The first 7 years of its existence series Battlefield did not directly compete with other shooters. There was no single -user unit until 2008 at all ( Call of Duty And Heyspin Casino Medal of Honor They could not worry), and the multiplayer was focused on those players to whom the online modes of ordinary shooters seemed too simple, and full -scale maneuvers Operation Flashpoint And Armed Assault – Too complicated. Recently, the situation has changed: Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Openly amusing above Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The characters are mocking “elite special forces using heartbeat detectors” and snowmobiles (they themselves prefer ATVs). A more obvious announcement of the war would have been an inscription on the box with the game: “MW2 and guys from Infinity Ward , We will destroy you ".
Instead, on the box “Defining Online Warfare” on the box is also a spit in the soul of MW2, if you remember whose servers all online fighting are now underway. In general, there is a desire EA Dice become the developers of the main (if not the only) military series of the planet. And, you know, they can do it.
Go down the mountain
This time the embarrassment came out with RS-players at Dice: the first part of the Bad Company was released exclusively on the consoles. To understand where this game came from and what role it plays in the overall structure of the series, we must watch our inlet. To understand what the modified Frostbite engine is capable of (with which the owners of the Xbox 360 and PS3 met in the first Bad Company Battlefield 1943 , And PC players are faced for the first time), you need to buy a game or look for videos on YouTube-static screenshots do not convey all the splendor.
The word "photorealism" today sounds on every corner, but … separate panoramas of BFBC2 and really can be confused with the species cards or personnel of a documentary about Bolivia, Andes and the Republic of Chile. The levels are spacious, in appearance open. They are deftly combined with the backdrops, which depict the snowy mountains sparkling under the sun, a burning port or city under the shelling, and from this they seem even more. The position of the Sun and weather conditions are constantly changing, and the latter play an important role in the design of the missions – so, in one task you need to remove the sentries from a sniper rifle, synchronizing shots with thunder, in the other – go down the mountain slope during the strongest drill, warming up at the blown up by the blown up barrels with fuel.
In the first Bad Company, the cards were really open – no one particularly limited the player in the player's movements. BFBC2 uses much more straightforward rail missions: you can look around, but walking – not particularly. In 80% of cases, we move along the road, river or concrete aryk, shooting the enemies running towards. The program of events is so obviously directed and grinded that it does not even resemble Modern Warfare, but Half-Life 2. Another 10% are dedicated to pursuit on ATVs and armored vehicles with a cheerful firp along the enemies and flights of helicopters rushing after.
With the exception of one level, where, as in the good old days, they give us bugges and send us to an endless desert, the BFBC2 single is a slightly interactive six -hour movie. The plot of the game is a moderately idiotic, dedicated to the US war with Russia and the search for the details of the oversized weapon, which threatens to leave all Texas without electricity. Dice is just stuffing a hand in the composition of a coherent single -user story: if the single MW2 is a very Hollywood blockbuster with stars of the second size, then the BFBC2 is a movie with suspiciously magnificent landscapes and pyrotechnics immediately on a DVD.
Players
Ideally, Bad Company could be a completely different game-this can be seen in the remaining 10% of the campaign, when we are locked on an isolated section of the card and forced to perform short offensive and defensive missions. A lot of buildings, weapons and ammunition warehouse, opponents advancing with detachments in motorized rifle and tank troops … As if playing online Battlefield, but with the plot and bots.
In such moments alone, all the stunning capabilities of the engine are becoming noticeable: any wall can be broken by explosion of grenades or rockets, trees – tuck, most buildings – destroyed to the base. Already in the first Bad Company, it was possible to hole the surrounding reality, but in the second you can smooth the building with the ground and radically change the gaming landscape! This is the very destructive environment that the developers of military simulators are so often promised (and so ineptly).
In BFBC2, you can destroy almost anything, and the under -barrel grenade launcher in shootouts is the most important argument. With it, you can make an impromptu embrasure in the wall for firing at the enemy tank. You can break a piece of the second floor and deprive the sniper of a fire position. You can break through the wall on the move and run through the hole. Finally, enemies can ruin the house on the roof of which you are standing: when the Earth at any moment can leave under the feet, it is difficult to calmly kiss the enemy from a sniper rifle.
Destruction in BFBC2 not only looks very cool and realistic (dust, fragments, smoky pillars), they make you look at the very concept of a tactical shooter in a new way. It is no less dangerous to hide behind the same wall for the same wall than brazenly climb under the bullets. It is necessary to run away from place to place all the time, to keep alternative positions in mind, to competently use changes in the situation (holes in the walls allow fire to be firing on the enemy from the most unexpected angles). Fighting is very difficult and interesting – even at the minimum level of complexity, the enemy AI literally tears to pieces of the player accustomed to the monolithic decorations.
