Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and PS3 First Impressions

First of all, I don't know much about Battlefield. I saw some vids about Battlefield 3 and it looked pretty awesome, so I bought Bad Company 2 to ramp up for it's release. I played Black Ops/COD on PC for a while but I'm just getting into console gaming now. That's where I'm at and this was the first time playing a FPS online.

Maybe it's because I'm so used to COD and the fast pace of the mouse that Battlefield seems so different to me, but I mean it's not different "bad" just different as in "unfamiliar". Pile that on top of inexperience with the DS3 Controller and I had a veritable struggle last night trying to take control of those analog sticks.



I played about 1/2 way though the Singleplayer campaign just to get familiar with the controls and ramp up my game before trying to step up to the streets, but mang, kids have skills these days.

The first two things that struck me I missed were the fact that you can't go prone and you can't strafe-run. I mean I love to dolphin dive and never ever run in straight lines, so I was running into walls like non-stop in BC2. I guess if you compare it to real life you'd look like a clown and probably break your ankles trying to do either of those things but try it, becuase they are pretty intense physical feats. Seriously, try strafe-running. I did on the track at the Y, it actually doesn't make much sense and was pretty hard. If you know what I'm talking about, strafing in COD is shifting sideways while you run and you can look around while your body is headed in another direction. In BC2 it basically means you face the direction you're running in and looking around will actually make you turn. Once you stop running, they're the same but if you know games, you're running most of the time. I thought this was craziness at first and I still do because most games aren't built that way.

The second thing is the pace. The maps are big, you have to wait to respawn, you can destroy buildings/cover and you run with 3 other dudes in a squad. The whole thing is definitely more team based compared to COD - where everything just boils down to TDM - so it makes for much different gameplay. You get rewarded for helping out your teammates and you run around a lot or take vehicles. There's also a lot of snipers. I still haven't decided whether sniping is a legit tactic in this game or it's just camping too, but with the maps being so big they seem to work.



COD is by definition of a twitch shooter - usually whoever sees the other person first wins. While this is pretty similar experience you do have more of a chance to react to fire even if you get turned on. You do have "health" in this game, but I haven't figured out if it's BS or getting healed will really help you out in the long run. It also took me a while to realize that it's actually helpful/rewarding to run with your squad instead of solo.

In any case, one of the most important things for any game when you play online is map knowledge. When you get familiar with the maps you know where to expect to run into people and have certain routes you like to run. It usually helps when you have a general idea of where you're going but I honestly don't even know what maps I played last night and basically just started running in a random direction whenever I spawned. So while I'm not pulling any t-mart jumps, I'm pretty happy with being solidly in the middle of the scoreboard not being dead last with those tactics.

I also expected a lot more trash talk on the PSN since there's no keyboard, but you really do get a lot more spam on PC via chat and even speech. Of the games I played last night no one had a mic (or decided to talk I guesS). There's no text chat either, so there was pretty much zero trash talk or strategy, which I kind of don't like. I'd imagine if you get a party of guys running mics they would easily clean up in and team game against randoms. Not sure how common it is, but I thought I'd be arguing with dudes hearing nonsense like all day.

I'll admit that I barely knew what was going on most of the time and the maps are fraken huge and you just end up blowing up buildings, but it was fun and a real change of action.

Anyway, that's been the experience 2 hours into PSN. Check this out: first game ever.



Other than aiming, I also have a hard time pushing in the stick to run and using the damn 2nd triggers. Mouse is so much easier (for now anyway). And load times, WTF.

Man, I really need to get that bike up and running...