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To those keyboard commandos out there who have been in retirement since Battlefield 2 or have boycotted Modern Warefare 2.
It’s time to strap on your combat boots, clean off the dust from your defibrillator and jump into EA’s latest incarnation of the Battlefield series: Bad Company 2 (at least the Beta anyway).

Having managed to get a key for the Beta I’ve been for the past few weeks playing around on it.

The beta features the Rush game mode and one map: Port Valdez.
Port Valdez set in the snowy Alaskan landscape is a four stage map in which the defenders with unlimited reinforcement tickets must defend sets of M-COM stations.
Whilst the attacking team must demolish these stations before they run out of reinforcements.

For each stage the attacking team completes they are awarded with extra reinforcements; objectives can be destroyed in various ways the primary method is to run up to the station, activate the demolition charge on it, and defend it until it detonates.
Alternatively you can just use the Recon’s C4 charges to demolish the building containing the M-COM or place the charges on the station itself.

Both teams are provided with a variety of vehicles the Russians (attackers) are given a tank, an APC and quad bikes.
While the Americans (defenders) are only afforded vehicles after the first stage falls.
Although only given an APC they do get access to the infamous Apache attack helicopter that in the hands of a talented pilot can cause the opposing team to grind to a halt, unfortunately it’s a double edged sword as in the previous Battlefield game vehicles can be stolen.

Aside from the new game mode one of the major differences from the previous Battlefield game is the smaller number of classes more so EA has consolidated the classes: Recon is still by far the most recognisable class keeping his infamous C4 charges and high powered sniper rifle, the Medic has now been provided with a light machine gun instead of the familiar assault rifle giving him an infantry support role along with keeping his squad alive, Assault doubles as the Support class being able to now deploy ammo packs, and finally the Engineer doubles as Anti-Tank been given a rocket launcher to deal with tanks or later on deploy mines.

Unlocks have been reworked from the old Battlefield 2 system; now all unlocks depend on how much you play a class so for instance you play lots of Engineer you only unlock Engineer related unlocks and specialisations.
Specialisations are usually class specific such as a more powerful scope for the Recon to use or faster healing health kits for the Medic.
Specialisations are not limited to infantry as use of vehicles are rewarded with unlocks that enable the player to have more armour on any vehicle they get into or being able to passively detect enemies around their vehicle.
EA has still kept universal unlocks like in Battlefield 2 which come with ranking up these unlocks are applicable to all classes; they can range from being able to run faster to being able to wearing extra body armour.

Okay so there’s new unlocks and neater classes, how do they play together?
From the hours of game play that I’ve spent on the game they interact fairly well so long as your team don’t all decide to play as Recon, Port Valdez is fairly balanced enabling equal opportunity for either side to win, and with the addition of destructible cover it makes it a very interesting prospect for the defending team.

Recon still plays very similarly like in BF2; you find a nice camping spot and pick off your victims although the unlockable binoculars enables a Recon player to call down a mortar strike to flush out or destroy pockets of resistance.
Medic is still king if you want to quickly rank up as you can become the top player in the game simply by running around reviving team mates and healing, now that you’re packing a machine gun it makes it all the more easier to defend yourself and support your squad.

Assault is all offensive you run into the fray guns blazing firing off 40mm grenades and can have an infinite amount thanks to the ammo packs you can deploy.
Finally the Engineer plays very much like in the original game except now you’re not stuck with a shotgun but are given an assault rifle to defend yourself with, your role now expanded to Anti-tank duties means you get to do the risky job of blowing up armoured vehicles although play style of the engineer hasn’t really differed much from BF2 play.

Vehicles like in the previous game are a huge trump card but useless without support, for instance the Main Battle Tank (MBT) no longer has a driver machine gun but requires a second crew member to mount the top mounted machine gun luckily for the second crew member the machine gun is remote controlled meaning they won’t attract sniper fire.
Usually a tank charging into a base without that second crew member will not survive for long as you’ll undoubtedly become an RPG magnet.

Enough about the gameplay, what’s the game look like?
The user interface is slick, easy to navigate and logical.
The visuals in this preview are of the game at medium quality and I have to say this game looks absolutely gorgeous, the models are detailed, and particle effects are amazing.
Now for those people who think they can get away with playing this game with absolute minimum spec you should think again, this game is fairly resource heavy so anything mid/high end from the last 2 years will run it great any older and you’ll need to lose some eye candy.

Alright so now I’ve covered most of the game’s good points now it’s time to gripe.
My first gripe is EA in all its infinite wisdom has removed the ability to go prone (lie down on your stomach) this is a huge annoyance especially when you’re trying to take cover in a crater as snipers can still see the top of your head because you can only crouch.

My second gripe is with the god awful server browser, although the interface is slick it lacks most of the features you’ll find in a server browser: The ability to filter by region, the ability to order the servers by properties, and the ability to stop the server list from updating since it’s infinitely long due to having no regional filters.
My final gripe is the game’s stability only two weeks from release and there’s a show stopping bug that seems to appear out of nowhere like dropbears.

Aside from these issues I haven’t had huge problems playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and immensely enjoyed my Beta experience, so aside from my above gripes I had lots of fun, and look forward to the retail release of Bad Company 2.

For those Battlefield veterans still leaning on the fence about buying Bad Company 2 I’d say take the jump and parachute into the Battlefield universe once more for another ride.