GamingDudes.com

After the fiasco surrounding Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, many PC gamers chose to ban CoD6 and opted to wait until Bad Company 2 was released with the promise by Ea and Dice that they would support dedicated servers and the true PC community! The shocking attitude by IW, the general disdain and downright condescending idea towards PC gamers and lack of appreciation for the fact that PC gamers have made gaming what it is today!

There would be NO online gaming in the console world if it wasn’t for PC gaming. PC gaming made it possible for the Gaming world to exist and develop high definition high resolution games. PC games that are 10 years old could not have been played on old console style 480i resolution Televisions because of the resolution incompatibly.

Ok, sorry about the rant about PC gaming making the gaming world what it is. Fortunately many game developers recognize the true importance of giving PC gamers what they have come to expect in the PC gaming world.

About 3 weeks ago I picked up Bad Company 2. First of all I’ll talk about the good things about this game, and there are plenty.

Lots of weapons

You have a choice of playing as 1 of 4 classes. Assault, Medic, Engineer, Scout.

Assault:

Advantages-

Playing as “Assault” has its advantages. Most of the weapons are excellent. They are accurate and deadly.

You have a choice of arming your gun with 1 of several attachments including smoke grenades the “noob” tube grenade launcher or a shot gun attachment that is absolutely devastating at close range. All of these attachments are limited to 2 shots.

However, with the ammo box you can re-supply yourself as well as your squad and the rest of your team which racks up 20 points for yourself every time your squad re-supplies and 10 points for every one else on your team.

Disadvantages-

Playing as Assault you have no weapon which is effective on Tanks and other vehicles except the grenade launcher, which does almost nothing unless the vehicle is badly damaged and you can score a direct hit in the rear of the tank. If you see a tank the best strategy is to run and hide.

Medic:

Advantages-

The Medic is supplied with Light Machine Guns, A medicine bag or healing pack which heals teammates and squad members, and Defib pads which can revive fallen squad members and teammates. Again healing teammates racks up 10 points and squad members 20 points.

The Light Machine Guns as a rule use 100 round clips which means you usually won’t have to reload in the middle of a firefight, however, the LMG’s have heavy recoil and are not as accurate. However, each gun unlock has different characteristics and as I have not unlocked all you’ll just have to play each class and find you favorite combination.

One major plus to having a Medic on you squad is reviving fallen teammates prevents you from losing respawn tickets, and can be the difference between winning and losing a round.

Disadvantages-

While reviving teammates is a huge plus it can also get you killed. The fallen teammate most likely has a gun pointed right at him. Also, like the Assault class you have no effective weapon against vehicles.

Engineer:

Advantages-

You have 2 very effective tools against vehicles as an engineer and unlocks that are even better. The Tracer dart, which when shot at and hitting a target places a flashing red dot on vehicles which allows you Rocket launcher to lock on the target and hit a moving target even one which has moved out of the line on sight.

You are also equipped with the repair tool which allows you to repair vehicles. It can even be used to damage or destroy enemy vehicles.

Disadvantages-

The weapons designated to the Engineer class are all “silenced” which decreases damage of even effective weapons making a firefight with someone with better weapons a one sided affair. However, some of the perks gained with ranking up, make a considerable difference in the effective damage of all weapons and helps even the playing field.

The Magnum ammo perk acquired with rank 15 is arguably the best perk in the game. I have been killed more times with the magnum ammo perk than any other combinations. So you have to look forward to that unlock. More on that later.

Scout:

Advantages-

This is the sniper class. As a sniper your default sniper rifle is an excellent weapon. Causing heavy damage and accurate at a distance this is the best default weapon in the game. Don’t worry though there are still at least 2 better sniper rifles to look forward too that you can unlock.

There are also at least 2 semi-auto sniper rifle’s which can be a life saver in a close range firefight…or even medium range. You can also equip your sniper with C-4. 2 C-4 packs on the back of a tank will destroy the tank giving you 100 points plus points for anyone killed inside.

You can also choose mortar’s instead of C-4 for an effective strike from distance on stationary targets. If you get lucky you can call in a mortar strike on a tank and destroy it if the tank does not move before the strike.

Disadvantages-

As a sniper you have no effective weapon at close range against an automatic weapon. Your best bet is your pistol or knife if you are close enough.

Summary of game play

One of the best ways to rack up points is to play as an effective squad member. Spotting and marking an enemy by pressing “Q” can rack up serious points when that enemy is killed. Receive 20 points from each kill by spotting enemies. Receive 40 points by spotting enemies and pumping a few rounds into them and letting a teammate finish them off. Receive badges and pins for a variety of achievements. All in all this is one of my favorite games to date. This coming from a guy who is in need of a serious upgrade, being forced to play the game at the lowest settings for now.

Its not all fun and games

That is when your game crashes to desktop for no apparent reason. Unfortunately this game is plagued with issues. Fortunately many have been patched, therefore resolved.

The game still crashes to desktop as of the latest patch, and this seems to be a universal problem. The game is still a console port. So expect problems for that reason alone.

The in-game server browser is a joke. As of 4/9/10 there is no support for joining friends via Xfire. You are forced to try to find friends from the in game browser. There is no option to enter servers via a in game console by entering a server I.P. address.

The game browser does offer a friends list where by you can send friend requests and receive friend requests and join servers from each other that way, which would be OK if it worked right. The only way I have been able to receive friend requests was by sitting on Ventrilo and with the game browser open, and waiting for the request sent from the person in Ventilo. In other words we both have to be on at the same time and talking to each other.

The “Play Now” button is a nice feature if you just wanted jump in the game and “Loan Wolf” a few rounds…that is if it worked! For me, clicking on the “Play Now” button almost always returns a “No servers found” message.

The server browser and filter options are another problem. The boxes for filter options only seem to work for “Not Full” “Not “Empty” and “No Password”. The box for “Ranked” I am not sure if it works. I haven’t been able to figure that out.

The “Punkbuster” box only works to filter out “Punkbuster” servers. Clicking on the box filters out all Pinkbuster servers. Leaving it unchecked however, does not Filter out non-Punkbuster servers. Also, clicking the boxes results in the obvious, except with the Punkbuster box. Click the box to do what it says next to the box. Except with the Punkbuster box click it to do the opposite.

The server information tab is another problem. You have to click on each server and then on a dropdown tab to get the server information. I find myself clicking on the server information and then clicking back out, and not remembering which server I clicked on.

Finally, and this is not a game problem but it seems to be an ATI driver problem. If you are using an ATI card, (I have an ATI 4870) the game takes “forever” to load. This is apparently because of the way ATI drivers handle the shaders for the game. They have to be loaded twice. Which still does not explain why Nvidia Cards take less than 20 seconds to load. The latest release notes for the last ATI drivers acknowledged the problem, hopefully in a future driver release the problem will be fixed.

However, the game itself is well worth the issues providing an enjoyable gaming experience which appears to have a longevity that will offer hours of gaming pleasure for the next 2-3 years or more.