Battlefield Bad Company 2

[Malc]

Perks and unlocks in multiplayer games are fine to me as long as they are handled right.

MW2 does a brilliant job of this in my opinion. There is a massive amount of progression to the unlocks, which keeps the player rewarded as they are playing, and similarly the game includes death streaks to help novices, as well as 'payback' or 'recovered from a death streak' rewards that give you a large bonus of XP to help out beginners getting to the better rewards later on.

As for Battlefield, I haven't really found the lack of help towards novices much of a problem. And I will always want unlocks to reward me for my play.

[Charlie]

Yeah, I can see how people like perks. It's just, personally, I feel playing well or winning the match is reward enough. I don't know how the perks work in MW2 (only played multiplayer MW2 for 30 mins) but in Bad Company 2 they go a long way in determining the results of an encounter, be it because your rival has 12x zoom sights compared to your 4x zoom, or has armour upgrades, smoke grenades or quicker reloading shells upgrades on their tank.

[jimtendo]

For a new player, i think the baptism of fire is a little tougher in Bad Company 2 multiplayer, than it is in Modern Warfare 2.
Reason being, at least in MW2 there were some default classes with some high end perks and guns with some setups. So at least when you're grinding up the levels you're not totally mismatched.
Whereas in BC2 (like Charlie mentioned) you have nothing to counter someone using a x12 scope or magnum rounds or body armour. And not even mentioning other firearms that are unlocked a long way down the line.

However, I've given up on MW2 multiplayer since the enjoyment was lost a long time ago. Too much BS happening in it. They've patched it of course with the infinite care package glitch and sniper dual weilding 1887's to name a couple of gripes among many.

It's just the fact that too many Super Smash brothers powerups are unleashed, you know, the AC-130/ chopper gunners/ pavelows etc which narked me.
Then there's grenade spamming/ grenade launcher spamming (whilst letting loose all your kill streaks) at the start of rounds 3 to 4 of Search & Destroy on your spawn site.

That's not to say BC2 is without its faults, like for example, spawn camping. though for me i can deal with that, and pretty much enjoying this a heck more. Sure, there's team snipers you meet every so often, and teams that only go for K/D ratios instead of objectives.

I think Killzone 2 (and to some extent Call of Duty: World at War) did it best when introducing new players onto the fold.
In Killzone 2 you could filter it so you could either be matched to players of similar rank, or you could choose not to.
Call of duty however, made (i think) lvl. 1 to lvl. 8 players play in seperate games to the rest.

[englishbob]

I was getting pretty "meh" performance from the Multiplayer visuals on the 360, upscaled to 1080p...

...until I dropped the res on the dashboard back to 720p, to my eyes it appears less "clunky"

I have no scientific proof of anything, but upscalling isn't its all cracked up to be sometimes.

[nonny]

Booted back to the dashboard, lag in every match? Welcome to my world fellas. It's been like that since I bought this game. I've yet to experience any different

[Rossco]

Not had one glitch or bit of lag in the 10 hours I've played this online now. It's been wonderful to play to be honest.

[analog dog]

This game is unforgiving in the extreme sometimes though,I'm like level 15 now and have unlocked a certain amount of upgrades but last night I was playing against a guy (level 24) who had some monstrous auto-shotgun that was one-shot killing me from about 20-25 meters away.
He was patrolling a zone so I camped and waited for him with my M60/Red Dot/Magnum ammo,saw him coming,opened fire and he popped me again!!
When the killcam came on I'd taken 20% of his health!!
The ****er was wearing body armor upgrades too..

This guy was basically playing as a ripper,the only reason he could do that was because of his rank and the upgrades that afforded him.
To come into that game as a low rank or (god forbid) a total noob there is no chance of coming out on top against that guy,this is where the balance of MW2 and it's loadout/perks feels more balanced,you always feel like you've got a chance.

[FelixofMars]

Maybe maybe not, certainly you can get unlucky and come in on high level rankers who will dominate a map but I don't think its really any different from MW2. Yeah there is more chance for you to get a lucky kill on a high level in that but generally for the whole time I was playing MW2 I felt I was up against it if I had some real hardcore nuts on the other side (even at higher levels) once they got their claws in to a few of the low rankers in the game and delivered a few predators etc then got the choppers the game was pretty much over.

I much prefer to think that at level 16 I lost to say one or two level 29 's than there are a class of snipers, knife runners, akimbo shottys running around racking the kills up then using a Pavlow on you from miles away with a chopper stored up ready to fire off.

