While ago I made a blog post about MW2 and BC2. It got some comments that pointed out that BC2 had better single player campaign and better graphics. At that time I was thinking that mw2 had better campaign and graphics, but I have changed my mind.

Graphics.

They are better on BC2, yes. Why did I said that MW2 had better graphics? Because I didn’t like the style BC2 had with the graphics, but now I like it. However I still dislike some of the snow/dust storms effects that makes you blind…

Single player campaign.

I didn’t play the campaign of BC2 to end when I wrote the first post. But now I did finish it with easy difficulty, because normal was frustrating at some points… (Too much enemy spam at some points…)

Problem with the BC2 single player campaign is that the start is bit boring and when the fun part starts at end, it is over way too fast. And it ends to very annoying cliffhanger…

And the single player was short… But yeah. I recommend to atleast try to play it to the end.

Here is video from the last mission, it does not contain any cutscenes/important story stuff, but it may spoil the final mission for some players…

I note right at the start of this post, that these two games can’t be compared, because they are totally different kind of games. Modern Warfare is more focused on infantry combat, as the Bad Company has vehicles and large destructible levels.

This post isn’t about which one is better, this is more like a dual review of both of the two games in one blog post.

Single player

Both games are heavily multiplayer based, but both have a single player campaign. Neither of these games have good campaign as some other great single player games like Half-Life or Portal, but they are worth of playing trough.

MW2 tries to get “cinematic” style and have succeed pretty well. The story isn’t great, but it is interesting enough. It jumps from place to place maybe too much. The problem is that the actual gameplay is mostly just “go and shoot everything” type of game.  Sometimes there is some random vehicle parts, but mostly the game is just going around and shooting people.

In mw2 I highly dislike some parts of the game. Especially those part where you need to rush forward to endless spawns of enemies. The regenerating-health system has its own disadvanges. Example in games where there is the normal health system, you can get to situation where you have only 1-15% of health and you need to move very carefully. But with regenerationg health system you can rush forwar. In some places this can become annoying, because you are at “hurt”-state for a long time when trying to push forward. Good example is the level on the screenshot below.

But in the mw2 has also couple of very good missions. The sneaking levels are just awesome. Example the “hidden” special ops mission is awesome. I also like the “Estate Takedown” mission.

In BC2 the story is somehow better, but the game itself isn’t so fun. Yes, there is lots of weapons and big levels and so on, but still. Its even more like just a random fights. It doesn’t have so many “wow” moments.

BC2 has nice cutscenes. I really like them, but the way how mw2 shows cutscenes is also great. Most of the loading videos are amazing on mw2, great way to “remove” the waiting when loading the level.

To note, I have not played trough the bc2 single player campaign. This is one reason why I say that mw2 has better single player. The bc2 just isn’t good enough to force me to play it trough in one weekend.

If you want a good single player game, buy Modern Warfare 2. It has much better singleplayer campaign.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer is the most important part of both of these games.

Common for these games is that both of them have a leveling system with collecting xp,levels etc. I kinda don’t like the idea that players with better level in fps games would have better changes to kill other players, its not rpg, its fps! The real way to do leveling system in fps game is the way how Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory or Enemy-Territory: Quake Wars does it.

In ET:QW there is two kinds of levels. There is “global” level that is just the total numbers on your stats site and then there is the campaign level. The campaign level is reseted every time the three map campaign ends. This way everybody has the same weapons at the start of the match, but still be able to gain new stuff.

But the way how ET:QW handles the unlocks may not work well on this kind of game with much many unlocks. And that brings a new problem. Balancing those weapons.

The main difference in mw2 and bc2 is the size. In bc2 you are small part of the bigger battle. The levels are also big and there is vehicles. The mw2 is more about small situations and quick combats.

BC2 is much more team oriented, because the levels are so big. Its hard to run to enemy base alone when the enemy outnumbers you easily. Thats why you need to go in as a team. In mw2 you can easily win the match alone.

