BC2 Review, opinions so far... Options

[Magik5]

From last nights experience of trying to connect to servers, i pretty much gave up and went to bed as the game would either CTD on the server browser or say the connection to the server has been lost after each attempt at connecting. But hey, its beta - tried again when got home this afternoon and gave it another shot:

Not had one crash to desktop as of yet today, the server list populated as it should - even tho the server browser is a little slow to sort itself out.

Trying to add friends to the friends list didnt seem to work - you could successfuly search and find who you wanted to add but upon them accepting the friends request they still did not appear in the list - however when this gets working itll be a handy "quick connect" tool to join the server your mates are on.

When in the game, its very pretty to look at and runs fine at custom high settings for me (Q6600, 4870 1gb, 8gb pc6400) and not so far run into any tearing issues or the like (6 tells me he has this on his 8800gts sometimes). The weather effects and explosions etc are fun to watch, as well as watching a wall being blown out or a few trees being crumpled.

Movement takes a little getting used to, e.g. you cant move left or right when sprinting, but this i can get used to.

It doesnt feel consoley to me, however i think theyve tried to be clever with the movement to mimic a real life soldier, e.g. when you jump the camera moves along with the soldier to make you almost feel like your jumping with him. When knifing someone (managed 2 in a row because i accidentally spawned in as a sniper as was so disgusted i went on a knifing spree ) you see the soldiers arm come flying out with the stab and the camera wobbles a little along with it. I like these touch's because they connect you with the soldier your playing with an bring you that little bit closer to the game.

The pace of the game so far seems good, you can get a few good kills in before you die, or you can end up getting slaughtered a few seconds after spawning - pretty much the same as bf2 as it depends where the current action is.

The weapons are good so far, the sounds are great and the recoil animation are more realistic and lean more towards say PR then they do bf2. Monkey will be happy to know its still possible to n00btube people from a fair distance as i luckily managed this today playing as assault class.

The last game i played i got dropped from the server at exactly the same time 6 did - even though we were both playing on different servers which was rather odd.

So far so good - i have high hopes for the final release with the extra game modes and single player aspect - however its not quite polished yet and there are many bugs yet to fix before itll be a smooth ride.

[MonkeyFiend]

I've played for a few hours this morning and again just now. I thought I'd post a short review without reading the others (and hence being influenced, so apologies if I repeat stuff)

First impressions... well it's a beta, some of the stuff like the server bowser is bad e.g. it lists servers alphabetically with no means of sorting them by say ping. Usefully the best UK server are multiplays, so they're easy enough to find. The friend list thing isn't working at the moment, but was a frature that should have been in the original bf2 and should be handy.

Connecting to server was flawless for me.. I've heard reports of crashes etc., however I've not had any problems so far.

Gamewise I had everything on max and it handled it fine, although seemed a little slow. I mean in actual movement speed, the respawns are fast at 5 or 6 seconds or so. Turned everything to low, also handled the same.. I threfore assume the pace of the game is a little slower than I expected, although this is made up by the lack of waiting for respawns. The 4 classes in the game, recon (sniper), assault (noobtube!), engineer (Anti-tank) and Medic. All seems fairly straight forward the engineer class is basically a merging of AT/Engineer, while the the assault class takes the ammo bags of the bf2 support class.

The noobtube only carries 2 rounds (but at least assault can drop an ammo box). It does however have no discernable range limitations and no yaw to the shots.. meaning I managed to noobtube a building while parachuting in and also from a hill managed to noobtube an unfortunate at the far edge of my draw distance. Only a few hours of playing and being accused of cheating already. Bah.

After being hit your health recharges, like halo. Medics are only there to revive, therefore limiting their usefulness

Effectswise, it's all very pretty. While epic explosions are very nice I did find it a little on the busy side; stuff smoking and blowing up all around me, was difficult to find actual people to kill. When I did find people perhaps my aim really is balls, but I didn't find the hit reg to be particularily good, especially using the machine gun on a tank.. just couldn't seem to kill anyone with that.

The noobtube fires a bit like mw2, this'll take a bit of getting used to. As will the running - can't run and move sideways, unlike bf2. Basically this is first impressions, at the moment I feel the balance is off in the favour of snipers - they can actually kill things, whereas assault seem to empty clips without killing... foreseeing a whole bunch of people on the EA forums moaning about hit reg.

Other points, the field of view is pretty limited on my temporary 4:3 monitor (my widescreen being repaired). The helicoptr took of like it has no weight or intertia which just felt.. wrong. I've only found crouch, doesn't appear to be a prone (which for snipers seems weird). At present you can't invite people to yrou squads

All in all, certainly nothing that would kill the game and has been fun so far. I'm interested in some squad work as I think this will really change the nature of things. Essentialyl the game is very promising so far (providing your system can handle it )