Review – Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Now with Onslaught Mode
June 25, 2010 - By Jason Hamilton
This week developer Dice gave their recent hit Battlefield: Bad Company 2 an adrenaline shot. Onslaught mode was made available for purchase on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. What was already an action packed game filled with intense combat action for online play, just got beefed up even more. For the price of $9.99 on PSN, or 800 points on XBL, Onslaught mode is now available for download.
Onslaught allows four friends to team up together to capture objectives while fighting against an extremely aggressive, intelligent, and constantly re-spawning AI. Some of the enemy units have been seen to behave a lot like other players behave in multiplayer, without the cognitive thinking, of course. Most of the time, enemy units are not standing still to shoot at you, making for a harder target at which to shoot. Additionally, enemy units don’t wait for you to come to them, or for you or your team to be spotted; they are actively and aggressively seeking out you and your team.
They say the greatest defense is a strong offense. In Onslaught Mode, this holds true. If you’re not playing by this rule, you will soon find enemy units closing on your initial spawn point – your base of operations. In the Isla Inocentes map, for example, upon capturing the first objective, the AI will launch a Russian Havoc attack helicopter. The Havoc will drop several teams of enemy soldiers, who will commence to lay down heavy, heavy fire on your team. The key in Onslaught is to keep at least one of your teammates alive. If all four die, the game is over. The balance for this over-the-top aggression is set by how weak the enemy soldiers are made. They’re as easy to kill as the enemy units in Campaign mode, but you are in a target-rich environment. Having each of your teammates play as a different class is strongly recommended.
In Onslaught mode, the scoring system is handled the same way as it is in multiplay: 50 points for a kill, 10 points for a headshot, 20 points for a squad heal, etc. However, the real goal is the leader board. For bragging rights you will want to complete a given map as quickly as possible. You can even replay it to better your previous time. While this is a novelty, at best, I am disappointed that the points you earn are not carried over and added to your multiplayer stats in some fashion. I understand that these are two completely different gaming modes with different rules, but I feel like Dice missed the boat on an opportunity to level your character up and unlock additional perks.
A couple issues seemed to have made it past quality control in the PS3 version. I have been met with difficulty when trying to accept a game invite from someone in my friends list. I will get a system message that says “the game is full”, or “no games can be found”. The other issue, which is admittedly less frequent, is that I have occasionally been booted from a game in progress. While annoying, I was able to quickly rejoin and continue playing.
While some Battlefield: Bad Company 2 players have not been very happy about a price tag being attached to what many felt should have been free (or included at retail), Onslaught mode has made a very strong impression. What was already a chaotic and challenging game, has seemingly become moreso by continuing to simulate a denser “fog of war”. Onslaught has also brought more to BFBC2 than just a lighter purse: it has brought a new way to play an already great game.
Below we’ve embedded an official trailer from the game. Take a look at some of the action, and you’ll probably decide that it may be a worthwhile addition to your gaming inventory.
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man… 10 dollars for a 1 MB Download?!?!
hahahahahahahahahahahaha, not wasting my money
The actual content was included in the 400+mb “update” Welcome to the internet Haji, learn to use it.
Yes, the $10 actually pays for a 100KB “key” to activate the content. At first I thought it would be a waste and that this was something that Dice should have GIVEN us. Well, you can’t get EVERYTHING for free, and I do not regret laying down the dough.
One thing that I did not put in the article, as I’m trying to get some sort of confirmation from Dice, is just how uncanny the AI appears to be. The way the NPC’s move I’m kind of thinking that Dice has been collecting movement data from players online, and used it to model the AI’s behavior in Onslaught. In most games the AI will send all of it’s units, say, through one door. In Onslaught, if there’s more than one door to a house, the AI uses all of them.
Whatever it is that Dice did, they did a great job.