The game I started in last night had lots of high levellers so in the end I started going Recon with X12 zoom, magnum ammo and they soon dropped the game when the NTSC guys started destroying them with various tanks, choppers etc ect.

This guy was basically playing as a ripper,the only reason he could do that was because of his rank and the upgrades that afforded him.
To come into that game as a low rank or (god forbid) a total noob there is no chance of coming out on top against that guy,this is where the balance of MW2 and it's loadout/perks feels more balanced,you always feel like you've got a chance.

[capcom_suicide]

The game I started in last night had lots of high levellers so in the end I started going Recon with X12 zoom, magnum ammo and they soon dropped the game when the NTSC guys started destroying them with various tanks, choppers etc ect.

Yeah I noticed that! I think we had 7 or 8 NTSC-uk'ers last night and when started there was only 4 of us and plenty of high rankers on the other side.

When the "Boyz" turned up in force and we all had comms on XBL we basically ripped them to bits and the top rankers just dropped the game! This tells me that if you play as a team in BF2BC2, even at low ranks, you can still beat an opposition of lone wolves, despite their rank 20+

It was a good laugh, and nice to see everyone online. At one stage when the squads spawned at the same place I had serious GRAW1 de ja vu seening screen full of players with NTSC-uk usernames!

Also sorry to Spatial for our shortlived heli ride. Didn't quite pull off the loop the loop.....

[spagmasterswift]

Was starting to think the choppa was more out to get me than the enemy, top funz last night hearing you boys panicking and then seeing it bouncing off the side of a cliff.

I unlocked some sort of body armour so looking forward to soaking up a few more bullets over the weekend.

[Spatial]

Also sorry to Spatial for our shortlived heli ride. Didn't quite pull off the loop the loop.....

I wasn't in it at the time, but I did get an amazong view from the mounted missile launcher as it took off, did half a barrel roll, and landed at the entrance to the base on its roof



I can't say anything though, my attempt in it was going well, until I totally fudged it and dropped us in the drink.

I still think it's hysterical that those high ranking players dropped out once we started handing their asses to them. Proof positive that if you're lone wolfing it in BC2, you will get owned by people playing as a squad... or as it was described last night, "a swarm of locusts"

They just can't compete with people using team play. Every tactic they tried, even the really dirty stuff like spawn camping, just didn't work because they weren't coordinating with anyone (or if they were, they were doing a pretty bad job of it).

You might have guessed from some of the girlish screams from me last night that I was really into playing this last night. Quality playing from all involved. The way we held off some of the attacks was just brilliant on times. Some real tactical play, some real all out aggression, some tense stand off's and just maximum fun.

[tbm]

I had a total stinker last night, jumping out of a tank to repair and selecting rocket launcher is pure fail of the highest order Thankfully I had the Helo antics to make up for my pish evening. Trying to repair one from a tower, as it bobs back and forth was a sight that makes me wish this game had the record function seen in Halo 3 Nobody believes you when you tell them, but it happened.

Quality stuff guys.

[Prototype]

Was playing this with Charlie the other night. One thing I found annoying is we had about 6 snipers on our team. And about 5 of them were camped in the same tower, whilst I was the only one trying to deploy the bomb. Plus the idiots who were just waiting for the chopper. I can say though I enjoyed this a lot more than MW2.

[capcom_suicide]

Was playing this with Charlie the other night. One thing I found annoying is we had about 6 snipers on our team. And about 5 of them were camped in the same tower, whilst I was the only one trying to deploy the bomb. Plus the idiots who were just waiting for the chopper. I can say though I enjoyed this a lot more than MW2.

That's the thing, you need to be playing with decent folk to get the most out of it.

I thought it was cool in a squad, but when the whole bloody team was NTSC-uk it was something else. Like Spatial said, I desribed it as a "Hoard of locusts" because that what we were, just destroying everything in you path.

Ammo, Health, spotting, heli pilot, tank drivers you name it, people just swapped to whatever was needed when a call came out for help.

A combination of the wife being busy with a course this week, my OCD and my fear of people dropping away from the game in classic NTSC style, has led me to put lots of hours into this week. Tonight is the last night of freedom, so I'll be on for more again!

I guess some ppl get addicted to achievements, I just get addicted to great game where I can blow stuff up!

[EvilBoris]

I can't say anything though, my attempt in it was going well, until I totally fudged it and dropped us in the drink.

All I could see were 2 tiny green arrows swimming through the icy water