Surviving BFBC2 Multiplayer – Part 1

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Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is probably the hardest multiplayer game of recent times for a newbie to survive in. Unlike Modern Warfare 2 you don’t get a taster of the classes you’ll be able to unlock as you level up, you don’t have a Copycat Killstreak available. In fact you get pretty much no help at all. Not even from the instruction manual.

If you’ve come to BFBC2 from MW2 and think that you can waltz in and be beast from the get go then you’d better think again, otherwise you’ll end up crying into your Gatorade. Thankfully, and with the help of the wonderful world of the intertubes I’m going to attempt to redress the imbalance by giving a heads up to all the new players out there. This can never be a definitive guide – I don’t have the time, and seriously don’t have the 1337 skillz to cover everything in the game. Hopefully areas that I’m sketchy on, have missed, or gotten completely wrong will be commented on by someone with more knowledge.

To begin with we’re going to go over getting started. We need to do this as EA appear to have forgotten this fairly important part.

Getting Started

When you start the game you can alter the brightness, volume and sensitivity settings – the run of the mill stuff that most people do. *Note* If you have been playing Modern Warfare 2 you’ll probably find the control quite sluggish in BFBC2. In MW2 on the PS3 I play on sensitivity 3 – on BFBC2 I have the sensitivity up at least 60% and even that can be too slow some times.

BFBC2 Multiplayer Options

Once you’ve finished fiddling with the settings go back to the main screen and choose the Multiplayer options (this being a Multiplayer guide, it would make sense to choose it). The two options we’ll look at in this part are Play Now and Play with Friends.

Play Now

No friends - no problem

If don’t have any friends online, don’t want to play with them, or simply have no friends then you can jump into a game using this option. Choose your game type, level and whether or not it’s hardcore and away you go…..good luck.

Play with Friends

When you choose the option ‘Play with Friends’ you get a screen with three choices – join a friend in their game (but not necessarily in their squad), create your own squad, or view game invites.

Joining a friend’s game.

To join the game of a friend who is already playing you need to highlight their name (as long as it has BC2 next to it) press X (on PS3) and the game will try and join you up. If the server is full you’ll get a message saying as much. You can either then try again until you do join their game, or choose someone else to join. When you get into your friend’s game it’ll put you in their squad only if there is a slot available – otherwise it’s pot luck whether you are friend or foe in game.

Creating your own squad

If you like to be organised and have it all worked out before hand you can create your own squad by clicking on the Create Squad Button. From there you can send invites to your friends and once accepted they will appear in your Squad box. Below the Squad Box is the area where you select your game type. When your squad is together and you’ve chosen the game type you can select Find a Game at the top to launch the multiplayer.

Create Squad and View Invites

Accepting an Invite

If you are invited to a game you can use this option to view your message invites. It’s not usually an issue if your friend is setting up a squad in a lobby, but if they are already playing then you need to pull your finger out or you’ll miss your slot.

That’s it for Part One. In Part Two we’ll be looking at the classes available to the new player and in game comms.

Peas and loaves.

Find me on PSN – evaDlivE

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