Kotaku
I'd been playing around with the Bad Company beta for a few days when McWhertor asked me what I thought of it.
"It's OK," I said. "Hey, is this the one that's free, or that other one?"
McWhertor tells me I'm confusing it with Battlefield Heroes.
"How much are they charging for it?"
"$60"
"WTF! That's insane, it's fun, but $60?"
But ten minutes later I'm back on the game and I can't seem to stop playing it. I even sneak in a piddly five minutes of playing between the time I put the Lemon Chicken in the stove and I need to come back up to check on it.
It's an addiction!
The thing is I'm not sure why I'm having so much fun with it. Battlefield: Bad Company, on it's surface, seems to be pretty much like every other Battlefield to come before it. You start off in a map by choosing your class and then drop into a rolling fight with live players.
In this particular Battlefield you're fighting to either defend some chests of gold or blow them up. The chests of gold are located at different points on the map and as they are destroyed the map enlarges to show more chests of gold that need to be blow to bits or saved.
There are some tweaks. For one thing you earn upgrade points by ranking up in combat and can drop out of the game and use those points to unlock weapons for use by the different classes. Most of the unlocked weapons are rifles of one sort or the other, but there are also some pretty neat gadgets, like anti-tank mines or sticks of dynamite.
There's also the destructible environment, which looks pretty damn cool and even effects gameplay quite a bit. As Mark explained in his earlier impressions of the game, the destruction is very controlled. You can't, for instance, totally level big buildings. You can though blow gaping holes in walls to avoid a map's natural choke points.
You can also use artillery to literally chew up the terrain, creating man-sized pot holes in the ground. You can also saw through trees with a machine gun, removing the cover that snipers find so tantalizing.
Like I said, this effects gameplay in a lot of interesting ways, but I almost find the visual effect much more impactful. It just looks kick ass to be chasing a running bad guy with a machine gun and have trees falling around him as you zero in. It's neat that when you're running away from tank fire walls are literally blowing up around you.
So I love the game, I can't stop playing the game, but something keeps telling me that I'm not sure if I would want to spend $60 on it. Maybe it's the knowledge that EA is also going to make a selection of weapons available through DLC purchase, or that by buying the Gold Edition of the game you get a wider selection of weapons. Looking over the weapons, I don't think they're really going to give anyone a distinct advantage, but it just feels wrong.
Bad Company is tremendous fun, but if EA wants to use it as a vehicle for DLC micro-transactions maybe they should cut down on the price a bit. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some gold to explode.
Comments
Love Battlefield hate EA!
Love EA hate Battlefield!
Wait...
I played this twice last week and lost interest. plus only one multi-player mode is pretty weak.
PR filter: bravo to EA for ever pushing the boundaries of downloaded content possibilities.
I seem to be playing it alot but not completely enjoying it. The game seems unbalanced (of course it is the beta so maybe it will be fixed). The artillery makes defending annoying, the defenders are equipped with a few anti vehicle turrets but they are gone within seconds due to the artillery. Haven't actually used the artillery though since its such a race to get to it first then everyone starts team killing for about 2 minutes because they wanted to use it.
Well, just like Gran Turismo Prologue, let's vote with our dollars, or lack thereof. I would hope that people don't support these types of microtransactions, especially when they have a significant bearing on the gameplay.
Oh if you love $60 You will enjoy having to pay more for weapons and Xbox Live. Also good luck with EA's crappy servers & not getting the RRoD from over heating.
LONG LIVE MODERN COMBAT
Huh. What's the "war era," so to speak?
Is it like BF:1942 with gold instead of flags, BF:Vietnam with gold instead of flags, or BF:2142 with gold instead of flags?
Also, I don't know if I'm remembering it wrong, but a trailer for this game I saw way back when certainly seemed to insinuate that it had some sort of singleplayer campaign or some such.
"WTF! That's insane, it's fun, but $60?"
My exact feelings for 90% of the games that come out.
