2010 is now upon us. Sounds like a great time to play some 2008 games.
 
I just wrapped up the single player campaign for Battlefield: Bad Company. I enjoyed this game. The story was kinda loose in a few of places, but the character banter between Redford, Sweetwater and Haggard was awesome. I even found myself speaking out loud to them every now and then.  
 
Let me start by saying that this game has the best tree-falling physics of any game I've ever played. From the first moment when B-Company asked me to try out the grenade launcher to blow off the front of a house(Which subsequently was lobbed over the roof and hit the tree behind the house with perfect comedic precision), I was shooting down as many trees as I could, just to watch them fall.
 
I will never get used to driving controls being mapped the L1 and L2 buttons. I just feels so backasswards and I got finger-tied every time I hopped into a vehicle. 
 
I thought it was cool that I was responsible for my own health. This made some of my "charging through the front lines" choices feel all the more epic, especially that final mad dash across the bridge to get the anti-aircraft turret(Is is even possible to make it this thing, it got blown to bits pretty fast). The only flaw is the toggling/cycling between the items and weapons felt really clunky. In the 3D program I use at work, if I click on a hotkey it toggles control objects on or off. If I hold the button down, the control object becomes visible and then when I let go it immediately goes back to the other command I was using. I think the healing should've been handled this way. There was so many times where I forgot to bring out my weapon again, cause I thought it was going to come back out automatically after letting go of L2.
 
Another issue I came across was the check points. I'm pretty gung-ho about my approach.  As such, I usually play a warrior or someone built to cut through enemies like a lawnmower. Needless to say, my vehicles rarely got me all the wait to my checkpoints. I would wonder around the map on foot, attempting to cut corners and triggering checkout points in the most inconvenient of places. One such occurence had me respawning underneath a bridge I was to cross. This resulted in me having to take about 5 minutes just to get back to where the fight is every time I died. I, once again, refer you to my gung-ho style approach to give you an idea of how often that was.
 
But, I muscled through the game, which is a big deal to myself because I don't consider myself an FPS fan. This is probably the first one I've completed from beginning to end. I think is served it's purpose as a good starting point. I saw just how sloppy of an FPS player I am. I was getting a bit more strategic towards the end. I was even making the decisions to put the mission objective ahead of shooting every person in the towns and villages. It first started as me running to the red smoke just to narrowly avoid dieing, but then it became a realization that, if these circumstances were real, sticking around for clean up was just pointless and suicidal.
 
I wonder if I've opened a pandora's box of some kind. I've now realized that I don't hate FPS's. I might not play the mulitplayer all that much(Even when playing Halo 2 with co-workers, I was nothing more than sniper fodder) but if the single player experiences keep up this level excitement that piques my interest, I might have just expanded my entire gaming catalogue. I'm gonna have to quit reading or something to make up time for them all.

2010 is now upon us. Sounds like a great time to play some 2008 games.
 
I just wrapped up the single player campaign for Battlefield: Bad Company. I enjoyed this game. The story was kinda loose in a few of places, but the character banter between Redford, Sweetwater and Haggard was awesome. I even found myself speaking out loud to them every now and then.  
 
Let me start by saying that this game has the best tree-falling physics of any game I've ever played. From the first moment when B-Company asked me to try out the grenade launcher to blow off the front of a house(Which subsequently was lobbed over the roof and hit the tree behind the house with perfect comedic precision), I was shooting down as many trees as I could, just to watch them fall.
 
I will never get used to driving controls being mapped the L1 and L2 buttons. I just feels so backasswards and I got finger-tied every time I hopped into a vehicle. 
 
I thought it was cool that I was responsible for my own health. This made some of my "charging through the front lines" choices feel all the more epic, especially that final mad dash across the bridge to get the anti-aircraft turret(Is is even possible to make it this thing, it got blown to bits pretty fast). The only flaw is the toggling/cycling between the items and weapons felt really clunky. In the 3D program I use at work, if I click on a hotkey it toggles control objects on or off. If I hold the button down, the control object becomes visible and then when I let go it immediately goes back to the other command I was using. I think the healing should've been handled this way. There was so many times where I forgot to bring out my weapon again, cause I thought it was going to come back out automatically after letting go of L2.
 
Another issue I came across was the check points. I'm pretty gung-ho about my approach.  As such, I usually play a warrior or someone built to cut through enemies like a lawnmower. Needless to say, my vehicles rarely got me all the wait to my checkpoints. I would wonder around the map on foot, attempting to cut corners and triggering checkout points in the most inconvenient of places. One such occurence had me respawning underneath a bridge I was to cross. This resulted in me having to take about 5 minutes just to get back to where the fight is every time I died. I, once again, refer you to my gung-ho style approach to give you an idea of how often that was.
 
But, I muscled through the game, which is a big deal to myself because I don't consider myself an FPS fan. This is probably the first one I've completed from beginning to end. I think is served it's purpose as a good starting point. I saw just how sloppy of an FPS player I am. I was getting a bit more strategic towards the end. I was even making the decisions to put the mission objective ahead of shooting every person in the towns and villages. It first started as me running to the red smoke just to narrowly avoid dieing, but then it became a realization that, if these circumstances were real, sticking around for clean up was just pointless and suicidal.
 
I wonder if I've opened a pandora's box of some kind. I've now realized that I don't hate FPS's. I might not play the mulitplayer all that much(Even when playing Halo 2 with co-workers, I was nothing more than sniper fodder) but if the single player experiences keep up this level excitement that piques my interest, I might have just expanded my entire gaming catalogue. I'm gonna have to quit reading or something to make up time for them all.

Bad Company is my favorite online FPS hands down, you should really give it a try at least online. Actually I got side tracked by the multiplayer so much I haven't even started the second level in the campaign. Despite as you mentioned the weird controls for just about everything me and some friends have a ton of fun just messing around online when we are bored. Good to see other people that like the game a lot, most of my friends hadn't even heard of it believe it or not.

Maybe, but I hardly ever have fun online. Between all the dieing and only getting a couple of kills. But I was noticing that I was getting better at picking off people on the fly(something I struggle with), I work better meticulously stalking behind the guy before popping him one. Metal Gear was the perfect pace of shooter for me. Who knows, maybe by the time I get around to Bad Company 2, I'll be skilled enough to actually be able to hold my own against other players. Though, if I do get that one, it might be for the 360... the PS3 analog sticks are too sticky/sloppy for any sort of precision.