I have been playing the multiplayer beta of the upcoming Battlefield: Bad Company on the Xbox 360 for a few weeks, and I wanted to give my initial impressions.

Likes:

  • Wide open maps which are very open as compared to the smaller, close quartered oriented maps in COD4. They allow more freedom for classes like sniper, but seem to be already well balanced to where they can't dominate.

  • Nice selection of weapons kits, unlocks, and vehicle weapons so far.

  • New "Gold Rush" multiplayer mode is fun, and a nice change from typical MP modes

  • Destructible environments are just plan cool, although they need much tweaking before final release.

Dislikes:

  • Helicopter controls are just confusing. They were fine in Battlefield: Modern Combat. Should have left it alone.

  • Team killing is out of control. It was bad in other editions of BF, and just in this limited beta it is already rampant. TK'ing for the artillery strike and others is just frustrating. Follow in the steps of COD4 and just eliminate team kills all together.

  • No customizable weapon kits.

  • Weapons are way unbalanced. Machine gun hits barely register at close range.

Yes, I know this is still a beta, but I hope the dev team takes things like this into suggestion. I really like the beta so far, and will definitely purchase, but these few annoyances will likely turn people off eventually.


Comments
on Apr 13, 2008

I'm waiting for a Battlefield 3 announcement personally.

Considering Frontlines: Fuel of War has been violating some of the most basic principles of an online FPS title and now essentially has the player-base of a niche title when it should've stolen a large chunk of the Battlefield player-base.

While its nice to see DICE trying to bring BF to the consoles once again, the formula doesn't truely work unless its on a PC.