Back in February of 2010, I was knee-deep in playing Modern Warfare 2 online with my buddies when a demo came out for a game named Battlefield: Bad Company 2. My buddies and I had seen the videos and were impressed (ATV? Dude on back shooting while guy on front is driving? Awesome!) I remember downloading the demo and starting it up and getting dropped in Port Valdez.
I remember the sheer confusion of battle, not because it was a frantic spawn-die-spawn-die MW2 cycle. I was confused because I was dropped into an open area with no good idea what to do. I was stuck in some bushes behind a guard house and there was gunfire from all around. I died an unceremonious death and spawned again. This time I ran around, but had no idea what was happening. A few minutes later, I deleted the demo and went back to MW2.
The next day, I talked with Rohan and he said he had the same experience. We all wrote off BFBC2. When BFBC2 launched in March of 2010, we did not pick it up, we were still playing MW2. I am not sure why for my birthday in June, I asked for the game. Maybe it was because I was getting bored of MW2 at that point (only eight months into MW2). Anyways, I picked up BFBC2, finished off the single-player and then jumped into multiplayer -- and after some stumbling around, discovered that the Battlefield way of warfare was much better than the Modern Warfare way. And roping in my MW2 buddies made it just that much more fun. We discovered that BFBC2 was better in every respect than MW2.
In MW2, a sniper could snipe from a second floor of a concrete building with no real way to kill him (think Scrapyard). The wall was concrete and nothing could get through it, not even a rocket. BFBC2 didn't subscribe to this thought of invincible buildings, given enough time I could level an entire map.
MW2 was about being twitchy only. Maps were small, spawning was random, and one game had dozens of spawn-die-spawn-die cycles. BFBC2 had large maps, gave people space to think and strategize. A smart player in BFBC2 could live for long periods of time and still be productive for the team.
In MW2, the voice chat was team wide and usually the team was populated by young yelling kids -- so playing with your buddies was no fun because you had to mute everyone on the team at the start of every round. In BFBC2, we were introduced to the idea of a squad and communication was restricted to the squad of four. This was brilliant because we could sit and play as a team of friends. And the players in BFBC2 were usually more mature.
In MW2, the focus was really on KDR. The more kills you had, the more perks you got. The more perks you got, the more kills you could get. It was fun in a Pacman sort of way, but I think that's why the game didn't last long for me. It got stale. In BFBC2, the focus was on team objectives: MCOMs in Rush and Flags in Conquest. Yes, MW2 had the same Conquest-type gameplay, but it didn't work as well as it did in BFBC2.
I played BFBC2 with my buddies for more than a year now. I didn't get to level 50, but I did get past level 40 which was my goal. I got platinum on a whole slew of weapons and vehicles -- my most proud platinum was on my knife. My KDR started off in the low 0.50's and stayed there for a while, but I worked it back up to almost 1.00. My best weapon is the AN-94, but late into the game I started using the M14 Mod 0 Enhanced (last four months or so) when the M14 got the 4x ACOG. That gun has quickly caught up with the AN-94 (it's only behind the AN-94 by two dozen kills). The M14 remains my favorite gun in the game. C4 and Mines both were memorable weapons -- I didn't reach the level of Mine-awesomeness as Josh (aka Paddles) or Rohan (aka Marksman) though. And the weapon that made me laugh in joy the most was the 40mm shotgun attachment.
BFBC2 is a game that I've played for the longest time. It is because of its mixed of pure awesome and because of my buddies. This game has served us well and has given me many memories of classic moments. Today, Battlefield 3 will be arriving so we all will be putting away BFBC2 and moving onto the next battle. After 429 hours of multiplayer gameplay in BFBC2 (and a dozen in singleplayer), I say thanks DICE for such an awesome game.