Battlefield Bad Company 2 Beta Impressions

okay, played about half a dozen games.

as usual, the first thing i do is check the controls out and put the aim sensitivity to max. max is fine for me in this game, and it could be faster. one thing that's weird about the aiming with sniper rifle in zoom is the way they seem to make it coast a little with small movements, so i have to undercompensate and really feather it. i didn't notice the same phenomenon with other guns.

for those that want to know (yes, i know you want to know) it has Default, Southpaw, Legacy and Legacy Southpaw for stick movement and Default and Southpaw for L1/L2/R1/R2.

dpad for gadgets is dumb imo, the old way was much better. not sure if they did this for some sort of game balance consideration or to piss people off... shooters should all have full config!!! (don't even get me started on R1 to shoot)

click to run baby! no more of that holding shit!!! (funny story, i used to love hold to run)

up to change views and x to change seats in vehicles instead of the analog click and triangle was in 43 and i'm mostly used to it, but it's still weird sometimes.

no laser designator class makes tanks more viable, not that they were bad before, they were great as long as you could win the dodge-that-bomb metagame. no mortar cannon for the offense (on this map anyway!) means you can actually use defensive weapon installations and not have to worry about someone (like me) taking them all out at the start of the game.

guns.
kill.
FAST!

the knife being a downwards vertical stab now means you really have to be on point! (see what i did there?) it still has a little pep in it's step, but it's not the vacuum seal of death like some other melees in some other games, and there's no wide wave arc like BC1. having to be in close proximity combined with guns killing fast means no more of random person running at you from 10ft away for a melee kill. oh, and the melee button doesn't draw the knife out, you go back to your gun, which means no more double knife swing trick.

maybe i'm mistaken but health regen seems to work based on how close enemies are to you or something... i was sniped several times and on low health and it came back... well, not quickly, but it wasn't slow, but a few times when i was shot close range and hid, the screen stayed bloody for ages. or maybe my perception was off when it happened because i got shot?

the design of the map is fantastic, tons of options on offense to use and tons of places on defense to consider. the different segments all offer something different on defense and offense. on defense, some of the base spawn points seem to be in an area where the offense can't go (artillery zones) though they can still shoot you just fine. Squad spawning where you can pick your squadmate and it doesn't accidentally spawn you on someone else!!! <EMBED SRC="HolyHandGrenade.wav">!!!!!

on this map, quite a few windows are smaller than the standard size in BC, so you can't just shoot out the glass and hop thru the window. the tall wooden fences must be a bit taller or you sprint jump a bit lower, since they are no longer sprint jumpable... reload animation shows when you sprint, so you can't reload then tap sprint to skip some of the reload time. yes, you still run while reloading, i checked the speed out.

knives and bullets don't do much (any?) damage to trees now, looks like you need explosives to take a tree down... explosives still damage the crates! it's hard to tell exactly how much because the health bar is TINY, but it looks like rockets and C4 both do ~1/8th.

i didn't play that long and i can already see that the killcam basically shows you exactly where the person is. i had no trouble knowing where a person was based on the killcam footage, and i've only played half a dozen games on the map. gonna have to move around as a sniper

instant no-scope (zoom+shoot simultaneously) no longer works. to get the increased accuracy of a scoped sniper shot, you have to be fully zoomed in now. bullet spread on an unscoped shot is wider than BC1 too.

the SMG i used (stats were down so no unlocking) has some serious kickup, you need to feather it now, no more bullet hosing. not that you need to, 3-4 shots will finish someone off.

the vehicles all steer really well, almost too well. it's not like BC1 where they feel like weighty vehicles, the jeep feels like an rc car now and the tank drives like a car. oh, in positive news, the jeep coasts a bit now when you bail out, like '43. jihad jeep time baby!

and this last bit hurts me, because i looooved doing it in BC1, but i completely understand why they did it. THERE IS NO MORE RUSHDOWN OFFENSE!!! the artillery zone (out of bounds area) falls back for the defense and there's a 40? second wait before it falls back for the offense. oh, and the out of bounds timer is 10 seconds now, up from 5 in BC1.

the fonts in this game are smaller than BC1 and 1943, i know some people complained about that and said they were unreadable on SDTV's, so this is probably gonna be worse.

my favorite moment was on defense on the bridge, i swam across to the enemy side, threw a motion detector, ran up the bridge behind an enemy squad AND KNIFED THEM ALL!!!! the game is awesome and i'm double dipping, PS360 FTW!

 

awsome first impressions man. I will double dip by buying the PC (less frustrating cause of the m/kb) and xbox version (to play most of my consoles buddies).

question, what do you think about the lack of AA? does it really look that bad? i keep reading on that. i know it's beta and that could change, hopefully thas a ps3 only issue .

cant wait for the beta to hit the PC in december

 

if you're ok with the lack of AA in BF 1943 on XBLA/PSN, then this is no different. also, i'm pretty sure they won't add any (on console), i read it in an interview somewhere. BC1 didn't have AA either, it just had that film grain filter.

 

What an immensely popular thread ... for an immensely popular game ... !

 

dont worry folks leo will get this game as well lol

 

When does this hit PC?

 

theres an open beta in December for pc and xbox on january. all retail versions on march 2nd