Battlefield 2142 to Bad Company 2 Migration Guide 4th February 2011

Up until recently the only Battlefield game I had played was 2142, definitely one of my favourite games. I was persuaded to give Bad Company 2 a go and safe to say that is now also one of my favourite games. Some things are quite different than 2142 and will probably trip up other people as they did me. I thought it would be handy to make a guide of the differences that have stumped me so far. I’ll add more as I come across them.

Single Player
2142 is a purely multiplayer game. The only single player mode is to play the multiplayer levels against AI. In Bad Company there is a proper single player story mode. During this you can unlock weapons and rank up your soldier. However, and here’s the kicker, you don’t get to carry any of it into multiplayer with you. Finding all those M-Comm units? Epic waste of time. I did my usual habbit of trying to be completionist about it all. If I’d known in advance I would of just stuck to the main story instead of wandering off searching every house and cranny. If you’re down with Battlefield 2142 then you don’t really need to bother with the BC2 single player mode unless you just want to see the story. Not to give you any spoilers there but the story is kinda anti-climatic and not a patch on the first Modern Warfare plot. It’s kinda on par with Modern Warfare 2s story I guess.

Multiplayer Server Browser
In 2142 the list auto-populates however in BC2 the list starts off empty, this had me stumped for about 5 minutes. It’s actually like this every time you load the server browser window. I think it’s EAs way of relieving the load on their servers. The idea is that you will find a few servers you like and add them to your favorites tab. Then in the future when you click Server Browser you just skip the main search list and go straight to your favourites. That saves the search query from you to EA and back again with the results. Simple change but effective.

So, on the right hand side in BC2 you can see the search filters. Leave a box clear to say “I don’t care”, click it once to add a tick which says “Game must have this option” and click a second time to make a cross which says “Game must not have this option”. I have them all ticked except EA at the bottom which I’ve left blank. The game will remember your filters for next time. Filter wise I don’t think there’s anything here that you wouldn’t of seen in 2142s search filter system.

The bit that had me stumped was that I pressed the Reset button and nothing happened. I did this a bunch of times and decided it meant I had a connection problem. This led me to wondering if I had to forward ports etc. Tried a bunch of things and nothing worked. Then I pressed Search by accident and it worked. Lesson learned? If you have two buttons and one doesn’t work then try the other one! Reset just clears everything back to default, you have to press Search to actually do the search. I know it sounds obvious now but it wasn’t at the time.

Hardcore
Now this is something 2142 didn’t have, hardcore mode. No one warned me about this. Basically the server admin can toggle lots of things on and off plus increase the difficulty level. A typical hardcore game means you have no cross hair, no mini map and damage is greatly increased. I wasn’t that keen on it at first but now I quite like it. Unless you’re going to play lone wolf you will really want to use VOIP to keep in touch with your squad. Although the minimap isn’t visible you can still pull up the large map (M key in game) although make sure to find a safe place to rest whilst you do that!

The Commander
In 2142 one soldier on each team can become the commander for their side. This allows them to see the battlefield from a birds-eye satalite view. They can communicate directly with squad leaders and individual soldiers. To help aid their troops they can call in supply drops or a couple of air strikes. There is no commander in BC2. The closest thing is to use the UAV. On the map you’ll see a small rectangle with a chevron in it. If you go there you’ll see a little computer on a stand. If it’s active then you can use it to remote control the UAV which can launch awesome air attacks.

Go Prone!!!!
Tuff, you can’t in BC2. You can walk, run and crouch but no going prone. I actually just read that they’re touting that as a new feature in Battlefield 3, even though it was in 2142 from day one!

Melee Combat
This one is really screwing me over, trying to break habits. In 2142 the knife was your first weapon so you pressed 1 to select it. 2 is your hand gun, 3 is your main weapon and above that are your addons like the ammo hub or med pack. In BC2 there is a dedicated melee attack key (defaults to middle mouse button). The actual blade isn’t in the weapon list at all which means your hand gun is 1, main weapon is 2 and so on. Only a small difference but it’s enough to mean I’m missing out on some good dog tag opportunities. Oh yeah, dog tag collecting is still encouraged in BC2!

Punkbuster
Hasn’t changed at all since BF2142. When using that I always had to use the standalone Punkbuster utility to update my 2142 PB files. Same goes for BC2. I use the same util, I just added BC2 to the game list it has.

Port Forwading
Don’t need to if you are using UPNP. I have it enabled and have not forwarded any ports and the game runs fine.

Game Modes
In 2142 you had two game modes, Conquest aka capture the flag and Titan where both teams race to capture as many missle silos as possible to take down the enemies titan. In BC2 you have Rush, this is where there are several M-Comm stations on a level and one team has to defend them and the other attack. You can destroy an M-Comm by running up to it and holding down E until the fuse is set. Then you have to defend the site until the bomb goes off. Another way is to destroy the building that the M-Comm unit is in. Be careful though as I’ve seen more than one server state that they don’t allow you to use the tanks to do this. The other mode is Conquest which is capture the flag as in 2142. There are also Squad variants of each mode meaning your squad against an other directly.

Leveling Up
To get unlocks for each class you have to play as that class. If you want to get all the weapon and accessories for the Assult kit then you have to play as the Assault soldier. You can see your progress towards each unlock at the end of each round. You get pins and awards as in 2142 although obviously they all look different and are for mostly different tasks. It’s more of the same jump through hoops stuff.

Destructive Enviroment
This will get loads of you. Most things in a level can be destroyed given enough motivation! This means hiding in that small attic window for your perfect sniper spot could land you in trouble when a tank brings the whole building down. Also means that running for cover actually means run from cover to more cover since a grenade can take a wall down on top of you. Very cool stuff that adds a big difference to game play.

This is one thing I’ve noticed people seem to have a problem getting their heads around. The fabric covered chain link fences are a good example. I’ve noticed that most people stop shooting at me if I run behind one of these as they think they’ll either follow me in or circle around and get me on my exit. In reality they could of just shot me through the fence. On the flip side I’ve seen people running behind the fence as they thought it would block my bullets but instead I just do a large spread Scarface style and take the whole fence down!

Homing RPGs
One of the engineer unlocks is a tracer dart gun that when fired at a tank marks it for anyone with an RPG. Marked vehicles get an orange rectangle around them. Then if you have an RPG and right click aim at the target you’ll see a distance indicator appear after a few seconds. Now you can fire your rocket and it will home in on the tank. A typical use of this is to fire over a hill by shooting high into the air so the rocket goes up over the hill and then arks back down on the other side. Be careful not to miss though as it has a very slow reload and if a tank gunner sees your stray shot they are more than likely to move you to the top of their threat list!

VSync
Didn’t have any problems with 2142 but BC2 did cause me some issues. I sorted most of them out as you can read here.