Category Archives: Games

Map Pack #6 for Bad Company 2 (for real)

Once again Fieldoperative has the scoop. He must be watching the BC2 store on a daily basis!

Map *cough*mode*cough* pack #6 is out tomorrow for Bad Company 2 and in my opinion is a wasted opportunity and a disappointment. It will have Panama Canal Squad Death Match & Laguna Presa Squad Rush. At least I do play a bit of SDM these days but it would have been so nice to get Conquest on Valparaiso.

Can we all say, “DICEapathy”? Would that be fair?

Well that was an odd game of Squad Death…

Well that was an odd game of Squad Death Match in Bad Company 2. I joined after playing Onslaught in hardcore mode (thanks Mike for joining in briefly!) but after we were decimated Mike left to go off to the cinema and my squadmates decided they wanted to play with themselves so the game ended prematurely.

Anyway, on to SDM. This is one of the times I wish I had a PVR. The squad I joined was leading with 5 kills when I joined and I was doing well. The matchmaking system working perfectly for once. Then I got killed and spawned on Matheu who was crouched in the upper corner of a house. I noticed a number of C4 charges on the lower floors and presumed he was waiting to kill someone with the explosives. Thinking, “Good luck with that”, I ran down the stairs and off into the fight.

Later on I spawned on him again. He was still in the same house! I checked the scores and he had 2 kills to his name. Over the mic I asked him what he was doing crouched there. He didn’t reply so I got out the grenade launcher, aimed over his head and blew away the wall behind him! Sure, the guy needed some sun being locked away in that corner for so long! “Here, I’ll let some daylight in.” He fell out unfortunately but came racing up again into another corner. “Eh? Let me help you.” Boom, more daylight! Boom! Boom!

Repeat this a few more times. When I saw his explosives from elsewhere in the map I’d lob a few 40mm grenades over in his direction. The resulting explosion would more likely than not set off his C4, and unfortunately I killed him when he wasn’t fast enough evacuating one building. I think between us we took down 3 houses.

He left the game shortly after the teamkill. I miss him. Did I upset him? I was just helping him get a tan.

Good news, we went on to win the game! Thanks to Matheu I blew holes in one house, looked out and saw two medics in a house across the road and got myself a double kill. Later on I killed a guy in the middle of the road, a medic jumped out and revived him. Would could I do? I shot the medic, and pumped the original guy full of bullets until I ran out. He was invulnerable of course, but my trusty sidearm took care of him when that wore off.
Got the last kill of the game too. Woohoo!

We won the game, I got 18 kills, ace pin in the game and a positive KDR. Great game. Very enjoyable.


What’s Double Dragon?

It was with amazement I read that question on the hupit forum a while back.

What? You’ve never heard of Double Dragon? Arcade beat ’em up from the late 80’s?

Double Dragon was only one of the most anticipated arcade conversions of 1989. A two player beat ’em up, heroes (Billy and Jimmy Lee) fighting against hoards of baddies to rescue Billy’s girlfriend.

Exciting, heady stuff!

Of course, when it finally hit the C64 it was a less than stellar conversion. All the moves were in there but there was this annoying gap in the torso of each character. The programmers even added a note in the game manual about it!

Mode Pack #6 is apparently coming to Bad…

Mode Pack #6 is apparently coming to Bad Company 2 next week according to this post. No details, and I haven’t checked the BfBC2 store but it fits in with their monthly giveaway of new maps mode packs.

So, we’re not going to see new maps. That’s clear enough already. What would you like to see? If I was a betting man I’d say we’ll get rush on Laguna Alta which could be like rush on White Pass. Alpha will be so close to the attackers deployment battle will be joined as soon as anyone moves an inch.
Or they’ll make a mode pack for SDM or squad rush and everyone will go YAAAAWWWWWNNNNN!

I was just thinking the other day how the lack of a level editor is such a missed opportunity for players. The Doom and Quake series had level editors, other shooters from that era had them too. I remember downloading mods for Doom 2 and having a blast! Are games companies so scared we won’t buy their next big product just because there’s a level editor (and hopefully active community) in a game? Really?
Do they lack the imagination to make a better sequel and feel threatened by amateurs designing levels? Do they think we won’t splash the cash if we have new levels for their old game?

The average age of games players is now in the early thirties. That means they’re probably working, have a family and have (some) disposable income. Sure, getting maps for free is great, but what about a map store? The Apple app store proved that people will buy in their droves if the price is right. Apple make a fortune from it and there’s a huge community around it. People talk all the time about their favourite apps. Why the hell haven’t EA or Activision replicated this for their respective franchises? All we get is what the company blesses and produces itself.

Would you buy maps built by amateurs or even semi-pros who didn’t work for the game publisher? What if they were priced like app store products? US$0.99 for a map?

Such a missed opportunity.

Edit: I forgot about Starcraft II. That has a level editor of some sort doesn’t it?

Use your headphones properly in Bad Company 2!

During a lull between games last night I changed the sound settings in Bad Company 2 from “Home Cinema” to “headphones”. I mistakenly thought that “home cinema” would give a better surround sound effect on my fancy pants headphones. Boy was I wrong!

Now I can hear footsteps better, the whole world sounds so much better. I can hear the wind blowing through the trees. It’s like “War Tapes” but not as overboard on the reverb. In maps where there are an abundance of houses it helps a whole lot as I can hear enemy wandering around upstairs!
It’s like that low noise perk in Modern Warfare 2 that lets you hear footsteps a lot more clearly. Yes, I’m kicking myself that I didn’t try that setting before now.

Bad Company 2 Conquest and SDM last nigh…

Bad Company 2 Conquest and SDM last night for us. Cards needed our help with a video he’s doing but unfortunately Duck can never connect to David’s games. Weird. Anyway, when we got into the game we ended up on the wrong teams so we started jumping around and stuff and gave up. I presume Cards grabbed a few others then.

It was getting late so I started another squad and we hopped into SDM, without David at first but he joined later on another squad and killed Mike and Duck. I dodged him, but still ended up with a bad KDR. I think we won, but definitely won the last game of SDM we played. Despite my crap KDR.

This Reddit thread reminded me of two of our games on Atacama Desert. The enemy grabbed both our helicopters and flew around like mad things! They still didn’t stop us taking all three flags. Duck and myself had lots of fun defending one flag over and over again! Poor Mike had a tough time trying to take down the air vehicles. We won won game decisively, but the second game was lost even though we had all three flags. Those helis did a lot of damage.

Blur tonight, or over the next few days methinks. Excited to try the teamplay games. Will have to unlock that mode first though.

Oh, there was a weird lag in some games. It felt more like the machine struggling to display and run the game rather than network issues. No rubber banding, just a case of stuttering occasionally. The same thing happens to me when I host Onslaught games and the game gets hectic. Anyone else?

Funny moment of the night: I think David spawned on me in the building that normally houses Bravo 2 on Arica Harbour. I spotted an enemy in the next building so I aimed high and tossed a grenade. Ooops. Instead of going through the door it bounced off the wall above it and came right back at us! I dodged out of the blast radius and thankfully it wasn’t hardcore so I didn’t have to worry about teamkills. How we laughed! 🙂

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