Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Preview

Soldiers are the only people who can look hard while wearing a beret. Trufax.

The Battlefield series is one of the few FPS franchises that can genuinely stand up to Modern Warfare 2 without its knees knocking together... or at least it would be, if a videogame franchise could have knees. Still, they say that a game can "have legs", so maybe it can have knees. In any case, I digress. The point is that Battlefield occupies a unique place within the genre, a position it largely owes to a tried-and-tested formula: massive arenas, fully destructible scenery, and loads of vehicles that can be used to crush or blow up your opponents.

Few people will be surprised to hear that Bad Company 2's multiplayer is sticking very closely to this template. If anything, this seems to be a refinement on the game we played last year. Whereas the first Bad Company gave us five load-out classes to choose from, there are now just four: Assault, Engineer, Recon and Medic. While that's bad news for anyone who loved the first game's Special Ops class, this means that the excellent XM8 rifle is now available for use by the Assault class. As BC veterans will already know, this is a highly versatile weapon that can be used to mulch your foes at close to medium range, as well as picking people off at a distance.

Why did DICE scrap the Spec Ops class? No-one knows for sure, but at a guess I'd say that the new unlock system might have had something to do with it. As before, multiplayer progress will expand the range of weapons and tools at your disposal - but this time your experience is tied to your style of play. If you want access to a greater range of sniper rifles, for example, you'll have to spend some time with the Recon class. This setup is a marked contrast to the last game, and indeed to Modern Warfare 2, where any old kind of grafting will get you closer to the upper-level toys you desire. Though it goes without saying, the idea is to encourage people to master a particular approach to combat. Under these circumstances, it makes sense to blend the Assault and Spec Ops classes - otherwise the run-and-gun guys would lose out.

You have the ability to tinker with your load-out between spawns, but for most of my most recent hands-on session I stuck with the XM8 - a gun that allowed me to roam and do a bit of sight-seeing, while still slipping bullets into skulls. My play test took the form of a Conquest match on the newly-revealed Panama Canal map, and as I expected, the level itself was the clear star of the show. The background here is dominated by an enormous hillside covered with flames, an inferno that sends masses of moody smoke up into the sky; you can't actually get up there, but it's an impressive piece of decoration that also helps players to keep their bearings as they move about the stage; given the expansive size of your environment, this landmark proves to be fairly useful.