So, in Battlefield Bad: Company 2, there is an angry U.S. military official. He gives information to a Russian, who then lets loose an EMP on the U.S., knocking all aircraft out of the sky, right on top of the lead characters. The Bad Company Special Ops crew must rush a plane to kill terrorists, followed by the Russians invading US soil.
Why does this all sound so familiar? It’s almost like… we’ve been here before. Maybe it was a movie? No… a Tom Clancy novel? No, no, that’s not it. Ooh, what about a recently released video game from a rival game company who produced another shooter about modern warfare? Ding!
It is almost shameful how the story of Bad Company 2 mirrors that of Activision’s Modern Warfare 2, mostly because the two games are in direct competition for the same market. To be fair, there is the likely chance that since development of both games overlapped, no one on the writing staff knew of the plot devices in Modern Warfare 2 and it was too late to make changes. On this level, and to this extent though, it is hilarious how everything unfolds so precisely, you can see it coming long before it happens.
At the least, Bad Company 2 tells the story through well-conceived cinematics, a bit of the proverbial “fresh air” compared to the rival title. Instead of developing characters over a bunch of wildly flashing maps between levels, Bad Company 2 continues to establish the four special ops soldiers via humor. Whether or not is seems completely inappropriate for the intensity of the action is debatable. If it leads to a hardened Texan reciting Dixie Chick lyrics to make a point though, who cares?
This is a strictly linear first-person affair, breaking from the open and at times confusing level design of the original. Spacious maps still allow room for flanking or other maneuvers, not to mention the destructible environments that can (pardon the pun) level the playing field. Even though everything is closed off to a designated mission area, it feels open, enough to be free of any claustrophobic feelings.
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