After playing more rounds of Battlefield Bad Company 2 (BBC2) than I care to admit, I have come to the conclusion that it is superior to its nearest competitor, Modern Warfare 2. Strangely, my conclusion is not supported by video game critics, who managed to hand MW2 an average of 94% on Metacritic, whereas BBC2 earned an 88%. Am I completely misguided in my judgment or, as is so often the case, did Modern Warfare 2’s tremendous hype-train subliminally strong-arm critics into handing out high scores, lest they piss off their readership who expects nothing less?
Some games just have an internal momentum that is hard to explain. It was a preordained conclusion that MW2 would garner high marks, its many design flaws over-looked and avoided in a ton of reviews, as if Infinity Ward can do no wrong. BBC2 did not enjoy this white-washing of facts when it came time for reviews and BBC2 and was treated more harshly for having the same problems as MW2, namely, a pretty short and uninspiring single-player campaign.
Abandon Solo Campaigns
I don’t think either game delivered a compelling single-player campaign and would urge both companies to abandon solo missions in the future. This is a controversial opinion but I think there is merit in the following argument: if you’re splitting manpower between two completely different modes, neither mode is getting 100%. Therefore, single-player campaigns in games like MW2 and BBC2, two titles known and acclaimed for multiplayer, arrive half-baked, six hours in length, have weak stories and little purpose other than a stealth-tutorial for multiplayer mode.
If campaigns were abandoned it would free up additional space and resources for increased multiplayer content; more maps, more modes, more weapons, just more of everything that increases a game’s value and worth over the long-haul. If there is a demand for a single-player campaign then I would urge the developers to create a stand-alone title, much like the original BioShock before it unfortunately succumbed to multiplayer with BioShock 2.
If they don’t think a stand-alone, single-player Modern Warfare or Battlefield game would sell, then why are both companies wasting resources on including said feature? The answer is so both companies can have a bullet-point on the back of the box, basically claiming that all of their bases are covered, there is something here for everyone. MW2 managed to escape unscathed in terms of its rating, but BBC2 was called out for its single-player mode and the result was a average score notably lower than its competitor.
In a perfect world, developers would release a multiplayer version of their latest game, priced between $39 and $49, and a full-blown single-player experience of least 30 hours in length, for an equivalent price. This ensures you pay a little less for what you really want….and you get what you really want, with neither side being shafted in the process.
BBC2 Vs. MW2 Multiplayer….FIGHT!
Multiplayer is where the real value of a shooter rests. It’s what gives a game legs and endurance. It’s what prevents you from returning a game to Gamestop in exchange for something else. It is here, in multiplayer mode, that BBC2 eats MW2 for lunch.
Servers
MW2 multiplayer is supported by a form of peer-to-peer connectivity. Without getting all technical, this basically means a player is selected from within the lobby to host the following game. That player’s console becomes the server for the round, sending and receiving data to all other players. This is a horrible way to create a multiplayer environment because the playing field isn’t level. There is ongoing argument about what I am about to say but my own experience doesn’t lie: the host of a MW2 match is at a serious disadvantage.
Some claim the host has the advantage in MW2, but I have proven to myself over and over again that, at least for me, this couldn’t be more untrue. In MW2 I can tell when I’m the host based on how my weapons behave; slightly compressed audio when using a rapid fire weapon. It’s like I can hear each shot getting bunched up. Then I notice that it takes far more hits on an enemy to bring them down when I’m hosting, a fact born out by my final score, which is always negative by a 1-3 ratio. If I’m not hosting, my kill/death ratio is a quaint 3 to 1, enough to lead the scoreboard in a typical round.
This tells me that MW2’s peer-to-peer hosting scheme is a fraud, simple as that. It takes all the heavy-lifting off the shoulders of Infinity Ward and Activision, sparing them the expense of investing in dedicated servers while offloading an illusory multiplayer experience. One more point: you won’t find any ridiculous Host Migration in BBC2.
Then there is Battlefield Bad Company 2, which uses dedicated servers, a far superior method of dispensing multiplayer data for a level playing field. Problem is, and listen closely EA/Dice, the servers have to work! I’m sick to death of EA constantly underestimating how many servers they need for every new game, followed by a press-release that says “…due to overwhelming demand…” blah-blah-blah, followed by two weeks of connectivity issues and server investment. This should not be an issue in this day an age. Dice has been making multiplayer games longer than most, have had this problem countless times, and appear unwilling or incapable of learning from past experiences. Meanwhile, gamers suffer for the first two weeks while EA/Dice try and get their shit together.
However, when the servers work, as they are working now, and everything is smooth as silk, the multiplayer environment has no equal.
I have one other issue about MW2’s peer-to-peer system that is worth mentioning: it detracts from what the designers can do with the environment. The reason Dice can completely destroy a map though the course of a round, felling buildings, shattering walls, etc, is because it runs on dedicated servers and can afford to exchange huge amounts of data without interfering with the latency of the game. If MW2 offered a destructible environment from within peer-to-peer, well, let’s just say you’d be watching a slide-show of lag. It just isn’t technically feasible and the game design suffers from built-in limitations.
Which Brings Me to….Moments
Moments. It’s a word I use a lot when discussing video games with people. Moments are those times when something so cool, so unexpected happens that it puts a big, dopey smile on your face. A moment is usually a one-of-a-kind event, something you’ll never be able to duplicate no matter how hard you try, the kind of situation that finds you begging for a instant replay so you can show your friends.
