On the Ball: Two Shooters Enter ?

[VanBasten]

Seems the focus alse went towards multiplayer...

Battlefield series has always been focused on the multiplayer.

 

[Irridium]

Seems the focus alse went towards multiplayer...

Battlefield series has always been focused on the multiplayer.

Too true.

I guess I worded that wrong, what I meant to say was they went from making the Single Player stand out to going back towards focusing on the multiplayer.

 

[GLo Jones]

I switched to Battlefield on the day of release, and never went back.

CoD had me on the verge of a breakdown every time I played it. I definitely preferred the single player of it, but at the end of the day, I'm a multiplayer guy.

The close-knit teamwork of Battlefield represents everything I love about multiplayer shooters.

 

[Hobo Joe]

The MW2 DLC will win by a massive margin - it has too large of an audience in comparison not to.

 

[Oyster^^]

COD, for the most part, is pretty simple. You see bad guys, you shoot 'em, you get shot, respawn quickly, rinse, repeat. There typically is much strategy. need to a cap a point? Rush rush rush. Need to defend it? Shoot shoot shoot M203. You can join objective gametypes and just go by those simple rules, and you'll do pretty goddamned good, even without communicating with your team. Try doing that in BC2. Not likely that it'll do much besides getting you killed.

Now then, I haven't played the BC2 singleplayer, so maybe it's so heavily similar to MW2, and completely different from BC1's SP, but for BC1, you had a wide variety of options. Strong point the enemy held town in a humvee? Sure! Pick off guys with a sniper rifle or go charging headfirst with an assault rifle or SMG or shotgun? Your call. Light tank or heavy or some sort of careless daredevil and head out only with a RPG? it's all up to you. Come in from the side or the front or open a few holes in the wall? Your choice.

MW2's choices consist of taking the alley on the left, or the alley on the right; and the game usually says "Roach! Take the alley on the left and flank them!" or something similar. Never mind that they play differently. MW2 is very speedy and quick and all, with sensitivity ranging from "slow" to "the flash". BC2 on full sensitivity takes quite some time.

In my opinion they're only "identical" in that they're FPS's and you shoot people in them, with modern-era guns.

Well I'd argue that as FPSs that you primarily shoot people in, packaged in a bogus modern conflict, they can be compared in some capacity. Don't get me wrong here, I think COD is boring as dirt and I appreciate all the things the BF allows you to do. Although I haven't actually played BC2... I'm working off videos and my experience with other BF titles. BF2 rocks my world.

Yeah so I agree that there are some significant differences. I just don't think that comparing them is stupid.

 

[Captain Pancake]

Is it just me, or does BC2 seems somehwat lower rez than MW2?

 

[Abedeus]

Here's the difference: Modern Warfare 2 has normal, functional mouse control and normal FOV. Bad Company 2 has mouse lag + mouse acceleration and a small FOV.

FOV can be modified up to 200 from the basic 55 (I have mine set on 95), I feel no mouse lag.

Honestly? Are you even trying to attempt attach "realism" to MW2? It's an arcade shooter dressed up in some HIGH SPEED LOW DRAG GO LOUD DROP TANGO SUPPORT. While some of the weapons resemble their real-life counter parts, the weapon stats are just goddamned confusing. For instance, despite the fact that TAR-21 and M4A1, FAMAS, L86, and MG4, M16, ACR, and F2000 all fire the same 5.56x45mm NATO cartridge, their damage is completely inconsistent. The TAR-21, FAmAS, M16, and L86(40) all deal more damage (40-30) than the M4A1, MG4(30), ACR, and F2000 (30-20). The first set also deal more damage than the M240B (30), which fires the much more badass 7.62x51mm NATO. The SCAR-H fires this and does 40-30, and the FAL fires it and does 55-35. I won't go into detail, but also consider the UMP-45 and the Vector. Both fire .45 ACP, yet the UMP does 40-35, and the Vector does 25-20. Where's the sense and realism in that?

(By the way, the guy with one arm is dead since COD4.

Anyway, the more important factor, which, this article more or less addresses, is that they are two completely styles of FPS. Comparing MW2 and BC2 is like comparing apples and carrots. It's just goddamned illogical and stupid.

yet, in Bad Company 2, you can take a .50 round in the chest and still survive, or even a regular 7.62 sniper round for that matter and act like nothing had happened other than havign a little red on your face for a few seconds.

If you want to use a hyperbole, at least... don't use it. Half a round of uzi to the chest is lethal for anyone not using the armor upgrade. And by using the same uzi, two hits to the head are lethal too, but since it's very hard to do it on the move against a mobile target...

You now why people survive those hits to the chest? New armors, plus the chance of hitting a metal object inside of the armor.


Also, why is everyone having problems with connection? Server browser, check every option (not full, not empty, ranked, PB and so on), then use Search. It finds servers fast, and you easily will find good servers with low ping. Note that I usually find 100-200 ping servers and it still doesn't affect my gameplay AT ALL.

Is it just me, or does BC2 seems somehwat lower rez than MW2?

...Does that even mean anything? What, less players? 32 per server is the norm. Smaller maps? Nope. Less fun? Huh, storming an objective while under fire of your team's and enemy's mortars, snipers and rocket launchers, throw some vehicles and you've got hell on earth.

 

[Wolfram23]

Is it just me, or does BC2 seems somehwat lower rez than MW2?

...Does that even mean anything? What, less players? 32 per server is the norm. Smaller maps? Nope. Less fun? Huh, storming an objective while under fire of your team's and enemy's mortars, snipers and rocket launchers, throw some vehicles and you've got hell on earth.

I think he meant the graphics. Like it matters.


