It's time to open up your Hurt Locker, strap on your Full Metal Jacket and prepare to enter the theatre of death as the Battlefield franchise kicks off another epic conflict.
Publisher: EA
Developer: DICE
Released: 5th March 2010
Platforms: PC (reviewed), PS3 & Xbox360
[Editors note: Before I start, I want to make clear that I love the Battlefield series and this one is pretty damn good too. But because of that tenderness, any wrongdoings are amplified a hundred-fold. Hell hath no fury like a gamer scorned.]
By their very nature, online first person shooters are not welcoming places. It's frag or be fragged as the digital bullies line up to lay the smackdown to anyone foolish enough to stray into their crosshairs.
This remains true in Battlefield: Bad Company 2, where there are no moderators to help you out when you've been slaughtered 120 times in last 120 seconds, there are no handy buffs to help whipping-boy players attain a modicum of dignified revenge. Like the many circles of Hell, this (mostly) online FPS is just pain, pain and more pain.
That is until you claw your way out of the pit, pull on your horns and cloven hooves and start dishing out some unhappiness of your own. But you have to be a thick-skinned, dedicated and somewhat masochistic Battlefield virgin to stay the course and join the bullying ranks.
Ah! Fresh meat...
As with Battlefield 2142 and the CoD: Modern Combat series there's something of a 'carrot and stick' approach to keep you playing. The root veg in question is the combination of sumptuous graphics, rich sound effects, awesome vehicles and (if you can find a server to survive long enough on) great gameplay. The 'stick' is that the only way you're going to get good at this - and by extension experience the lovely carotene goodness - is to keep punishing yourself by offering your bottom up for the pleasure of the skilled players... who probably don't have jobs... spouses... or anything better to do of an evening than make pyramids out of their Cash and Carry load of Whupp-Ass cans.
It's almost like DICE and EA don't want new players to join the fun. The instruction booklet is lighter than Karen Carpenter's ghost and any in-game tutorial is restricted to the single player game. This tutorial still leaves questions unanswered - I'm still unsure whether the chevron box in your HUD is a symbol for the controls to an unmanned drone, a church with a steeple or the site of a Roman earthworks. Answers on a postcard.
All we are saying... is give peace a chance
To compound the confusion, there are no 'Bot match' or 'Create (empty) game' options so you could stroll around the maps getting the lay of the land like a kid in a theme park after hours. It's not even worth practising by barrelling through the single player game in 'easy' as none of the multiplayer maps are here and only a couple of the vehicles. Learning to fly the choppers under fire in a live match is about as much fun as premature ejaculation, and just as short and upsetting.
To make matters worse, the woefully small array of multiplayer maps in Bad Company 2 are a much more confined affair than previous BF outings. Perhaps digital real estate is at a premium during the recession, but the small maps mean you can't even bimble about ineffectually for a few minutes just enjoying the environments without someone unloading leaden justice your way. You either fight or die!
And the 'fun' doesn't stop there, because while you're flailing around with your guts hanging down like a H R Giger grass skirt, your opponents are gaining experience points thanks to your death; experience points that will make them even better at eviscerating you with hollow points next time. Oh goody.
This XP isn't giving them access to cool but harmless new outfits to skin their characters with, pimped vehicles to swagger around in or access to exclusive maps, no, they're being gifted more accurate weapons, deadlier ammunition, and gadgets that mean they can spot you hiding within a locked safe at the bottom of the Pacific. So when you do finally have 40 minutes between putting the kids to bed and sitting down with the missus for Chicken Kievs and a House MD re-run, your Battlefield lifespan can be now measured in pico-seconds. In fact, genetic engineers are considering switching from experimenting on May Flies to using Battlefield Noobs, as the Darwinian cycle is that much faster.
Welcome to the party, pal!
As a veteran of pretty much all the Battlefield games since the original sortie on PC back in 2002, I'm used to having my arse handed to me on a silver platter (and I didn't have the excuse of no free time back then) and I've handed out a few silverwared backsides myself. I can handle the pain of 'victimhood as I know the pleasure will come later once I've earned my 'victim stripes'. I know that you'll get into a groove of a preferred character class, hop in your fave vehicle and tackle now familiar maps on servers you know are knob-head free.
I also understand that adding incentives and rewards for the dedicated players helps keep the fanbase happy and keeps players coming back again and again (although their absence didn't stop me living BF1942 for several years). What I don't get is why these only seem to serve to make the plight of new players that much greater? Surely LEET and NOOB happiness isn't mutually exclusive?
By way of an example, a buddy of mine (veteran gamer (including UT3), but BF newcomer) stubbornly refuses to play the BFBC2 multiplayer, as he spends all his time watching a respawn counter. Speaking as a player who regularly hits mid-table in BF matches, I do my fair share of countdown gazing and can empathise with what my friend is going through. The close-quarters maps, the lack of a practice arena, the powered-up uber players - DICE isn't exactly 'growing the audience' to the series here.
If you've ever been to an unfamiliar pub, walked in to spy an empty pool table, but on approach you're met by a stranger lifting his fifty pences from the baulk cushion and insisting that you have to challenge him rather than play your mate? That's what Battlefield Bad Company is like for a new player.
Death and the high cost of fragging
BFBC's 'closed door policy' isn't the fault of the good players though. They're good at what they do and have invested heavily to get that good. Why shouldn't they have fun? The problem is with game balance. Where games such as WoW and Warhawk keep high and low level players apart, here we have the Andy McNabs battling the Andy McDowells. It's not a pretty sight.
It is a crying shame though, because the multiplayer game is excellent. The single player game is a bit 'Hayden Panettiere' - beautiful, but short and unfulfilling - but overall the BFBC2 package is so skillfully done it's a shame many gamers won't get to see it fully (or stay for long if they do) as it seems skewed so that the big boys get to play on the swings and no one else.