Even with Battlefield: Bad Company 2 coming out roughly five months after the launch of Modern Warfare 2, it would be foolish to think the competition won't be fierce between the two titles come March 2010. The Battlefield franchise has always been a front-runner for multiplayer focused war shooters, but in recent years, Activision's baby has stepped in the limelight and hogged it all up. But if the beta for Bad Company 2 is any indication, the Battlefield series could be making one hell of a return that will surely get a lot of people to jump ship on Modern Warfare 2 to check out EA's latest online fragfest.
Ever since the first Battlefield game, 1942, I've always loved the series. The mix of large scale maps, ample weapons, tons of drivable vehicles, and objective based gameplay always meant I was in for a unique experience with every match I played. There were days when a friend of mine and I would literally just hop in a dune buggy and drive around from capture to capture point, disregarding the rest of our team to do our own thing and love every minute of it. Having a good time in Battlefield didn't mean that you had to have a great kill/death ratio or score the most points in a round. And I'm happy to say that good time feeling is intact for the latest Battlefield entry, Battlefield: Bad Company 2. I had a blast playing it even though I sucked ass most of the time.
The beta for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 opens up one map, Arica Harbor, and one game type, "Rush," to play with. In "Rush" there is a team of defenders and a team of attackers. The defenders, as their name suggests, defend a set number of computer crates spread throughout the large map of Arica Harbor. The first set of crates is located in roughly the center of the map, creating a neutral defend/attack position for both teams. Now if the defenders can hold off the attackers from that first set of crates for the entirety of the match, they will win. However, if the attackers destroy both computer crates, a new set of crates will reveal themselves further in the defender's territory. As the attackers destroy more and more of the defender's crates, the defenders get pushed further and further into their own base territory until they finally run out of room to defend and lose the match. Get it? Basically, "Rush" is a new variation on the capture and hold game-type that forces congested firefights instead of spreading everyone out over a massive map and eliminating a lot of the frantic excitement.
Overall "Rush" is a fun game-type. Although, whenever I played I never witnessed the defenders win a round. Matches have a long round length and defending all the crates for as long as you have to is pretty challenging unless you have a team made up of Battlefield all-stars. It also doesn't help that attackers can spawn on the heels of their teammates instead of neutral spawn points, helping them get to the attack locations much quicker for optimal crate destruction.
You'll also be able to rush these contested zones in the standard fair Battlefield vehicles. You'll get to drive tanks, jeeps, and even ATVs which are as fun as they sound. However, I was a little disappointed to find that Bad Company 2 does not feature pilot-able planes. Planes have always been a huge staple of the Battlefield experience, so to see them missing from Bad Company 2 is a little unsettling. You'll be able to call in air strikes, but no dice on actually getting behind the pilot stick and kamikazing yourself into a control point in BC2. Damn!
