Battlefield Bad Company 2 Onslaught Review

09 Jul 2010 at 12:00:18 by Tim McDonald
Systems used to review this title: (PS3)

I stopped playing Bad Company 2 a few months back. Not because it's a bad game - it clearly isn't - but more because the deluge of interesting titles since has kept me occupied with other, newer, shinier things. Annoyingly, that was when Andy got the chance to go hands-on with Onslaught, and his disjointed ramblings about how much potential it had got me interested again.

In case you missed the aforementioned disjointed ramblings, the premise is that you and three chums take on a limitless supply of AI bots in a game mode that can be lazily described as Conquest combined with Rush. Because I'm not that lazy, I'll elaborate: you and your pals advance on a series of control points – unlocked one at a time – and need to clear the surrounding area and then defend against enemy reinforcements until each point is captured. If you die, you can respawn on any surviving squad member, but if every member of your squad is dead at the same time, you lose.

For once, then, the lazy way is the correct way: it's Conquest combined with Rush.

Sounds like a thrilling and entertaining way to bond with your pals as you mow down faceless Russian hordes, doesn't it? Well, it is, but it's not without disappointments. First and foremost is that if you try to play without your buddies, you'll find it completely imbalanced. The game gives you a concession in that you have unlimited lives, which is useful considering the above failure conditions, but nothing else appears to change. The upshot is that playing solo on any difficult above the lowest means you'll run out of ammo and die horribly so often that Onslaught starts to resemble an incredibly grim reimagining of Groundhog Day.

The idea that this solo mode can help you get to grips with how multiplayer works is, equally, a little hamstrung by the fact that Onslaught won't let you unlock any new toys to play with. This is presumably a half-hearted attempt at preserving the balance, as the sheer number of foes you're going to be killing would level you ludicrously fast, but it's heartbreaking to see the points you're earning – which would normally translate into unlocks – pop up, and know that they mean nothing outside of that round's scoreboard. It's like being taunted by the game. Yes, your unlocks from other multiplayer modes carry across, but if you're as woefully underlevelled as I am in some respects (my Engineer has yet to unlock the repair tool) that's little relief.

If you can ignore the fact that your time could be spent unlocking things on other modes, though, and you have either a few friends to play with or are lucky enough to find an online game populated by the rarest of all things on the internet – people who don't chew on their controllers and lick lead-based paint between rounds – then you'll have a blast. A team that works together properly, with each player taking on one of the four roles, can surmount almost any challenge. Recon sits at range with a rifle, covering the team, spotting foes, and acting as a fairly safe respawn point for when the other three die; Assault does the brunt of the pushing on the ground and keeps everyone stocked up on ammo; Engineers repair the team's vehicles and knock out those of the enemy with RPGs; and Medics rush about like headless chickens, trying to keep everyone alive and defibrillate those who aren't while laying down suppressing fire with their heavy machine guns.

I say these teams can surmount "almost any challenge," because this is Bad Company 2 and therefore you can play on hardcore mode. Describing this as "hard" is an understatement. In a mode where so much relies on every member of the team staying alive and doing their job, the lack of a heads-up display is uniquely terrifying. That's still not as terrifying as when the game flashes up that you're the last man standing, though: suddenly, the success or failure of the team rests solely on your shoulders. Combining the two is a coronary heart failure waiting to happen. An enjoyable one.

But even when you have a marvellous round, there are still two lingering senses of disappointment. The first is that there really isn't much new here – you're still fighting over the same old maps. While there are some atmospheric new tweaks, like changes from day to night, and one level's addition of a missile boat which rains down hell on your team in a scene reminiscent of the mortar barrage towards the end of the single-player campaign, they don't feel markedly different. The second disappointment is that there's little incentive to go back and play again. The idea is that your assault is timed, and you're meant to replay the levels to try and beat that time, but in practice this doesn't really hold up. Unless I'm blind, there are no rewards – not even Achievements – for nailing a level's time, and while you'll enjoy yourself, I doubt if the majority of gamers are going to go back and replay levels again and again to shave off seconds unless they have three regular cohorts to do it with. Likewise, those levels get old rather fast. With no developer par times to beat and only the online leaderboards to compare yourself to, which are inevitably full of people who've done things a full ten minutes faster than you, it feels like there's little point.

So is it worth picking up? Yes and no. If you've got three like-minded friends to play with, then 800 Microsoft Points is a small price to pay for the enjoyment you'll get. If you're focused more on levelling up, though, or you only play with random people, then the sense of accomplishment you get from Onslaught will be considerably more muted. Fun, but only in short bursts, and far from essential.

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