Anyone back on topic: nice article. I have MW2 and it satisfies my FPS urges for now, but having been a BF:1942 fan I certainly see the appeal of BC2, and am somewhat debating if I should get it. Except that I just got FFXIII and God of War comes out in a few days... so maybe not.

 

[ReverseEngineered]

I agree completely with this article. Despite being within the same genre and even having similar stories, these are entirely different games that focus on different elements of gameplay. To compare them is to compare their focus more than their implementation. I'm sure something can be said for the execution (both were well-done on the larger scale but suffered from many issues in the implementation), but to say that one is better than the other says more about what style the person prefers rather than some objective measure of which is better.

Unfortunately, the two companies see themselves as competitors and they measure their success on their popularity. With so many differences, it's nearly impossible to say what will make one more popular than the other. Who knows where this will go.

 

[AngelOfBlueRoses]

"they are the same game."

Stopped reading there.

Why? The whole point of the article was to say how they're NOT the same game. Underneath the surface, they are far from the same.

OT: I like Bad Company 2 more than MW2. The freedom is better (I was always more of a bumper car person anyways) than the straight and narrow. MW2 was really fun the first time around and then got bleh. Multiplayer was only fun for around twenty levels. Now, it collects dust until I decide to trade it in for something better.

 

[TheSeventhLoneWolf]

Team Fortress 2 still beats both of them.

A game I respect which takes 60% of all realism, throws it out of the window. Takes a couple of cartoons makes a game from that style and still remains a balanced piece.

I do believe that MW2 and BC2 are similar, but not in many ways. One they are both FPS's. Two, They have the same or similar setting. Three. very similar art styles. That is all and nothing more really.

If you can pick up one game, look at it and say what it is and be correct about it to the other, they're not the same. At all.

Spoiler: useless point.

Even Yahtzee likes Tf2.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

The trouble with such a tightly scripted sequence of events is that it delivers that tension and pacing extremely well, once. After that you know what happens next.

Depends. If you're like me, it never delivers it at all. Instead, it just becomes frustrating because all attempts to play "outside of the box" are punished harshly. I've played through Modern Warfare one time, and even them a lot of the set pieces just annoyed me. The famous scene where your character dies after the nuclear explosion just irritated me because I had to drag a barely-moving character along until the game decided that it was time for me to croak.

 

[TheJulz]

Id take MW2 over BC2 anyday. Couldnt stand any of the Bad company demos

Good job, you played a demo.

 

[Shurikens and Lightning]

MW2 was horribly balanced with no such thing as squad, makes mah clan angry!

However, BC2 allows for infinite amounts of tactics and it feels rewarding to employ the right one.

 

[JayDig]

Good article.

It's annoying when two games have some kind of intense fan rivalry but they actually have very different types of gameplay.

 

[DirkGently]

Borderlands goes the other way from any semblance of realism. It intentionally goes to whacky and silly and guns that shoot lightning. COD doesn't though. In my opinion, it doesn't even try for realism, it just tries to appear as if it's going for realism. You know, like a movie like The Hurt Locker. It's not even trying to achieve the level of technical accuracy of Generation Kill. It's a lot like Black Hawk Down, but like they let the Hollywood types who said "fuck it, let's just add a pile of extra muzzle flashes and gunshots to goddamned everything" have a lot more control from the get go.

So it tries for realism and doesn't accomplish it, so it isn't realistic at all? So what are the damage values of those weapons in real life, you got the figures on that? I imagine not, because in real life you can't hardly predict the damage a gun/ammo combination will inflict, let alone accurately quantize it. The best games can do is approximate, and as you put it "appear to be going for realism". Whether or not those values are an appropriate reflection of reality is a subjective opinion, but considering the work it takes to balance a multiplayer game I'd say it's hardly random and it still doesn't have a damn thing to do with the discussion. 'Approaching realism' IS video game realism, whether it meets your stringent standards is something completely separate.

And to say that comparing these two games is illogical and stupid, is just a reflection of your own short-sightedness. This is an article about video game design, not weapon damage values.

You don't get it, do you? My point was that they aren't trying for realism (if they were it'd be a lot more like ARMA), they don't even try to be realistic or consistent with their own concept of 'realism' (see wildly different damage/range values for guns firing the same caliber ammunition). They just want to appear realistic. Not actually be realistic. And I did talk about design, before the rant on COD's inconsistencies and why any attempt to call it 'realistic' or 'approaching realistic' is just goddamned silly.

Also, I was talking about design.

 

[Abedeus]

snip

Compared to other games, it is more realistic. If I wanted 100% realistic, I would play America's Army. Or paintball/airsoft.

Still, you want realism in BC2? Play HARDCORE. Where snipers kill in one shot, and tanks smash your whole team with a single round. Challenging? Sure, if there was a limit for snipers on servers. Right now the teams just pick 12 or so Recons...

Besides, it's actually more rewarding to do it the normal way. Like I got a kill streak of 8 yesterday, by an accident. A tank with several people was rushing our point, someone used an RPG on the tank, then I hit it in the side. Two people dead + the engineer fixing the tan. Then I uzi'd the guy with the RPG before he blasted me, grenade into the building's window, another 2 dead. Then I stabbed guy who tried to kill my medic, and finally guy who was trying to set up the charge.

Where would be the fun if I could just one-shot them all in 5 seconds?

 

[samsonguy920]

Team Fortress 2 still beats both of them.

UT2k4 is emperor to all.
I've watched gameplay of both, and Modern Warfare 2 to me strikes me as nothing but another deathmatch game with little to offer for variance. B:BC2, however, offers a lot more, giving real opportunity for real strategy to each game. Granted I haven't played either, but if and when I have the money, I think it will be on Bad Company 2.

Of course every military leader will tell you strategy goes out the window once every battle has begun. But as long as the thought is there, that is what is important to me.