The vehicles in bc2 are awesome. Movement, Physics, HUD, everything is so great on the vehicles!  This game has the best vehicle system I have seen in games. And the destructible environment just makes vehicles even more fun to use!

I can’t say which game has better multiplayer. I have played over 100 hours of the mw2 multiplayer and about of 20 hours of the bc2 multiplayer. If you like big battles with vehicles, take bc2. If you like infantry combat and 1v1 situations more, take the mw2. As the mw2 is starting to get boring slowly, I may move to play bc2.

Technical stuff

There is so much to say about the technical side of these games…

In my opinion, the mw2 game-engine is much better. It works, it crashes almost never and it has the snappy feel. Movement is great and everything just works. This game engine is maybe my third favorite engine. (My favorite is source and second favorite is unreal engine)

Mw2 has also much better netcode. There is only one problem in mw2 when talking only about the techical stuff. The lack of dedicated servers. It isn’t a huge problem, but when you get problems, its hell. Lots of failed to connect messages… Laggy games…. And so on…

But dedicated servers on BC2 haven’t ensure lag-free gaming. The engine just isn’t very good. First of the menu system is horrible. The server browser is the worst browser I have seen. The EA network stuff is horrible and slow. Why should I login every time when I start game? Why it can’t update my stats on background?

And the forstbite engine (the bc2 engine) is somehow bloated and laggy. It just doesn’t run smoothly as it could. Modern Warfare 2 looks better, and still runs much better on older computers without any problems.

The destructible environment can be a bit heavy, but not that heavy! And the destructible environment isn’t so “awesome” as told. The walls will destroy at the same places every time, for some reason the stairs are extremely solid material and some walls can never be destroyed. After playing Red Faction: Guerial, this just doesn’t feel so destructible. You can just open the pre-defined walls with your grenade launcher. The houses will fall time to exact same position every time… But yeah.

The destructible environment is great feature, I am not against it. You can’t just say that it is “modern” destruction. It is still just a pre-defined holes on walls. But still, it is pretty great feature.

Sound system in bc2 is AWESOME. There is “high-dynamic sound” or something that makes the audio sound so awesome. All the explosions, gun fires, battlecrys just melt so well together. This has the best sound environment I have seen in games.

The bc2 isn’t so horrible from technical side as it could sound from this text… It just isn’t perfect. Just make sure that your machine is powerful enough to run the game and you should not have any problems.

Mw2 has steamworks integration (Steam cloud, achievements, etc) and I love it. Steamworks should be on every game nowadays…

Cheat protection

Quick summary about anti cheat to the end.

BC2 uses punkbuster that I don’t like at all. Punkbuster kicks many more player from games just because the software bugs or you haven’t updated. It also doesn’t like steam overlay on same games for some reasons…. It had lots of problems at start, but now it is starting to work slowly…

MW2 uses VAC that is in my opinion the most successful anti-cheat system. The problem is that VAC is designed to be help for a server admins that kicks player first, but mw2 doesn’t have servers with admins… Because of the delayed bans, cheaters can ruin games for players for even weeks before the ban activates. This is not fault of VAC. Its iw’s fault that they didn’t include the dedicated servers… I have seen three cheaters in mw2 so far. So the problem isn’t so huge. (But some people have said that I have aimbot/wallhack. Its kinda weird that having better k/d ration than 10 makes some people think that you have all kind of cheats installed…)

Which I should buy?

At first, check if your machine runs bc2. It is bit heavy game.

The best choice is to buy both, but if you want to buy only one game:

UPDATE: Because there have been couple of patches to BC2 fixing many problems and lag issues, I can’t anymore say that MW2 is better. MW2 is only better in the single player, and buying it only because of the single player isn’t worth of it. Just get the BC2.

