Bad Company 2, worth the $30 on Steam?

[p1nkfl0yd1an]

Thanks for weighing in Yokai! I'm embarrassed to admit I haven't purchased any new games (for PC) since L4D 1 came out. I later received MW:1 as a gift, and didn't enjoy it a great deal. I played MW:2 on my former roommate's PS3, and found that more enjoyable... probably because even though joysticks and bumpers are a huge handicap in my mind, all the years I spent playing PC games gave me a slight edge to the average PS3 enthusiast. Despite my steadfast adherence to the belief that first person shooters are meant for a mouse and keyboard, my K:D ratio and ratio of wins to losses was MUCH better on the PS3. This turned out to be especially true when I downloaded BF:1943 via PSN. I don't know what it was, but damn... the people playing that game online with their playstations? Just AWFUL. Nonetheless I've moved out of that house now and no longer have access to a PS3, and I'm also feeling dirty for racking so many hours up on a console. 1943 brought back some feelings of nostalgia for old school 1942. Testing out Bad Company 2 on a 360 has got me wanting that same style of play. The customizable classes were really sweet, but a skilled tank driver could still rampage through the map, rendering all of the foot soldier's "cheap" upgrades and lightning fast reflexes completely useless. I was also incredibly happy to find that my favorite aspect of Battlefield was still extremely prevalent. After all these years and sequels, people still park themselves on a vehicle spawn point and just jump up and down in mass groups of idiocy. FINALLY a helicopter respawns in time for some dumbass crashes it right into the ground. While all of the other players scream at the noob via voicechat it gave me plenty of time to pick them off one at a time with a sniper rifle. I'm sure PC players won't do this as muchbut it's good to know it's still battlefield. On that note I'm going to give it a shot... and if it doesn't work very well I'll just pop my 8800 into my new roommate's PCIx 16x slot and give it another shot. I get the feeling my stupid board's 4x slot is going to prove to be too much of a bottleneck.

[p1nkfl0yd1an]

Surprisingly my e6600 plugged into a board with a 4x Pcix slot combined with an 8800gt runs everything on a mix of medium detail and high textures at 1280x720 on a 50something inch HDTV via DVI->HDMI cable with no problems. That being said, it was totally worth 30 dollars. I don't know if it's just the nature of the engine or what, but it still "feels" very much like a battlefield game. It's tough to describe this in a manner that makes it sound like I'm NOT bashing the engine, but it always seems like with a game on this scale, the engine has to do funny things to keep track of your one pathetic little soldier... it leads to a very distinct experience, one which I enjoyed for WEEKS worth of time on 1942, and this is no different. I miss being able to plane whore to my hearts extent.


I only have one complaint, and it's a minor one at that. I was a HUGE fan of the 1942 mod Desert Crisis. If anyone played the VERY early versions of DC, you'll remember what a challenge learning to fly the helicopters was. However, this was because the nature of the piloting system was such that it allowed you to pull off RIDICULOUS turns on a dime, pinpoint maneuvers, and in general feel like you were really flying a nimble attack helicopter... but getting the hang of it was DIFFICULT. Anyway, the helicopters in BC2 are slow to respond, prone to fits of lag, and worst of all, aren't even coded correctly to operate with usb joysticks. If you just plug and play, you'll quickly find that for whatever reason, the yaw axis is backwards. Twist left? You pivot right. Twist right? You pivot left. This has apparently been an issue with BC2 on the PC since the beta stages, but EA/DICE never got around to fixing it. The fix? Go into the .dbx file for air and change a single line of code in which the value is set to "1"... to "-1"(thank god some knowledgeable users on the EA forums figured this out for everyone else)