What is your Gamertag kotaku article author
@kelptocratic: It's a modern era game. Although the actual "Modern Combat" game seemed to have more high tech equipment than this one.
I don't think that Goldrush will be the only game type but it seems like they want to focus on that the most and it is also then only type in the beta.
Also in Battlefield and completely agree. My own impressions are up on another site (wont add for Spam fear) but they're pretty much the same. There's still some balance issues they need to fix, but otherwise the more I play the damn game the more I want to play it even though the DLC thing pisses me off.
I have IGN Insider, if someone tells me how I can get the code I'll give it to ya cause I traded my 360 in
my one big issue with the beta is to me the shooting is broken.being an fps the shooting should be spot on but it feels like im always just spraying everywhere and the enemy has a ton of health.maybe ive played to much cod4 hardcore but the aiming just isnt precise with anything but a sniper rifle.the iron sites are way to zoomed in with assault weapons.the special ops guns all line up on the right side of the screen when zoomed in and light machine guns are too wild.shotguns are just about right though.it is a fun game but im not gonna buy it mostly because i dont support eas need to rip off its customers at every chance they get.
Fun or not, it's a precedent setter in terms of microtransactions that have the potential to affect the core game mechanics.
I'm not buying or renting it and am boycotting EA games until they abandon this latest attempt to nickle-and-dime us all to death.
@Truepatriot: Yea thats Battlefield for you. Ppl have lots of health and soak up a ton of bullets
@liquid_kore: Gotcha. I probably should have gleaned that from the picture.
Which reminds me, that Desert Combat mod for 1942 was all kinds of fun.
I think I enjoyed that one most out of all of them. Then again, I stopped buying them when they gimped the singleplayer in BF:2.
I'll wait for Battlefield 3. :)
@Itchy (PSN: Kaizoku-ou): ...GET HIM!!!
If I worked my ass to build a game.. like that one, whould I think that 60$ is enough for my work, or overpriced? I guess that the reasonable price is the one that gives me the most profits anyway...
I have not missed a single battlefield, and not going to miss this one. I will not support thier DLC tho.
I thought it was alright, but nothing I'd spend $60 on. It's a rent or a buy at a reduced price, unless the single player is actually good, then I may buy it.
Battlefield on consoles = Failure
It's just one of those games that just plays better on PC. Kind of like how guitar hero and racing games feel better on consoles, this is one shooter franchise really meant for PC players.
So...did they fix the insane fall damage? You can go up ladders, but theres no way of coming down without taking 1/4 of your health away in fall damamge...at least give me a parachute like in BF2: Modern Combat.
...and since theres no health crates and the support classes aren't played as much (since their huge ass guns do less damage than an SMG in this game), theres really no way of recovering health if you're a sniper or a specialist that doesn't get a health injection as a gadget.
Did I mention the reticle moves way to slow, even if you dial the sensitivity up to max? Why can't I trail a running guy when I'm not even using the iron sights?
...and don't get me started on "unlockables". A very poor COD4 copy attempt, but with the actual things that made the BF2 classes in the previous games worth while. No laser target for the sniper? No land mines for the heavy weapons? Thats absurd.
Damn it's nice seeing so many people are taking a stand with this game. My plan is to keep playing the beta a lot and then I wont even need to play the full game. ;)
It's worth noting that this game is supposed to have a full single player story - not like your average Battlefield. So factor that into your $60.
@Kyle81:
idk bf2 felt/feels spot on to me.maybe its the mouse but i mostly do fps now on consoles and man is bfbc bad at the shooting.
oh i forgot to add helis are fun =)
support+ good pilot skills=entire match without dying in heli.
@Zaid: Falls have been fixed to take less damage from shorter falls already.
I play support all the time. It's overpowered at the moment. I use one of the unlockable LAR's and don't have a problem in firefights, plus I can heal myself/teammates/fix vehicles/and call in mortar strikes.
@kelptocratic: If you liked that Mod then give Frontlines Fuel of War a try.
It was developed by the the Former Team Trauma who got hired then left EA to form KAOS Studios.
