Random brain farts on tech, games and gunpla: Battlefield Bad Company 2 review

Overall-7/10

Home sweet home.

Gameplay-8/10
Win
-engaging multiplayer
-player class and 3 new multiplayer mode
-entertaining singleplayer
-destructible world now changes gameplay
Fail
-High ping across all server
-sever browsing experience just as bad as BF2
-does not save your player or server preference
-singleplayer story fails
-singleplayer tries too hard to imitate call of duty

Visual-7/10
Win
-Huge amount of particle rendered
-highly interactive and procedural world looks impressive
-well rendered skybox and backdrop
Fail
-poor shadow draw distance
-brightness and contrast not well calibrated on default
-game generally too bright for comfort

DICE horrendous reputation to release buggy game is back in full force, now lets hope it follow previous trend where the patches to fix them keep flowing in. After leaving the PC market for the console with Bad company, its sequel return to a mulitplatform release with promise of those huge multiplayer battle with vehicles.
The developer seems to be targeting call of duty modern warfare 2 while developing the singleplayer segment of this game. Instead of overtaking or differentiating themself in a postive way, they copied mindlessly. From all the mindless chase around the globe to kill a target, to ridiculous boss kill finale, the only thing different is that you have a bunch of entertaining squadmates from your local circus. The story is just as weak as modern warfare 2, in fact even worst, with you chasing after a imaginary super weapon made by japan falling into the hands of terrorist.
However, it is still entertaining to visit various breathtaking environments with the advance world destruction and physics implemented. Hiding in a building too long while taking shells from a tank and the building structure will be taken out piece by piece till it crumble entirely bringing you down together with it. From buildings, towers to concrete slabs, things fall apart while you shoot, shell and explode your way to zoom in on your kill. This is the kind of physics implementation advertised by physx years ago but failed and clearly surpass crysis.
Visually, you soon realise night looks too bright, day burns your eye, particle or fog ends your life. Expect alot of time wasted on calibrating the game to your viewing needs unless you wear sunglasses during gaming.While particle obscure your vision, your AI enemy still fire at you accurately is a pain in the ass. In multiplayer fights, expect people to lower the particle count intentionally and you will soon follow suit. But this greatly reduce the visual quality and special animation as a whole.
For the environment is well rendered at first sight till you start seeing short shadow redering distance start clipping up,texture isnt that high res and the seemingly great rendering distance is actually made up of well integreted backdrops. But when explosions start rocking the world and see your beloved battlefield start crumbling, the game actually look impressive.
The server browsing issues are back, not showstopping like those from BF2 but still irritating enough to think twice firing up the game. Manage to get a server with decent ping and you will face issues like unbalance team where its possible to have 31 vs 1. Else, the 3 different multiplayer mode is great addition and variation. With the above mentioned world destruction fully implemented in multiplayer too, you will be delighted at the destruction unleashed. The multiplayer have slowly evolve from messy 64 "grab a vehicle" multiplayer into one that is more granular and emphasize more on team work and strategy.
Frankly speaking what make this game great is the well implemented procedural world destruction,seperating bad company 2 from its old predecessor and modern warfare 2. But i m still disappointed at the numerous bugs and poor design decision present but after years of checking out games make by DICE, i m actually come to expect these problems before even installing the game.

Cant see dood!