UPDATE2: About the graphics. BC2 is technically much better and has some really cool effects. However overall look of the MW2 may be somehow better in my opinion. You can’t really say which one is better, because it is everyone’s own opinion. Hell, maybe I just say that BC2 has better graphics and everybody can stop whining about it.

UPDATE3: Now I have played the single player campaing of the bc2 also. The story was much better than in the mw2, because it didn’t jump so much from place to place. But it was way too short… Update post may be coming soon.

• Take bc2, if you have computer that can run it.
• Take mw2, if you just want some kind of shooter and your computer can’t run BC2

Woah… That was a bit long post. Maybe this way I can forgive myself that I didn’t update this blog last week

So I finally got the level 70 in modern warfare 2. I have played 2 days and 7 hours with 6513 kills and 4832 deaths. Full stats are bellow if you want to see them

However, this game isn’t anymore as fun as it was when I first started playing this… Here is some reasons why.

Lack of dedicated servers is huge problem. It doesn’t make the game unplayable, but rather very annoying. It’s just so fun to see on killcam that you shot only 2 bullets, when you really have shot half of the clip to that guy that knifed you…

Then there is those well balanced weapons like grenade launchers and anything akimbo. This would be much better game without akimbo/grenade launchers. Akimbo shotguns  are especially annoying…

And finally, the last reason for this rage post, the idiots that this game has way too much. There is just way too many kids screaming on mics, cheaters with aimbots/wallhacks, campers, people that won’t speak English and spams the chat with characters that nobody understands, retarded hosts downloading stuff while playing…

Well, this was great game for a while, but now this feels just annoying…

Modern Warfare 2 Stats

(and I will try to update this blog more often

Single player

Single player game was short. It took about 5 hours for me to finish the story at normal difficult. The campaign is better than mw1, but not as good as good single player fps games like hl2/portal. The story isn’t awesome, but some scenes and the loading videos are just awesome.

Some of the missions are great fun. Especially the sneaking tasks. But the massive battles are annoying! You just shoot everything and there comes even more enemies! Some times there is battles where you most likely are dying all the time and you must blindly shoot everybody… Then there comes more brainless enemies and so on.

Single player was fun, but some tasks were almost annoying.

Multiplayer

No dedicated servers. Good or bad thing? Partly both.

Bad things about no-dedis:

• Some games are laggy (Some dedis are also laggy)
• Host migration (Doesn’t happen often)
• Mods/custom maps (Meh, isn’t big deal)
• 9v9 player limit (Yes, if you are noob and want to nade spam everybody, this is not game for you. You need more skill playing this game.)(And IMO this is the right size for good match. The maps are well designed. Levels almost never feels too big)
• No longer favorite servers where people likes to play

Good thing about current system:

• You can get to game with just one click
• Playing with friends is easier (I love the party system! It makes everything just so simple)
• Matchmaking (ya, I am not sure if it works, but good thing to have)
• No idiot admins with retarded rules (No c4/claymores/<insert your favorite wpn here> allowed)

I would like to see something like l4d has. Dedicated servers with matchmaking, but current system is ok. Only 10% of games are unplayable, but you get same kind of shit in dedicated servers also…

After 10 hours of multiplayer. I have got 4 host migrations, 2 failed to connect/failed to migrate messages, so mostly the system is working well.

Then, to the actual multiplayer game. There is lots of weapons and they are all usable. Most of the annoying perks are removed/changed to death streak. Example last stand and juggernaut are now death streaks with some modifications.

Care packages are awesome way to give some big guns (Helicopters/harriers/etc) for everybody, not just hardcore players. With death streaks and other small improvements the game will be much easier for noobs and still balanced.

Multiplayer is fun. LOTS OF FUN. I can say that this game is totally worth of the 38e I used to this game. The normal steam prize (60e) is way too high.

I recommend to buy this game if you like FPS shooters. (And there isn’t too much lag issues

Edit: Sometimes IWNet may have a problems and getting to game may take couple minutes, I hope that they will fix this soon…