It came out last month and is pretty fun..
It plays like a BF game but it adds deadly Radio controlled machines full of C4 or Mortars that fly or zoom under tanks.
Best of all No Micro Transactions
sucks to see that Battlefield games are now being made in mind for console gamers..at least, it seems that way
@PresDNA: You know, I tried the demo for that one. I thought the opening cinematic was brilliant and engaging. However, I found the gameplay severely underwhelming, but I only played it for 10 minutes, tops.
Then again, I've found that occasionally I'll be unimpressed by a demo, but an encounter with the full game will completely change my mind. Anyway, I'll give it a rental.
I've tried playing the beta at least 5 times and I never even get through a round. It seems slugish, slow and ridiculously unbalanced to me but maybe I'm just doing something wrong, I dunno.
i played it a bit...it's alright...but then again, i'm still hooked of bf2 for the pc....and console fps' don't really engorge my epenis much...
grab a copy of BF2 for the pc for like 9 bucks at wally-world Crencete and you too can join the awesomest ingame squad - Futureboys! w00t lol
@illmatic291: Why has this troll not been banned yet? Take a look at his comments thus far...
Been playing the beta for a week now, it's pretty interesting. I think they need to tweak the gun damage just a bit, because there are moments when people are running at me and are able to knife me.
Sounds like fun. But there's one thing that's bugging me and I don't mean to be a dick about it...
It's affect not effect.
Sorry. I'll stop now.
I dont' know...seem people are hypocrites or we on the forum are a very, very small percentage of gamers. I hear people saying how they are not going to buy this and that from EA but when the numbers comes out, EA is doing pretty damn good. Now people are saying, "I'm not going to buy Battlefield Bad Company because they are nickel and diming us. Well people do what you are going to say. Don't buy EA until they change their ways, because they are doing that to every damn game now. Look at Madden, they are charging 60 bucks just to update player stats. Not to mention they are charging a buck to download cars for need for speed. What else....what else are you going to put up with!!! Screw EA.
Yeha...Sawing through trees, destructible environments?
Did Crysis receive such praise for having those features? It should have.
@Atheist Jew: People were too distracted by the graphics.
@nxp3: I'd venture a guess that's it's the latter of the two.
Honestly, I've been loving this game since I got into the Beta. Something about it just feels fresh and fun. I'll probably pick up to play over the summer.
@TheTime: You're kind of new, so I'll point this out gently ... the "kotaku article author" pretty much IS Kotaku -- the creator of the tower the other Kotaku gods dwell within, and which we minions gather around ;)
I love these kind of games, but the extra payment for extra weapons kind of irks me. What's next, RPGs where you pay extra for more spells? Ick. I've been enjoying Frontline, though ... all the maps are very different and different tactics must be employed for players to be sucessful. Single-player is pretty short, though ... and no co-op :(
I have both Battlfield 2 and 2142 installed on my PC, and am fighting the urge to buy this.
Dear EA,
Whenever you are done with your two microtransaction experiments, please give the PC a nice destructable enviroment incarnation of the BF franchise sans aformentioned microtransactions, with whichever art style that you see fit.
Thx.
Charging for content on that ships with the game at full price is stupid. It also isn't that great of a game when held against other online shooters on the 360.
I love the sniping aspect of BF:BC, but everything else is pretty much BLAH.
The problem with the Battlefield series is that the ground combat (FPS) component of it has always been sketchy. It never feels right, like your floating around clipping. I had always wished they could release an engine that would combine the FPS components of a game like COD, with the wider vehicle based combat of BF. But it doesn't seem like thats ever going to happen unfortunately.
@txshurricane: Sniping is some fun, but it didn't feel that different to me.
Despite the whole Downloadable content flamewar that's going on in the interwebs, I think this game is incredibly fun. It's got a huge amount of depth in it's gameplay mechanics, a heavy dose of skill is needed to do things, and it just feels fun. If Battlefield is about making you feel like your in a giant battle, this is a success story.
Definitely a purchase in my book