Steam Roundup: Battlefield Bad Company 2

Now, I've played a decent amount of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 before but I hadn't touched past the second level in the campaign. That was the goal this time. I have heard it was a decent shooter campaign and love the witty dialogue between B-Company and figured I'd give it a shot.

As anyone who's played both games can tell you, Battlefield games are a lot different than the Modern Warfare style of game. The pacing is much slower and your avatar is a lot more susceptible to bullet, encouraging you to peek along a bit more carefully. I played through CoD4 not too long ago and found the change in pace to be okay. Personally, I like the speed of the CoD games but am not afraid to try something different. There were a few different spots where I wished I could just book my way past a fight but it wasn't too bad.

The campaign wasn't really anything special. It was pretty much the now standard run from point A to point B to point C structure, with a few 'defend this point' and 'mounted gun' sequences to change things up here and there. The story was predictable but had some pretty great characters, particularly the stoner pilot who flies you to all your missions.

The only other thing I feel I have to mention is sound design. While the music is by the books and boring for the most part, the sound effects and voice acting were phenomenal. Battlefield games are known for their unbelievably loud and sharp sound effects and it is the best I have ever heard here. Shooting sounds different when you fire in a structure or outside and you can even hear the shells falling to the ground in the places where you would hear that. Shots echo throughout the level and the din of war soon becomes the only thing you can hear. Beautiful.

The voice acting is no slouch either, mainly B-Company. These characters are what most people remember most about the last game, their hilarious comments and witty asides standing out in this genre full of machismo and military dialogue. Unfortunately, the best of this only occurs if you stop the action entirely and hang around with your group. It is then that they start to talk about things like what if having a woody was instead called having a clarinet or what the Sarge's MMA name would be. I laughed long and hard at several of these and only wished that more people would get to hear them; I expect most people don't even know they exist.

I enjoyed this campaign a lot more than I would have expected. First person shooter campaigns are becoming so by-the-numbers nowadays that I groan every time a new one comes out. Bad Company 2 managed to do enough with its humor and interesting takes on standard genre affairs to make me not absolutely hate playing through it.