Battlefield: Bad Company 2 – First Impressions
I played Battlefield: Bad Company 2 more extensively today (tried it in a short match within this week once).
Just like my thoughts on Metro 2033, here’s my thoughts on the game:
The ranking and unlock-system. My god, it sucks. So bad.
Well, it’s really only the unlock-system I’m bothered with. Ranking is pretty cool and all. Badges etc.
But I’m starting with some standard weapons heavily inferior to all the unlocked weapons of the other people. As a Medic I can’t heal or revive, as an Assault I can’t give Ammo, as an Engineer I can’t repair, and as a Sniper… Well you can play that one.
Also, when playing as an Engineer, you’ll soon notice your rockets (rocket-launcher) will only fly straight ahead (+ gravity). Others will have controllable or head-seaking ones or whatever. Well, yeah…
Yeah, you may say “You’ll get the unlockables fast!”, but I tell you: The system itself is crap. Having the new guys, entirely new to the game, have inferior weapons. And just then, when you need those EP for unlocking new things, it’s the hardest to get them. Really, the system is stupid.
I have no problem when it’s fair. In W:ET, ET:QW and some other games everyone starts with the same unlocks each match (if you’re not playing a mod ofc). That’s fair.
In Modern Warfare your default weapons are pretty good and not really that inferior to the other ones. I was perfectly able to make a lot of kills with them.
But in Bf:BC2 you start with ok main-weapons but don’t even use your classes items it’s supposed to have. Why am I Medic if I can’t do anything a Medic can? It’s more of a soldier that way.
Next big con: My god, why the HECK does the server-browser not display any ping at all?
After I played a long time on one server, where it was pretty fun, I finally checked my ping in the scoreboard and had 250.
I could still play pretty well. Although I had a kill-each-other situation more than once, shooting one another.
And then I knifed an enemy 3 times into his back. Once he even kneeled still and… well, my knife didn’t hit at all…
So later I searched for another server. I was on several. Pings from 150, 300, up to even 999, where it didn’t display more but still let me join.
The controls are good. The menu is crap. A bad console port. And so is the server-browser it seems. No ping displayed at all.
Just now I had some fun after joining a server with “Play Now”, where it searches a server for your (after the first one it chose for me was full *ghehe*). That was really good, so that works.
The menus:
You can’t view the scoreboard when in spawn-menu, which will be opened automatically. And you can’t close it. Yeah, great. And you’ll have to select to spawn EACH F*CKING TIME you spawn. Meh. Even W:ET did that way better 7 years (or what) ago.
When the game ends the final “cutscene” will be shown. You can press escape, and the “won”/“lost”-text will flash, but that’s it. You can’t exit or anything.
Then, pretty cool, it will already load the next map while you can still check your scores, how you did. But… you can’t even cancel the loading.
So if you just want to finish the round before stopping to play and you wanna check the scores, you’ll have to wait until it finished loading until you can disconnect from the server. I’m glad there’s no text “do not turn off your console” there… hehe
And well, some other, minor, things. You can see it’s coming from the consoles. But those 2 were the really bugging ones.
GamePlay:
Pretty cool. I only enjoyed hardcore-mode until now though. But really fun.
Graphics are cool, exploding things as well.
And after I was really pissed off in the beginning, it was really a lot of fun in the last games.
I hope they’ll patch the server browser (I’ll check the steam forums about that now about that issue), and the ranking systems and the menus just suck. But well, the game rocks.
Update:
Btw… Interesting detail: I have 4 vehicle specializations now, but none other. Neither rank nor of any class. [stats]
Lol, in the steam forums I now found this in the FAQ thread (along the info about Ping, and also FOV, I found):
Q. What is this little white pixel in the bottom right hand corner?
Not so much a bug as it’s just there. I’m not sure why it’s there, but everyone has it, and it’s not a problem with your monitor.