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DICE Sweden opened up the Battlefield Bad Company multiplayer beta on March 25th for Xbox 360 owners. The multiplayer beta features two maps; Oasis and Ascension. Oasis has all the available vehicles (heavy tank, light tank, armored car, attack helicopter, and artillery) to use in a flooded desert valley near a bustling city. Ascension drops players into a mountaintop village surrounding a monastery. Gold Rush is the only mode available in the beta and it tasks one team of defenders with holding off the attackers as they try to destroy a series of gold crates scattered throughout the map. Every set of crates the attackers gain rewards them with a boost to their number of reinforcements and a new area of the map opens up to fight over. Multiplayer will support up to 24 players and feature the same large-scale battles found in previous Battlefield games.
The beta isn’t the best Xbox 360 has seen that is for sure, and on launch day, servers were terrible. Hopefully none of this will be in the final game, EA is known for their awesome servers after all, and their online support has been known for setting tons of industry standards. With all jokes aside however, lets get right down to the bone of this beta.
There is no way to get in the room as your friends. You can only join random rooms and there is no option to invite. The full retail game will have an option to invite your friends, but they did not get that into the beta, why, I have no clue. Not being able to communicate with your entire team is a nuisance as well, making it hard to coordinate attacks. The in-game chat is squad based, with proximity based chat for good measure. However, there is no way in the beta to set who your squad mates are so you just have to hope the people on your squad actually have headsets on and they don't have their voice setting set to friends only.
The game is pretty fun if you ignore the fact it is virtually impossible to coordinate any kind of attack because no one is talking. I was able to try about three vehicles before I got my ass handed to me then decided to quit. They all handle pretty much like you’d expect them to; the Hummers control with good acceleration, cornering, and traction; boats are very fast and of course, stop working on land. The tanks are the powerhouses, offering powerful armor, fast, efficient and good traction. Most of the vehicles will also allow you to take other teammates with you and have them man a gun. For the lighter vehicles, having a second person is the only way to have the gun be used. The tanks the driver fires the primary gun and the rider fires the secondary guns.
One of many vehicles you can expect to operate.
The graphics aren’t mind blowing but, they’re good enough you won’t care. When the left thumbstick is held down to sprint, the camera has a nice little shake feel. Holding the left trigger downs bring the HUD to a gun view. Explosions are nice, that’s probably one feature DICE tried to emphasize on. The destruction resulting from explosions is on par too but I was expecting more. With a grenade launcher you can blow out walls, see glass shatter from surrounding buildings, and bricks fly around from the destruction. It’s a really cool feature, especially in the tank when you want to close the gap between you, and your camping opponents, otherwise useless in most situations.
Here is something just a little bit depressing just recently revealed about the title; if you haven’t already read all about it, EA has decided on a very heinous little scheme to make you purchase some weapons. Yep, you have to, with real money, buy some weapons. In the unlock section, several of the weapons are marked with “Purchase this weapon on Xbox Live Marketplace”. This shouldn’t be surprising, EA is known for making consumers pay for an ”unfair advantage”. Those accustom to Call of Duty 4’s perk system may disappointed to see none of that here. In a move similar to Battlefield 2142, the number of soldier classes will be lowered, resulting in a combination of the classic soldier classes. The same classic classes remain: Assault, Demolitions, Recon, Spec-Ops, and Support.
Those of you used to instant respawns in Call of Duty 4, get ready for a boring ten second wait after you die. Another unique feature in Bad Company seen in a few other games is that when you die you can choose to respawn at your base, or with your squad mates. If you respawn at your base you have access to any of the available vehicles, but you then may have to drive 3/4 of the way across the map to get back in the action. If you spawn with your squad you come in with one of your teammates. If they are driving a vehicle you will be put in the secondary seat so you can man a gun for them, but if they are on the ground walking you'll join in right beside them. Spawning with your squad gets you right in the action, but you don't have your own vehicle.
Battlefield Bad Company is sure to please the Battlefield vets and fans across the Xbox 360 when it ships this June. Newcomers may find themselves a bit lost in the huge open environments and change of run-n-gun style, and other FPS players accustomed to “CoD4” may find the title too much of a change for their liking. We’ll have more on Bad Company when we bring you our review, this June.
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