Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Back in 2006, Battlefield 2 was one of the greatest games I had ever played. It still is. Since then though, I haven't played another Battlefield. All of my friends were buying this game and professing how amazing it is.

Battlefield 2 had it all. Helicopters, jets, tanks, and jeeps all were amazing. I made sure to get a $50 dollar logitech flying stick just so I could fly everything properly. I had way too much fun with it. There were a few problems with it though, especially around the beginning of it's release. The load times were shit with the parsing game info. The MEC loading theme became what I believe to be the sound of purgatory. Sadly though, a lot of new gamers never played Battlefield 2, but I won't rant about that again. I stopped playing it around the time that my computer started having its first issues back in late 2007. I never bought any other Battlefield games up until Bad Company 2. No idea why. Just didn't. I started playing the 360 more around 2007 too, so Halo 2 and 3 were taking up a lot of my time and I forgot about BF2.

All of my best friends on Steam were playing Bad Company 2. They were saying it is really amazing, and that I should get it. After they peaked my interest, I bought it. I made sure to play it right away, maybe play single player with some bots first, but wait, Campaign? They finally jumped on the Campaign bandwagon and strayed from the 'single player means multiplayer maps except with bots'. That's not that bad. They seem to rip off Call of Duty 4 and 6 though. Their loading screens are basically Google Earth with a filter over them. I don't mind though, Call of Duty was a good game. The game started and I ran into my first problem. No prone. Okay, the fuck? Whatever, I guess they'll just add it in after because it was way too much work for them. I mean, okay, there are many games that are great without prone, but this is one of those games you expect to have prone in them. I have a high tolerance for shit for the Battlefield series so I just took it in stride. I fucked off to the multiplayer because the singleplayer campaign is pretty much boring and way too fucking hard (though I hate saying that). I started up the server browser with it being way too retarded and not loading anything, so I tried to do the play now but that was still fucked up and it kept making me try to join already full servers. After about 20 minutes of trying to get into a server, I finally joined one that my friend was in. No idea what happened to the jets, but you know, take it all in stride. The gameplay right now is about average. No idea why you die when the UAV you're controlling dies [EDIT: Upon further review, I was just getting sniped by some fag, but I hadn't tried the UAV too much because the respawn time for it is like 10 minutes], but whatever. I know BF2 started out really bugged, but I thought that they would actually try their best to fix their previous problems. Like, releasing a game really REALLY bugged was a problem. I mean, holy shit, I can barely play anything and yet all the servers are full. Even the servers that aren't full give me an error saying they're full.

This game broke my joyful stride through my memories of Battlefield and it'll be a while until I can run this part of town again. I know it can get better. I know it will, but right now this is what it is: shit. It really does suck. It just resembles an old franchise trying to stay, as the kids this days would say, hip. I say fuck the Campaign mode and fuck you cutting corners for it. I want a multiplayer experience from the Battlefield franchise. This hasn't given it to me yet.

R.U.S.E. Beta

A few weeks ago, the R.U.S.E. Beta opened up to everyone on Steam. Knowing nothing about it, I decided to jump right into it.

R.U.S.E. (and I have no idea what R.U.S.E. is an acronym for) is an RTS game set in WW2. In the same vein of EndWar, R.U.S.E. tries to add a new spin on the RTS genre. R.U.S.E.'s big spin on the genre is the ability and emphasis on tricking your opponent. In R.U.S.E. you have the power to fool your opponent with ruse cards. You get two at the start of each round and another about every 5 minutes. You can do things like hide your base, or your troops, or send fake units to attack them. That's all fine and dandy but Ruse also sets their maps on a war room board in a different environment. Sometimes it's a bombed out building, other times it's an actual war room. They say they did this because now they can have bigger maps than other RTS games. I'm not too sure about that, but it is interesting to zoom out and see what the war room looks like for a few seconds until you start to realize the enemy is sending a shitload of paratroopers to take over your base.

RTS games aren't my thing, but I can tell that this isn't that special.

Since it's beta, there's not too much that I can be truly mad at the people for, because it isn't done. Sure, the whole ruse thing is neat, it just isn't that new or amazing. Tricking your opponent has been a tactic in RTS games for a while now. Building a bunch of Black Hands or something to go attack your opponents teammate while you send the actual army of tanks and shit has been my tactic for a while. Sure it hasn't worked. Apparently my idea of an army of tanks would be like 20 of the lowest ranked tanks, but still. It's an average RTS game, but by opening the beta to everyone on Steam, they reached out to the crowd of people who never play RTS games, and they're going to get them to play and buy.

Tricky.