Bad Company 2 Impressions

I picked up Bad Company 2 Tuesday morning, and I have to say that my initial impressions are very, very good. They fixed a lot of the complaints I addressed earlier this week about the first one. I'm going to miss that adrenaline injection thingy from the first one, but I was thrilled to see that they improved the driving controls (brake and gas both as RT and RB? ridiculous) and got rid of that damned weapon/item cycling and mapped "Y" to switch weapon. They even mapped grenades to their own button and moved melee to a non-face button. As for using the d-pad to switch to your grenade launcher/rocket launcher, I'm not going to hate on it, but if you have an SMG and an RPG, do you really need a pistol as well?

Aside from the control, I was happy to notice that guns aren't needlessly inaccurate this time around (I can actually hit something with an LMG). I unlocked my first non-vehicle perk (called a "specialization") today. It's basically Lightweight, but it doesn't make you fly around the map like a banshee (not a Halo reference). I'm just hoping the perks don't get as out-of-control as they have in CoD:Mod2.

I haven't even thought of touching the campaign yet. In every shooter I've ever played that has an online component, the campaign is usually shit and never has any replay value. I have some friends who have probably jerked off while playing Halo: Combat Evolved's campaign, but I don't see how it can possibly compare to Metroid Prime or Bioshock. Hell, even in Left 4 Dead 2 where the campaign and multiplayer are nearly identical, I find myself only wanting to play Versus. But I digress...

The last thing I'm going to say in this early stage of evaluation is that Rush on Valparaiso is awesome. That map is a work of art (although, this doesn't seem to be the consensus). Oh, and dog tags are back, and they still kick ass. I will make it a goal to publicly humiliate the first person with the misfortune of surrendering me their tags thrice.

[update]: I got into some long range sniper battles last night, and they where immensely fun. There's nothing quite so thrilling as lobbing two headshots in a row. Who'd-a thunk gravity would make sniping so fun?

--Chilly P