[Erwan Cario]
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, EA's marketing team (at least the one that handles the company's French ads) was really, really trying to flatter the French military with its latest Bad Company 2 ads. Adopting the slogan "Devenez Plus Que Vous-Meme" for its website ("Be More Than Yourself"), EA has seemingly borrowed the French military's strikingly similar "Devenez Vous Meme" ("Be Yourself.")
"We are clearly in a situation of abuse of slogan ... So far, our campaign is working very well, we have very good returns," French army general Philippe Pontiès told Écrans. Allegedly, the posters will be altered sometime in the coming weeks, with the French military and EA reaching an agreement amenably. Perhaps unsurprisingly, EA has chosen not to comment.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 will unlock two multiplayer maps on launch day, free to players that input a "VIP code" included with new copies of the game (think: "Project Ten Dollar"). VIPs will also gain free access to a second map pack, which developer DICE will airdrop later in March. If you purchase the game second-hand, you can access the VIP code separately via the in-game store (think: $15). We can already see a repeat of the Mass Effect 2 account confusion coming from five klicks away, so make sure your affairs are in order before you redeem the code.
BC2 Senior Producer Patrick Bach claims, "These first two map packs are just the beginning. We're planning ongoing support for the community by always keeping the experience fresh and ensuring the best possible gameplay experience." This is where Battlefield 1943 fans wipe the tears from their faces as they march toward a more modern battlefield.
For those of you wondering just how superior the PC version of Battlefield Bad Company 2 is to the console iterations, the answer lies at least partially in the above PC version walkthrough. Sure, stuff like kit selection and squad layout is a bit more in-depth, and there's the near-ubiquitous (for PC games) server browsing/dedicated server support -- multiplayer count also gets a boosted 32-player count over the console's 24 -- but other than that ... alright, that's kind of a lot. When you also factor in DirectX 11 support (for fancy lighting, among other things), the differences get starker. It would certainly seem that DICE hasn't forgotten its roots as a PC game developer.
That said, even if you're a strident console-only gamer, the above walkthrough also gives us our first eyes-on with "Valparaiso" -- a multiplayer map apparently set in the Chiléan city. Here's a shocker: it looks just as impressive as everything else we've seen from the game thus far (even more so, graphically speaking, as it's running on a presumably tricked out PC). Bad Company 2 arrives on your console of choice (minus the Wii) in early March.
Ever noticed how you rarely place bullets into the same dude during two consecutive games while playing the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 demo? There's a darn good reason for that -- according to a recent tweet from EA, over 3.5 million people have downloaded the sneak peek on 360 and PS3.
We weren't sure Bad Company 2 would gain a ton of traction while sharing an audience with MAG and Modern Warfare 2, but apparently we were wrong. Maybe there's a special portion of the market set aside for multiplayer shooters/preposterous ATV stunt simulators.
As reported on these very pages yesterday, EA and DICE got a group of semi-celebrities together last night to celebrate the impending arrival of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 with a charity tournament, pitting NFL stars and 90210 actors against each other in a bragging rights team match. The celebs also selected their own team names for an upcoming Major League Gaming tournament, and the winning team in that match (which you can predict right now on GameStop's website) will end up giving $25,000 to the winning celebrity's charity of choice.
The event kicked off with a red carpet event, and Matt Lanter and Tristan Wilds of the new 90210 joined gossip blogger Perez Hilton to talk about crushes on their costars and how awesome Bad Company 2 was. Meanwhile, we wondered, where's the actual game?
Imagine you told us that Dr. Chad Ocho Cinco (Hon.) and Olivia Munn intended to throw a Battlefield: Bad Company 2 party and invite all their pseudo-celebrity pals to play for charity. If you asked us to dream up a guest list, we doubt we would be physically capable of coming up with a more ill-suited and uninspiring crew than the one that will actually be in Hollywood tonight for the Battlefield Celebrity Bracket Challenge.
We understand Hal Sparks and Perez Hilton are there, that's just the law, but the rest of the NFL players and 90210 and CSI:NY stars that fill out the list so strain and pervert the word "celebrity" that it can now be accurately applied to karaoke DJs and birthday party illusionists. The sole exception here is Heroes star Greg Grunberg, who's a totally decent guy that just seems to have fallen in with the wrong crowd. Bad company indeed, Greg. Bad company indeed.
John Riccitiello's "Project Ten Dollar" endeavor -- in which EA looks to combat used-game sales by offering free DLC goodies with new purchases -- has another game marching under its banner: Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Just like Mass Effect 2, the game will ship with a code that enables access to free DLC. The first batch of add-on content for DICE's shooter will be a set of new multiplayer maps, MTV Multiplayer reports.
"In the future you will get more content, for free, if you have this VIP code," noted producer Patrick Bach, describing a free content delivery mechanism similar to BioWare's Cerberus Network. Also of note: the VIP code will be attached to your EA.com account, so make sure you keep potential hazards in mind if you buy Bad Company 2 when it launches on March 2, 2010.
"We couldn't be more thrilled to hear that Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is already in the hands of almost 2½ million gamers, and it hasn't even shipped yet." That statement from Patrick Bach, Senior Producer on EA and DICE's eagerly awaited shooter, is doubly impressive when you realize that he's not talking about the PC version -- he's talking about the demo that was recently shared with Xbox Live and PlayStation Network users.
Having reached over two million downloads within a span of five days, the Bad Company 2 teaser is "on pace to become the fastest downloaded demo in EA history," at least according to the Big Company behind it. With the PC beta netting "hundreds of thousands" of sign-ups too, it seems the overt confidence isn't misplaced. But come March 2nd, will all those downloads translate to an impressive, post-Modern impact?
If there's one thing uglier than the console wars, it's the console war game ... wars.
In what's becoming the rule rather than the exception for EA games, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 will receive day one DLC. Speaking to Worthplaying, senior producer Patrick Bach said, "We have an in-game store where you get free content or you can buy new content to the game, so it's a very integral part of the game that we will have a long post-launch campaign. I think people will be thrilled to see what's in that already. On day one, you will get some really cool stuff."
It's still not clear if that "really cool" stuff will be free, for-pay or both -- in the case of EA's usual in-the-box DLC strategy, it would be free to new buyers and sold separately for used copies of the game. You'll remember that during the release of the first Bad Company, EA was actually threatened with a boycott for its (soon abandoned) strategy that would have created an in-game gap between players that spent extra money and those who didn't. Hopefully EA and DICE will be a bit smarter about things this time around.
The original Bad Company spinoff in the Battlefield series kept the franchise's setting firmly in modern times, but if the Bad Company 2 ESRB description is true, you'll be seeing a return to WWII in the sequel. At the very least, the game's opening will bring players back to the Eastern front, with the ESRB description saying, "In single-player mode, players conduct missions on an unnamed Japanese island during World War II and then move into the modern day through jungles, deserts, and snowy terrain."
As we've discovered in our way too many hours with the game's multiplayer demo, the description details the inclusion of "melee attacks with a power drill" (yes, seriously) and the characters use of profanity "during cutscenes and in the heat of battle." And yes, we're just as excited by the former as you might imagine.
[Via BigDownload]
