The PC Beta of Bad Company 2 has been out for a few days now, and having played it for more than a few hours, I suppose I might was well start judging it.  After all, we here at 3 Angry Gamers actually remember that the Battlefield franchise began before Bad Company (as so many console reviewers seem to believe).

I’m not going to go into too much detail, since this is just a beta with only one game type and one map, and it’s limited in it’s kit and vehicle selections.  But I will start off by saying the sound design is one of the most impressive parts of the game, and also one of the most frustrating.  The sound effects are generally awesome.  Bullets make different sounds depending on how close they pass to you, giving you a quick audio clue to know when a sniper is shooting at you.  There are echoes to gunfire, and soldiers are constantly yelling back and forth contextually (calling out when they get hit by a sniper, yelling in triumph when destroying a tank).  Since the voice acting is universally excellent, this constant audio bombardment really ramps up the intensity and draws you in to the experience.

Visually the game is quite good, but the HDR lighting effects in the snow level can be a bit overwhelming at times.  Tracers look good as do explosions.  Unfortunately, my anti-aliasing is limited to 1x and in order to get decent frames i need put some of the settings on medium instead of high.  Anisotropic is at 4x as well.  Since I’m running two 8800 GTX OC2s from BFG, this problem isn’t related to my video cards.  I’m guessing that it has more to do with with my dual core processor.

Here is where the frustration part of the audio comes in.  DICE has said that audio processing is software based and doesn’t use a discrete sound card, even if you have one.  That means it’s done on the CPU.  I think this is the reason for my frame rate issues.  Even with my AMD 5000+ Black Edition bumped up to 3.1 GHz, my frames still drop off significantly.  I don’t know how it’s running the physics either (I believe I had my cards forcing PhysX off, but I’m installing Win 7 right now and can’t check that), but my guess is that this was also running off the CPU.  A quad core processor would probably have helped me in this regard, but I have to say I’m a bit confused by it.  This game is designed to run well AND look pretty good on an Xbox 360, which is essentially a 5 year old computer at this point.  My hardware is newer than that so I would think it should run better than this.  It’s still a beta, and I give it alot of leeway for that, but I hope this is something that will be fixed with retail (since I’m broke and can’t even afford one of the low end Phenom X4s).

The map itself is fairly well designed.  The battle area is restricted enough to keep the action relatively focused but in most cases is broad enough to allow 16v16 games to have some back and forth.  That being said, team work is an absolute must to get anything done.  If not on the team level, then at least within the squad.  This makes playing with pubbies a royal pain in the ass, which is exacerbated by the lack of in-game voice chat.  I basically only have fun when playing with competent people I can get in Ventrilo with.  Infantry combat is generally intense, but vehicles are an integral part of the game.  Thankfully, TOWs are actually useful this time around (unlike BF2 where they were death traps) and .50 cals with gun shields are the bane of a sniper’s existence.  The spot and order system is contextual, but honestly I liked the greater precision of the BF2142 system better.  Orders are a strange thing too.  I don’t know who can issue them, since there is no true squad leader as in the previous two games.  According to my badge progress meters, I’ve issued several defend orders but I was never aware of it.

One of the big additions to the series are the destructable environments, and it’s a doozie.  Rifle grenades, TOWs, tank rounds, and shoulder-fired AT weapons can all punch holes in walls and roofs and destroy concrete obstacles that impede vehicle movement.  Eventually, some buildings can even be induced to collapse (and it’s a nasty surprise if you’re inside, let me assure you).  It makes for some truly cinematic moments, taking out a fixed machine gun with a well placed RPG or being stunned by an exploding wall that suddenly gets flooded by an enemy squad trying to get to an objective.  It changes the whole tactical paradigm of multiplayer shooters as we (at least, PC gamers, since we didn’t get the original Bad Company) know them.  There is very little that is truly safe any more.  Even trees can be levelled by machine guns and explosives, leading to mass deforestation in order to rob your opponents of concealment.  The ground can be cratered, making the going tougher for light vehicles like ATVs (which are hard enough to control anyway).

The front end menus of the game are also streamlined, though I have to admit the placement of your player stats within the multiplayer menu are a bit odd.  It wouldn’t be so bad if there was one stats submenu, but there are several, and dividing that out is just dumb.  Much better however are the side menus for friends and a simplified server list that displays either your history or your favorites (a full server list with filters is under the main multiplayer tab).

Overall I’m pleased with the game so far.  The gameplay is considerably faster than BF2 and even 2142, but not as twitchy as COD4 (and I assume MW2).  Despite that, there is still an excellent interplay between combat on foot and the use of vehicles (and the UAV with its Hellfire strikes is indispensable in the hands of a good pilot).  Although it lacks the depth of the last two PC-based BF games, with their commanders and stricter squad structure (you can spawn on any squad member instead of just a leader), it makes up for it with intense and focused objectives-based combat that requires teammwork like few games outside the Left 4 Dead series.  I can’t wait to try the other game modes in the finished version

-Scrim