The Quickfire Q&A is our schizophrenic antidote to over-worded, boringly constructed articles, giving you all the key info plus a joke or three in snappy question-answer format.
Next between our cross-hairs is the follow-up to the fun but flawed Battlefield: Bad Company, in which men in padded camo helmets fire RPGs at walls to knock them on top of other men in padded camo helmets.
So what were you playing?
A 10-man round of Capture the Flag on an arid seaside map called “Flag Map C”. Probably a provisional title, yes. It was an Xbox 360 build.
Where were you playing it?
Ooh, can’t tell you that. Bit embarrassing. Let’s just say I was at an event in London run by a certain “E. Gamer”. No wait, that’s too obvious – how about “Euro. G”.
What’s Flag Map C like then?
Seems to be an old industrial port town near a dried-up river delta – think abandoned shipping containers, old sailboats sunk to the oarlocks in sand. I saw an entire tanker high and dry in the dunes, just like the start of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. On the outskirts of the town you get low brickwork houses, but there are two or three storey buildings further in. Plus a lot of corrugated metal fencing and bombed-out cars.
You know what would be cool? A multiplayer map aboard a ship you can actually sink.
Your immediate impressions on picking up the controller?
It didn’t feel too different from Bad Company, really. The combat knife is now on left bumper rather than being buried in the weapon select, which makes it easier to melee kill. Other than that, business as usual. Left trigger for iron sights, click the left stick to sprint, right trigger to fire.
Can you lie prone this time, or is it still just standing and crouching?
The latter. It’s hard to spot other players in Bad Company 2 even when they’re standing – few primary colours or clean edges, lots of incidental detail, and damaged buildings generate huge, lingering clouds of dust – so I guess they didn’t want to make it too noob-proof.
What about the freeform destruction part? Did the game look like it was working harder than its predecessor in that respect?
Not that I noticed, but then I spent a lot of my time at the controller crashing helicopters. The man behind was most amused. Objects seem to come apart in smaller pieces, and I was able to level buildings with airstrikes, but you can’t knock them to the floor, piece by piece, with things like RPGs and rockets.
Never bring a chopper to a tank fight.
What about classes and loadouts?
You’ve got Assault, Engineer and Recon roles as before – no Specialist or Support this time, though the new Medic class retains some of the abilities of the Support class. Assault players get rifles and grenades, Engineers pack shotguns, repair tools and anti-vehicle rockets, Medics get those chest-zapper revival things and Recon troops are the snipers.
Your prognosis, then?
I liked the original Bad Company, and the sequel’s dancing to the same tune. Could face serious competition from MAG though – there’s the same rough-and-ready urban warfare vibe, but MAG supports more players per side and gives you more unique, interesting ways of organising them.
The game’s out on 2nd and 5th March 2010 in North America and Europe respectively for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
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This was a horrible Q&A and I’m pretty sure it’s outdated. because from what gameplay I’ve seen whole buildings can be leveled now.
Terrible Q&A! You have so many things in it that are just completely wrong. Like Fox sais, there is totall destruction. Also what you say about the classes is wrong. Medic wasn’t even in the last Bad Company at all, and you don’t even mention that the support class is missing. Makes me wonder, have you even played the game?
I’ve reviewed the info in the article and you’re correct, chaps: total destruction is indeed possible, but it’s not quite as emergent in nature as, say, in Red Faction Guerrilla. You can flatten a building with airstrikes, for instance, but you can’t bring it down piece by piece with grenades.
As regards your second point Aggesan, there *were* medics in the last Bad Company – they just weren’t known as “Medics” :p the missing Support class carried medical packs.
Sorry for the screw-up. How embarrassing! Will edit the article presently.
thats disappointing, i was really hopeful they would take building destruction to a new level.
BF BC started it with wall destruction, than RFG completley made me paper my pants with there physics engine, leveling a building with a gigantic hammer has never been so much fun.
hopefully BF BC2 will at least match RFG if not surpass it, if they dont ill be extremely disappointed.
In fairness though BC2 is a completely different kind of game to RFG – a tactical shooter, not an action sandbox. If you could knock every building in the game down with your rifle butt it wouldn’t do much for the map balancing – what’s to stop one team positioning a few snipers at one end of a town and sending out a couple of men to knock away all the intervening cover?
well not in MP obviously, that would ruin the game.
but using air strikes or C4 or explosives in the SP should bring down a building.
anyone remember one of the first previews of KZ2 GG said, when using high powered weapons you will be able to bring down whole buildings?
and as a example they showed that part in the first level.
one thing i really want to see implemented into FPS is environmental hazards.
make the player think twice before he pops and shoots.
thats the problem with 99.9999% of shooters, all you need to do is take cover, pop up, shoot, take cover, rinse and repeat.
developers need to try and break that pattern, not only buy grenades though other means.
You *can* knock down buildings with explosives and whatnot, but they disintegrate in a more scripted manner than in RFG. A player couldn’t, for instance, blow away a load-bearing wall and watch the whole structure fall sideways under its own weight, much as it would in real-life – the physics and destruction engine isn’t that sophisticated.