Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Multiplayer Beta Impressions

Title: Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Players: 1-24 players

Platform: PS3, Xbox 360, PC

Developer: DICE

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Release Date: March 2nd (North America), March 5th (Europe)

It seemed a bit suspect at first for DICE to launch the PS3 multiplayer beta for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 a mere week after the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, another prominent military shooter. You'd be wrong to lump these games together, though. Fans and critics alike will spin tales of how BF:BC2 is battling to usurp MW2's throne but the fact of the matter is, BC2 offers a strong multiplayer experience that is distinct enough from the Call of Duty mold that the two franchises will coexist quite peacefully.

The Battlefield series was at first exclusively on the PC so no doubt many of you young bloods, raised on your Halo's and Killzone's and what not, are completely unfamiliar with the franchise's well-established formula. The biggest difference between Battlefield and most shooters is the scale. Instead of close-quarters deathmatches, BF features protracted territory battles over vast landscapes. The Battlefield: Bad Company 2 beta features the Rush game mode, in which one team must destroy a series of objectives while the other attempts to defend them. The match ends when the attackers destroy all of the objectives (by planting bomb, which the defense can defuse) or until their finite supply of respawns runs out. A victory for the defense is therefore a long battle of attrition.

Even if the matches have a large scope, you don't feel small; the Arica Harbor map of the beta supports 24 players, large enough to create some furious gunfights and emphasize teamwork but small enough that individual players' contributions still matter. You won't feel lost in these big maps, either; Arica Harbor is actually broken into five smaller segments for Rush; the attacking team needs to destroy a pair of objectives in the current area before they can even enter the next. The game will actually kill you if you spend more than 10 seconds outside of the designated area, so all 24 players are effectively corraled into the same subsection of the map. It's still a lot of real estate but there are vehicles that you can use to shorten the commute. Also, each team is split into squads of up to four players apiece and you have the option of respawning next to any squadmate. It's never hard to find a fight.

There's a lot of variety in the different stages of the Arica Harbor map. It opens with the offense attempting to destroy two objectives in a desert base. If and when they finish that, they must push through a town, over a bridge, and finally into a two-story building along the waterfront. The different environments and layouts of each stage make them feel like completely different maps. The wide roads leading to the first desert base and the surrounding mountainside favor the use of tanks and snipers, respectively. The last push on the harbor, meanwhile, is all about close-quarter indoor gunfights.

BC2 does an excellent job of making you feel like you're in the midst of an all-out war. You'll hear the echoes of explosions on the other side of the map and the game's impressive draw distance means you'll be able to watch battles from afar as well, provided smoke isn't clouding your vision. Once you're in a fight, you'll know you're in danger. Weapons ring out loud and clear, players automatically shout phrases to fit the situation ("My vehicle needs repairs!" or "We're taking sniper fire!"), and your ears ring with nearby explosions. When you take damage, your vision will become blood-tinted and blurred.

The destructible environments of BC make a return here, so any cover you find could be blown to bits at any given moment. Supposedly they reworked the destruction for BC2 but I didn't notice much of a difference; might just be that BC's not very fresh in my mind. The basic principle's the same: every building can be reduced to a mere skeleton by explosives. The gradual demolition of the map alters the action; an explosion can create new passages for approaching objectives, new hiding spots for snipers, and so forth. The rubble can make movement a bit tricky at times, unfortunately. I had to spam the jump button at times to extricate myself from it.

Your first hour in BC2 will likely be more frustrating than your first hour with other shooters. You'll get picked off by snipers hundreds of yards away, blasted to bits by tanks, chewed up by machine gun turrets, and nuked from above by remotely piloted drones. There's nothing to really stop a team from spawn camping you, either. It's easy to get frustrated but the games gives you easy ways to counter each. The drones can be shot out of the sky with a sniper rifle (or with any other type of small arms fire, really, if you're persistent or it's flying low enough). You can also sneak to the enemy starting point, find the control terminal for the drone, and shoot whoever's using it. Tanks can be blown up with C4, rocket launchers or mines. Snipers, meanwhile, are limited by inability to go prone and killcams, which show live footage of whoever killed you in the few seconds you respawn.

Only a fraction of the full game's customization options were available for the beta so it's tough to judge how it will stack up with MW2's customization. The overall premise is similar, though: you earn experience points through your contributions on the battlefield and this unlocks new weapons and specializations. Specializations, analogous to MW2's perks, are ability enhancers. They allow you to carry more ammo, fire your weapons more accurately, etc.

The biggest difference between BC2 and MW2's character configuration is that BC2 splits equipment into four different classes: Assault, Engineer, Medic, and Recon. If, say, you want to use a sniper rifle, you'll need to be Recon. Experience points only count toward the class you play while earning it. Therefore, you won't unlock any new Assault weapons by playing Engineer. Experience points earned with a vehicle are a separate category as well, and count toward unlocking vehicle-oriented specializations (better armor, proximity sensors, etc.).

The classes don't force you into one narrow role, though. Each is fairly versatile. Many folks who choose to play Recon will sit on a hill and snipe people all day. However, that's not the extent of the class' abilities. Recon players can carry C4 charges, which are perfect for blowing up tanks. My favorite thing to do while playing that class was to sneak up on enemy tanks, plant C4, and blow them to bits. Pistols are powerful and accurate in BC2 so close quarters combat wasn't impossible to survive. The roles of these classes become further blurred over time as you unlock more equipment. Two of the earliest weapons you'll earn are a shotgun and semi-automatic rifle that can be wielded by any class.

A beta is always the tip of the iceberg but you never know how big the iceberg really is until the game actually comes out. I've played the hell out of this one beta map for about a week and hope there's plenty of fresh content in the full version to hold my interest. As long as there's enough maps, customization options, and vehicles to go around, BC2 will be a fine addition to any shooter fan's library.