It seems like such a bold statement to have. Bad Company 2 for all intents and purposes was a game that was meant to portray a sense of humor albeit not as silly as what you would see in Team Fortress 2. But at the same time maintained a graphically strong FPS in your atypical modern military shooter environment. Looking back from now all the way to say upwards to 13 years ago in early 2000's. There's obviously been a huge amount of shooters from endless franchises. The COD Series, the BF series, Counterstrike, Crysis, Quake, Team Fortress, Day of Defeat, Arma series, and the list goes on and on. I've played a variety of games in almost all series since I really got into PC gaming in the late 90's. But for some reason BC2 just stuck out.
I have Battlefield 4, Played many hours of Battlefield 3 and even bought premium for BF3 to get all the DLC's. Yet oddly enough my forte in playing BF3 and BF4 currently is purely infantry based games on Team Deathmatch and Domination game modes. Why? I just enjoy playing that way. There's nothing wrong with vehicle combat, but I couldn't fly a heli or a jet worth my salt and would end up crashing myself and any unfortunate soul who was with me in said aerial vehicles. I can work fine as a gunner on those though and that's enough. Ground vehicles I'm OK with, I can use tanks, AA vehicles, LAV's, etc just fine, but I'm no ace due to lack of experience with them.
In Bad Company 2, I think that game was a more modern looking adaptation of what the original Desert Combat mod for Battlefield 1942 would have been. Since Bad Company 1 never came on PC (it only went to consoles). Here you would your militaristic shooter, but with DICE putting out their engine on the game using Frostbyte 1.5, it looked pretty impressive. The destruction of buildings, and cover set a very dynamic environment where one minute you have a house, and the next minute it's a pile of rubble that barely provides sufficient cover from enemy fire. What I take most about the game is that it streamlined infantry and armor/vehicles well, sure a well driven tank with a great gunner can wreck a team especially when said tank has some engineers to repair it. But even so, it was never the originator as it was around in Battlefield 1942 if recall correctly. That evolved into Battlefield 2 and 2142, then although Bad Company was it's own sub-series just borrowing the Battlefield name, it was still part of the family. From there BC2 in my opinion set a standard that was hard to beat, and gave the ever fledgling and quite powerful Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare something to think about in regards of military shooter competition games.
For all I've mentioned and praised BC2, I never really gave specific reasons as to why I truly consider it the best, was it the destruction? The mix of infantry and vehicle combat? The graphics? The fact it challenged the infamous Call of Duty series as they were gaining massive momentum in the console arena? It might be all of that actually, the gunplay in Bad Company 2 was by no means perfect and balanced, but it was refined to the point almost all the guns had their own identity. Early in the game's lifespan, there were some overpowered weapons easily used and abused for competition such as the AN-94 with it's magnanimous 2-shot burst which was both powerful, accurate, and easily spammable. The Type 88 LMG which sported a 200 round belt fed magazine which had relatively good stopping power, rate of fire, and decent accuracy combined with the fact the LMG carrying class were medics making it all the more easier. The popular but heavily nerfed Carl Gustav AT launcher combined with class specs/perks to increase it's overall effectiveness not only made it great for tearing down cover and buildings, but it's splash, and how easy to aim with it made it way too strong for it's own good. Vehicle balance was similar and asymmetrical, for every M1A2 Abrams tank, there would be a T-90A somewhere else. So one can't really complain about vehicle balance since they were just that, balanced. There was a completely opposite vehicle relative to the other, and this formula carried over to Battlefield 3 and 4.
Now that I am playing Battlefield, the increased level of destruction that was scaled back in Battlefield 3 hearkens me back to the good ol' days of BC2. One of my favorite maps in BC2 was White Pass in Conquest mode. It had 3 points to cap in a snow ridden map with the most potent vehicle in that game being an Infantry Fighting Vehicle for each side. There were tree filled small forests in the map, some nuanced hills and passes on both sides leading around to the main spawn points of each team. The design while not really symmetrical was still sufficient albeit not exactly balanced as one team would have a large near indestructible factory type building that would house one of the cap points and would be overlooking a team's main spawn point enabling the opposing team to spawn camp the other. But the reverse can also be said though the other side of the map didn't really have any large buildings to use as cover. I had some really fun times playing BC2 and even a little playing the Bad Company 2 Vietnam DLC. I loved rolling around in white pass with an ACOG'ed Uzi headshotting people from 100m+. For some strange reason it worked and I was happy with it. With over 800 hours played in that game, it took a nice chunk out of my life that BF3 couldn't pull off, but I think with Battlefield 4, I may be able to replicate the same level of dedication and fun that BC2 brought. It's a shame this is Battlefield 4 and not Bad Company 3, because right now, it feels like BC3 in it's own weird way.
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