Battlefield Bad Company 2

I never was a big fan of military shooting games. I could stomach playing Counter-strike but for some reason other military games just didn't settle well with me. Until I played this.

Bad Company 2 is published and developed by EA and you can buy it for the Xbox 360 ($60), PS3 ($60). or PC ($45). We got ours for the PC. You can also buy it off of Steam for the PC ($50). It is a first person shooter game.

In singleplayer, you start off as a soldier in the past going to rendezvous with a mole/spy in the enemy camp.  Anyways, let's just say things don't go quite according to plan. It is here where the game designers decided to stick their tutorial on how to shoot/crouch/zoom/etc. Also, they made the very beginning kind of like a cinematic opening where the credits play during your lovely boat ride.

I think that is kind of cool because not too many people really notice who took the time to work on a video game. Kind of like how audiences didn't pay attention to the "little people" who have really important roles in movies.

The campaign mode has an interesting story that revolves around a military squad that call themselves "Bad Company". The characters are enjoyable and the storyline isn't too boring.

Plus the graphics are kinda pretty! Here are some screenshots:

The solo campaign mode basically prepares you for the best part about Bad Company 2: the multiplayer experience.


When you log into Bad Company 2, you can enjoy killing people using a whole array of weapons: grenade launchers, shot guns, revolvers, machine guns, and (my favorite) knives. There are three modes you can join: conquest, rush, and deathmatch . 
 

They are all pretty neat modes to play in. I think my favorite is blowing up the m-com stations. You get some really good "oh shi-" moments in multi-player.

 Also you get to do a lot of cool things like: fly helicopters, drive tanks, drive hummers across the desert, fly UAV's. There is no shortage of ways to blow stuff up in this game.

One of the few things I look for in a game is if the water looks pretty. Hmm, what do you think??


Anyways, this game is pretty solid. You can find a lot of videos online on gameplay. I'd rather you didn't suffer through my horrible playing and hearing me shriek madly into the microphone.

 The only complaint I have? It doesn't have lan multiplayer. Wah wah. So you HAVE to play on a server in order to do the multiplayer.

Good game! Great times! Fun way to kill people. I'd say overall this game is a good buy.

Transformers: War for Cybertron (PC)

Release Date: 06/22/2010
Developer: High Moon Studios
Publisher: Activision, Steam
Genre: 3rd-Person Shooter

This is actually a good game.
Wait, come back! I'm being serious!

Some background: a group of people (High Moon Studios) who actually are fans of the Transformers IP got a chance to make a Transformers game, and Hasbro even agreed to consider the game "canon" for the timeline involving the recently released movies. That's a pretty big vote of confidence for a brand that's ripe for milking from the likes of the publisher, Activision, who has driven quite a few brands into the ground as of late (See: Rock Band).

Now, I'm not the type of dude to mince words, so I'll boil it down like this:

The Good

• The graphics are great. I played on PC with no slowdown using a system I put together over two years ago. The game is capped at 30 FPS on PC, which will upset PC-gaming purists, but people who don't typically notice or care...won't.
• Co-op campaign for up to three people. Not available via split-screen, but it's in there! Oh, and difficulty scales with more human players, in addition to the difficulty you set at game start, so "Normal" with solo play is easier than "Normal" with two buddies.
• Class-based multiplayer with multiple game modes. This is what will give the game life after the single-player campaign's death: a Call of Duty style multiplayer game with abilities and templates to unlock, and a leveling system for each class.
• All multiplayer modes support live hop-in and hop-out, so if your power surges (like ours did the first night) you can rejoin a friend playing a game in progress. Just click their name and click join. Done!

The Bad

• The PC version doesn't let you change control schemes - you're left with finding third-party programs to rebind keys or gamepad controls. The default keyboard layout will probably be hell for lefties.
• Poor video options for the PC version; your choices are limited to texture quality, vsync, and resolution. No anti-aliasing, no effect customization, nada. It runs well though, so this might not be as important as it feels.
• Multiplayer has no host migration, so if the person hosting leaves, the game is over and your points gained for that match are gone.

Honestly, the "goods" very much outweigh the "bads" on this one. The game plays and handles well, the voice-overs are great, and I'm liking the story so far. For PC the game is only $40 too, so the price is right. If you're some kind of hardcore Transformers fan, you shouldn't even be reading this. You should be playing the game.

I'll close with some video of us playing multiplayer: our first match. The video ends where our power died, cutting our umbilical to the internets.

And a bonus video: all the class transformations for the multiplayer portion.

Hey guys!!

Expect a new post coming soon!