Place in history
BFBC2 contains elements of all games of the series ..
Battlefield 1942 (2002)
Battlefield: Vietnam (2004)
Battlefield 2 (2005)
Battlefield 2142 (2006)
Battlefield: Bad Company and Battlefield 1943 (2008/2009)
Battlefield Heroes (2009)
Many
The presence of a single in Bad Company 2 is certainly pleasant … But the games of the Battlefield series are still bought because of the multi-user regime. So, the BFBC2 multiplayer is the highest point of development of the series, it contains all the best features Battlefield 1942 , Battlefield 2 and first Bad Company.
Rush and Conquest modes are specially adapted for spacious maps, the active use of equipment and combat operations in the squads. In Rush, you need to sequentially capture (or defend) checkpoints: one team mines them, the other clears. It would seem that this is the most primitive form of the multiplayer … But the combat zone is constantly shifting, leaving the player of the player to break. Here we repel the railway station: first, the battle goes on the bridge with the product standing on it, then on the territory of the warehouses on the other side. One enemy line is worth it to shit with the ground, as we are immediately driven to the next. Conquest has a leisurely battle for holding flags, which are so competently that it seems as if there are not 32 people on the map, but two huge armies.
The technique in the multiplayer is used much more creatively than in the single. The presence of a good tanker or helicopter acce in the attacking side turns the game for the defenders into a last nightmare – it will be ironed from above with rockets and from machine guns, the tank methodically destroys shelters and cleverly dodges the launched missiles. But finally, the heroic sniper runs closely and attaches an explosive package on the armor … Well, to the control panel of a small unmanned helicopter (you can admire the battle picture and cause missile strikes from time to time) and there is a turn at all, like a game machine in the mid-90s.
All elements of modern multiplayer are present: four specializations of characters, titles and upgrades, customization of weapons (for the first time in the history of the series!) – just like in Modern Warfare 2. The unique feature of the series has been familiar since Battlefield 2 System of Squades. While at least one member of the detachment is alive, having died, it can be resurrected not at the base, but behind the partners, in the thick of the battle. In general, all aspects of the multiplayer in the BFBC2 are verified as this can be achieved only in a decade of experiments: the health of the fighter, the slaughter force of the weapon, the time of the repaan, the distance between the checkpoints – everything is designed to the smallest detail and works to create a convincing illusion of epic clashes.
The only thing for which the BFBC2 multiplayer is decisively adapted is for an ordinary defmatcha. The game has a team variety of this mode – Squad Deathmatch, the action of which takes place on cut versions of large cards from Rush and Conquest. Although the cards are reduced, and a unit of armored vehicles is assigned to each detachment, it turns out not a tactical action, but individual chases, fights and camping in dark angles. The mode is not particularly popular – it's like playing a truncated version of MW2 on the BFBC2 engine. For the completeness of sensations, you need a scope – when the guns rumble and the multi -barrel machine guns of helicopters screech. In mass tactical modes of BFBC2 there are never sagging, boring or inactive moments … Each player knows exactly what to do, the action develops as an integral Hollywood military film with the beginning, middle and end. Well, at any moment you need to be prepared for the fact that a burning helicopter will fall on the head-just not according to the script, as in the single, but by accident, due to the sluggishness of the comrades.
* * *
The online component DICE has been hidden since 2002 – this is the best online military experience of our time, where tactics, realism and arcation are mixed in strictly necessary doses. The multiplayer (with the exception of one ridiculous moment-for some reason you can’t shoot from the situation lying here) no serious disadvantages. Single – just the second attempt by Dice to instill Battlefield plot single -user regime. This is a spectacular, colorful, spectacular shooter, but it is far from the best representatives of the genre (the list of which is currently exhausted by MW2). But if the entire single Bad Company 3 will be the same as the best moments of the second part, then the series will simply not have competitors.
Reigracy – Yes
Cool plot – No
Originality – Yes
Easy to master – Yes
The justification of expectations 90%
Gameplay: 9
Graphics: 9
Sound and music: 8
Interface and management: 8
Waited? A shooter about special forces that Modern Warfare 2 could put on both shoulder blades if Dice had more experienced scriptwriters and designers of single -user missions.
Mania rating: 9.0
"Fabulous"