Battlefield BC2 BETA Reviews

[FieryDragon]

How's the game so far, peeps? I can't play until I get home tonight. Off work in 2 hours from this message. Be sure to add me on Steam if you not already have me. Search for pqchadd, that name is my profile name, so it should be my profile.

[Zantheus]

Well there are a few things I dont like about it so far....

-There is no option to go Prone (not even Snipers) which is GHEY!!
-No way of getting more ammo when you spend it all unless you pick up dead guys kit (I was sniping in hills ran out of ammo, had to run in town and fight with my pistol) I got 15 kill streak though before I had to use pistol
-you need to paly with the Video settings a bit...it ran choppy for me at first but then I got it up there running smooth

[Rand{CLR}]

Ok, lots not to like:

I haven't figured out how to keep the scope up when sniping. Makes it almost impossible to tell where your shots go. Any help? Anyone?

No prone=lame.

Squads seem a bit, well, stupid now. I didn't notice a key for squad commands, but I'm going to look again.

It takes a lot of force to destroy terrain. Nading boxes? Good luck.

No exhaustion--in other words, unlimited sprint/run. Too simplistic.

Incredible inaccuracy of early weapons. But that's not unique I guess. Same seems to apply to mounted weapons though.

They need to get VOIP working, and need to tweak text chat. It is VERY hard to chat in this game. I think you need to hold the key an inordinate amount of time to get the typing prompts, and hold it again to send. Annoying.

Knifing is spotty. They'll probably fix this. But it also looks lame--try it. You're throwing your whole arm out in front of your body like you were zapped with a stun gun.

Poor mounted weapon location. I found one spot where the mullion (in other words, the division of glass) in a window completely blocks about a 30 degree arc smack in front of a mounted MG in the second floor. It's actually more funny than anything.

There may be an inbalance in vehicles, but I need to give that one more time. Better TOW locations and vehicle selection may help too. This map has a very strange progression thing going on with different vehicle spawns, and the vehicles are not balanced per side. Anyway, it's hard to take down a tank. I only died once, when the lag spikes the Beta guys are already aware of caught me. While tanking and attacking tanks on foot, I see a TOW only does 30% tops to the front plate. RPGs are much worse. The Bradley main gun position absolutely sucks--four-round 20mm burst before you overheat, and no access to Bradley TOWs. The secondary MG in the thing is actually far more useful. The AA vehicle has a very fast overheat also.

I'll give it more time, but it's nowhere near as good as even 2142, which was clearly inferior to BF2 and BF1942.

-Rand

[Caddys83]

whew, I'm glad im not the only one who had a mix thought about this game.

[Skud]

No prone? Maybe I'll just stick with MW2 until they put out the gold edition.

[Rand{CLR}]

I think that sleeping on it, I figured out the element that had been bothering me as sort of a background piece: even with an expansion of the point of view, it's still too narrow. There is nothing approximating peripheral vision, and it's pretty constrained overall.

I never worry about this with other games, as I always go with the default, so it never became a conscious thought last night. However, it's clearly different from other shooters.

-Rand

[Jenan]

It's been pretty good. Although the map is quite terrible, the gameplay is fast-paced and fun...just don't expect this to be the sequel to BF2 - it's nothing like it. The weapons feel very big, clunky and inaccurate and the mouse lag is terrible.

Vehicles are pretty good but aircraft feel way too simple and don't last long in the air. It's great that the bushmaster on the bradley only fires a couple round bursts and not full auto - more realistic (and you get the TOWs with a gadget thing, Rand). One thing that I am in love with is the sound engine, it's sooo amazing!

Performance is pretty awesome too for the amount of stuff going on. Using an e8400 @ 3,8 and a 9800 GTX OCd with settings on high plus ambient occlusion I am getting 0 chop whatsoever, even in intense firefights. Probably in the realm of 35-50 FPS.

I am pleased so far but they have quite a bit of stuff to work on.

[Duke{CLR}]

here are a few comments after playing a bit and most of the time has been setting up my controls.

I can't comment on performance because I'm on my laptop on a crappy connection so I will hold off until I get home and fire up the vasectomator.

The deal breaker for me will be the lack of in game voip, if this doesn't get fixed I will probably cancel my order. Voip can make a huge difference in the squad play which can make up for areas that the game lacks in. I hope thaey make this a top priority.

I also seem to get mouse lag when entering a combat situation. If I Rt mouse click when I'm alone I zoom in quickly if I try to zoom in on an enemy then it seems like I have to hold the mouse button down longer.

I like the spotting although I seem to be the only one using it.

The game menu seems a bit odd but I can't put my finger on why.

I would also like to see some advanced video setting options so i can squeeze the most out of laptop video card. Certain effects turned way down means that I can run some others higher and get an overall better experience.

Two things that hurt UT3 were the lack of VOIP and the crappy console like UI so I fear this game could go that way.

[Skud]

fire up the vasectomator.

Lol! I forgot about that...you crack me up, Duke!

[Dead_And_Gone]

oh my... so i should wait...or preorder and get the beta...

I had an invite to combat testing, but they are overloaded at this time... go figure

If this isn't the next latest and greatest, i'd be oh so disappointed..

[Rand{CLR}]

Found something I actually like: you can spawn on ANY squad member, anywhere. But squads are limited to 4 men now.

New problem too--movement is totally borked. A lot of people tonight, myself among them, started getting stuck moving in different directions. Have to double-tap that directional key to stop. It's an interesting bug.

I need to set up the spot key. I currently have it down because I'm having general problems with binding--especially mouse binds. It's terrible at picking up the proper axis.

And just so everyone knows, it does not appear in-game friending works. Vile and Fiery both sent me requests, but they never showed up on my end.

After two days, I would like to cancel my preorder, but if Cain runs it I'll probably follow the gang. But with the amount of minor bugs combined with several significant issues as Duke points out, I'd rather have my money back at the moment.

-Rand

[Zantheus]

We do need to remember that this IS onlt the SECOND day of BETA testing...we should give DICE a chance to address some issues and hopefully they will open a second map or different game type soon

[Caddys83]

there is a beta patch update

[Grisu]

Thanks so much for these informations. Still haven't preordered.

Squads of 4? That's a fire crew, but no real squad...

[Rand{CLR}]

I still have to marvel at those who are always so optimistic at betas. I just have a more "glass half empty" view. When so many things are so off, I tend to believe that it leans more towards conscious choice than tweakable goodness.

Think of it this way--do you guys remember when X:Men Origins Wolverine came out, and it was leaked a month before hand? And how the studio was all like "uh, that's not the finished movie. It'll be a lot different." And it wasn't? Yeah, that's kinda how I view most betas. Especially when overseen by EA...

Caddy, tell us more about this beta patch. If they are actively working to fix the major stuff, there is still some hope, but nothing happened when I just opened both steam and the beta app/login.

As much as I disliked the Star Trek Online beta gameplay, I will certainly give their development team props for their quick actions and responses. I'd like to say the same for DICE here.

-Rand

P.S. Ooh ooh, remembered something else I like. Trees make me laugh when they fall over. It's like watching a paper cutout slide off its stand.