Battlefield Bad Company 2 - Xbox 360

I've been a huge Battlefield fan for a while, having played & loved both BF1942 and BF2 on the PC. I've also played and loved COD:MW on the PC as well, but have not touched MW2 yet, so I will make no comparisons between the two.The single player is not anything special here. I have not finished it yet but have progressed far enough to make a judgment on it. It seems to play out somewhat like a movie; The Dirty Dozen meets Indiana Jones...The cut scenes cropping up all the time do seem to interrupt the flow of the game and some scenes I felt were just unnecessary. Your teammates' AI is not the best; At times it feels like it's just you out there and your buddies hang back while you take all the fire up front (I felt the same way about the first MW). I think there is a hard balance to strike between allowing the player to have control over how they play the game and the efficiency of teammates. If your computer-controlled teammates are too good, you may find yourself following them and acting as support / second fiddle to them rather than the other way around. I think this is an inherent problem with these types of games.What mainly attracted me to this game was the multiplayer. BF games have traditionally been known to be heavily weighted towards MP rather than single player, so my 5 star rating takes that into account as well as my overall satisfaction with this purchase. I love the MP in this game. I like that there are objective-based game modes that reward the player for defending/taking objectives and supporting squadmates. The maps are quite large also. Before buying this game, I thought 12 vs 12 would be too few players (having been used to playing with 40-64 players in BF1942/BF2 on the PC, but 24 players works just fine, especially with the ability to spawn at a squad member's position. On the matter of spawning, I've almost never been spawn-killed when playing (unless spawning at a squad member who is under fire), which is nice. At first I was weary of not being able to go prone, but playing the BC2 demo and now the game put my worries to rest. It just works. Snipers can still snipe, etc. As large as the maps are, if you were able to go prone as a sniper, it would just kill the game; there would be too many campers sniping you at long range, who you would never be able to see. Allowing players to go prone would have probably killed the gameplay mechanics and I understand why EA kept it out of the final release. This could not be a battlefield game without vehicles, and this game delivers, although I would have liked to have a little more variety as in BF2 such as including the DPV or LAV, just to mix it up a little. I also would have like to see more than just Russians vs. U.S. (adding S. American milita?), although this would not have fit as well with the SP story. At the very least they could have included more faces for players or could have made some more generic as every US medic has the same mustached face...It would have been cool to be able to customize what helmet/hat/beret you could wear but I understand that EA probably wanted the player to be able to easily visually distinguish between classes for gameplay reasons. The hardcore game mode is also pretty fun... Anyway, I won't go into everything here because other reviews have touched most everything else I would have mentioned.In closing, multiplayer is flat-out fun. It's a DIFFERENT style of play than MW and if it's not for you, then it's not for you. But I for one, love the team-based gameplay.

I absolutely love this game. As a disclaimer, I have to say I have only played mulitplayer online and I have only played hardcore mode. I have been playing the online multiplayer for 3 days only and I am hooked. I am a fan of MW2 and that was my game of choice for a long time but I was getting tired of the same small maps, and running around and getting gunned down so quickly. I prefer to have some time to move around slowly, scan the areas, driving vehicles, blowing up buildings completely and being in a squad with other people who know what they are doing is rewarding when you get to play your role properly. I have read the negative review complaining that you have to be in party chat to talk with everyone and that is true to a certain extent but it is not a negative by any means. The game is not meant to be played where your entire team can sit and chat. It would do no good. In MW2, the maps are small so if I say, "There is a camper behind the barrels in the cave" everyone on the map can hear me and be there in a relatively short time and take action. However, in this game the maps are HUGE. It would do absolutely no good to be able to talk to everyone AND it would take away one of the joys of the game which is only talking to your squad and working as a team with your squad.Originally I thought the graphics would bother me as I really like great visuals and appreciate games that have them. I have a 65" and a 70" television in my house that I have xboxes hooked up too. Because of the large size, it somewhat pixelates the images and makes them not nearly as crisp as looking at a 40" television. After playing for a few days, I can honestly say the visuals are great and don't discourage game play at all. I even popped MW2 back in and was surprised that I did not find it to be a huge difference. I think what is the most lacking in BC2 is the foliage but the game play immerses you so much that you don't care. You have to remember the maps are huge, and there are so many different vehicle that you can operate that they had to give somewhere.The sound is phenomenal. If you have a surround sound system, you should purchase this game just to experience it. If you don't, this game is a great excuse to purchase one. The explosions really rock the room and are ground shaking. The planes screaming by overhead can be felt. No game I have played comes close in terms of realism (my experience from movies only). And let me be so bold to say if you are a medical marijuana patient living in a state that allows you to partake and you play this game while heavily medicated... oh boy are you in for a treat.Now for what I do not like about the game. I am not used to not being able to go prone. I suppose that is good because it would make the snipers absolutely unstoppable. I don't like the snipers either. I will save judgment for whether or not they are too hard until I actually get better, but for now I think they ruin gameplay a little. As I said before though, I only play hardcore mode so perhaps in the regular mode when they shoot it shows on a map or something but in hardcore mode there is no map for you to see, no crosshairs, no HUD and because the maps are so huge and they can get these 12x optical scopes they can take you out long before you ever spot them. Regardless though, it is a game I look forward to playing before work, after work, and I am excited for my wife to leave this weekend so I can crank the surround sound up completely and just have a great time.