In order to have moments, you need a game that offers the ability to create moments. A title like Grand Theft Auto is a perfect example. It gives you a huge world, tons of weapons and vehicles, and the ability to do what you want when you want to whoever you want. In this way, it sets the stage for an anything can happen atmosphere.
In the two weeks I have been playing BBC2, I have had countless moments. A moment like the time I fired a tank shell into the flying fuselage of a helicopter, watching as it spun out of control towards the ground. Two guys bailed out, chutes open. Helicopter crashes into an enemy tank, both explode. One of the guys who parachuted out of the copter managed to glide down and land ON my tank. Unfortunately for me, he was a Recon armed with C4. I blowed up real good, but I laughed the entire time. That was a moment.
BBC2 is generous in its moment creating ability. It has no equal, thanks to the huge variety of options offered the player. With MW2, moments are few and far between, extremely limited in scope. Players don’t have much to work with. The environment never changes, there are no vehicles, little in the way of variety and it quickly becomes redundant. You seldom come away from a round of MW2 with a story worth telling.
In MW2, You Earn Perks. In BBC2, You ARE the Perk
Both MW2 and BBC2 offer a perk system, but the two differ tremendously in how they implement the concept. In MW2, perks are, for the most part, automated upgrades. For instance, calling in a helicopter to lend support until the other team finally shoots it down. It’s a hand-off experience, requiring little to no skill on the part of the player. All you have to do is kill X amount of players without dying and you get a temporary perk.
In BBC2, there are no temporary perks, just permanent upgrade options for the various classes. However, the perks are all sitting out there on the battlefield. Want a helicopter? Then go pilot one. Want a UAV? Then secure the console and man the controls. BBC2 doesn’t hold your hand in any way. If you want to kill people then you’ll have to muster some skills and do it yourself.
MW2’s perk system detracts from the overall experience because it forces players to, for lack of a better word, camp. Since the only way to get a perk is to NOT die, it forces a large number of players to basically hide. I have no problem with camping and hiding in games, but when your most popular game mode is tired old Team Deathmatch, camping feels completely out of place, a testement to MW2’s failure of focused design.
Focused Design
Infinity Ward included a ton of multiplayer game modes in MW2. Problem is, most people are perfectly content with Team Deathmatch, the second oldest multiplayer mode known to man. Part of the reason for this is because Inifnity Ward didn’t spend much time working on compelling game modes. They used the same stack of maps for every mode, which is simply lazy. You cannot shoe-horn every game mode onto every game map and expect quality.
Case in point is BBC2, which offer two main modes in Rush and Conquest, with some secondary modes like Squad Deathmatch. If Infinity Ward had designed BBC2, all game modes would be available for all maps, but Dice wisely understands a map needs to be designed for a specific game type. Hence, Rush maps are completely different than Conquest maps.
By focusing the design of the game around two completely different modes, BBC2 feels polished and balanced, whereas MW2 took a “kitchen-sink” mentality and hoped for the best, which didn’t materialize, evidenced by so few people playing anything but boring-old Team Deathmatch.
Why Would You Recommend MW2 Over BBC2?
I have been asking myself the above question for several days now and am struggling for a good answer. In a lot of ways, MW2 feels like a variation of Halo, only with modern weapons. It’s chaotic, fast-paced and confined, whereas BBC2 is far more focused, larger in scope with significantly more variety…plus the potential for infinite moments.
Would you say the graphics are better in MW2 than BBC2? Debatable. I would say close-range graphics in MW2 are more detailed and vibrant, but BBC2’s destructible environment more than makes up for the subtle details on a character model. When I launch a grenade at a wall, I want the wall to explode, not bounce off like like a tennis ball, as happen in MW2. I consider walls exploding to be part of the graphics universe and it enhances gameplay to such a degree that, in the end, there is no valid comparison between MW2 and BBC2: BBC2 is new school, MW2 is old school. I can never again enjoy, or treat seriously, a shooter that doesn’t allow for destruction.
Perhaps one would recommend MW2 over BBC2 for newer players. MW2 is the training wheels for BBC2, the game you start with and outgrow as your skills rise, eventually entering the world of BBC2, ready for strategy, tactics and actual team-based objectives. MW2 is boot camp for the real war you’ll find in BBC2.
One can’t really make an argument of MW2 over BBC2 because of developer support. Infinity Ward has been notoriously lazy in creating new content to support their games and take forever to address technical issues. For BBC2, Dice will be unleashing a ton of content and has a built-in store interface complete with a schedule of coming goodies.
Just a few days ago a valid argument would have been stability. BBC2 servers were offline for far too long and no one could play, something that didn’t happen at MW2’s launch, albeit for reasons related to their peer-to-peer multiplayer illusion, an illusion that cannot be patched or fixed, ever. Now that BBC2 servers are stable and humming along, MW2 has lost one of the few feathers in its cap.
So…I’m still fishing here and not getting any bites. I’m not finding anything MW2 does better than BBC2 in terms of multiplayer. What say you? Surely you loyal MW2 fans can point out some elements you feel are superior? Let me know in the comments below, after you’re done calling me every name in the book.
