Battledfield Bad Company 2 Demo Hands-On

Developer DICE is probably one of my favorite game developers over the few years. Their Battlefield series has been highly regarded by gamers and their release of Battlefield 1943 for Xbox Live Arcade was a stellar addition to the downloadable games arena. Prior to that, and out of left field, they released Mirrors Edge which, in my opinion, was completely under-rated by the critics.

After that pleasant build up of good mojo I will now give you my impressions on the multiplayer demo currently available. First and foremost and what I noticed was the way the color schemes mute the intensity level. You might be scratching your head at that last comment, but from the game menus to the trees and the vehicles I noticed the contrast level immediately changed my mood from hyped-up to calm and collected. The effect continued as I chose the Recon class and was placed on the battlefield. Right away the Port Valdez map seemed to swallow the screen. It just seemed massive. Thankfully vehicles are still a mainstay in Battlefield. A few of my teammates jumped into an Apache helicopter and took off while I scoped the landscape and tried to get my bearings. From what I could tell we were on defense while the opposing team was attacking. 3 control points were easily identified as A, B, and C with the objective being to keep the enemy from setting demolition charges and blowing up the control point. This is different than past BF games where simply holding the point for a period of time garnered your team some points. Now the game has changed to make defending a control point critical. As I ran around the map the controller layout was simple and soon I had sniped my first enemy, changed to my pistol and shot another. The match lasted a while and the enemy team repeatedly attempted to drive a tank into our base. We lost one of the control points, but held on to the others. In round 2 my team was on the offensive and as I parachuted into the landing zone I saw a few vehicles waiting for our use. The ATV caught my eye first and I sped down the hill towards the enemy base. I died attempting to infiltrate a control point but on my next respawn I was the gunner on the tank and we mopped up for awhile before being blown up. When the match ended my team won and as is typical of multiplayer games these days, I was presented with XP that went towards a progression level similar to Halo or COD. All in all the experience was solid and played in classic Battlefield fashion with some new twists. I later learned that the game type I played was called Rush. Basically the Russians are attacking the Port defended by the Americans and their are 3 areas with control points. Once an area is overrun the attackers move to the next set of points. All of the action is regulated by a certain amount of respawn tickets assigned to each team. If your team runs out of tickets, game over.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 gamer reactions have been a mixed bag. What I found interesting is that a lot of people thought the game was just 'ok'. I have to say that the demo is just that, a demo. It's a preview of the final product. As demos go, I would say download it and give it a shot. No one brings you massive battles on great maps quite like the boys at DICE do. I'm going to reserve my final verdict on this until the game releases and I get a crack at the full monty.