op campaign, judging by the launch trailer. However, fundamentally it is the multiplayer on these types of games that keeps me playing from months to years on end.
Potentially having to 'buy' new weapons just to stay on a level playing field doesn't make the game much more desirable either. There is clearly some things I'm having issues with, and that is some of the gameplay mechanics as well as just the sheer amount of ammunition it currently takes to kill someone online.
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