The War of Apples and Oranges

This past week, two of the newer FPS’s on the market released content patches, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2.  Releasing their content patches on the same day, BF:BC2’s developer DICE (who announced the date second) has effectively made a declaration of war on the Infinity Ward juggernaut behind Modern Warfare 2.  Even more surprising, after this last patch, they are clearly winning.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the successor to the wildly successful original by the same name.  Originally nothing more than an offshoot project from the original CoD series, it did so well that it has dominated the name.  The original had an extremely gripping and cinematic campaign that seldom took the control away from the player, letting you feel every gripping moment from escaping a sinking freighter to invading a nuclear missile silo to stop the entire east coast from going Fallout 3.  On top of that it introduced a multiplayer level system that, as you played more and more, you opened up more weapons, weapon modifications, and even player perks that added a level of customization not regularly seen at the time in online shooters.  It was fast paced with relatively close combat, regularly referred to as a “twitch” shooter, as often times the only thing that determines who lives and dies is reaction time.  The leveling system and addictive gameplay brought Modern Warfare into the spotlight, pulling in so much money Infinity Ward would have been crazy NOT to make a sequel.

And a sequel they made.  The campaign picked up where the first one left off, and multiplayer was clearly an extension off of the first’s.  However, considering how many serious steps forward the first game took, it’s sequel felt underwhelming.  While the old adage of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” has some merit, the games had multiplayer that was so identical, the only way you could tell which game you were watching was if you knew the maps.  On top of that, multiplayer was notoriously buggy for several months after release, frustrating new and veteran players alike.  After dying to some little prick using the javelin glitch for the 10^th time in a single map, the multiplayer takes a horrifying turn from amazing to frustrating.  And while they did eventually fix most of their bugs, it was too late for many players.  Word on the street that the most recent map pack actually re-introduces a number of glitches, further emphasizing how absurd it is that a company that hosts millions of players a day lets problems like these arise.  On top of that, this content patch (released last week), introduced five maps.  Two were carbon copies of maps from the original game, and one of the remaining three featured a terrible glitch with the sky box that left the map painful to play on.  All of this came at the unusually high price of $15, which was a punch to the gut, further exacerbated by their competition.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is yet another successor, but not of quite the same sort of fame that Modern Warfare had.  It’s original introduced the game mechanic of destructible environments to mainstream online multiplayer, and large scale tactical battles focused more heavily on teamwork than who reacted faster.  Sadly its campaign fell woefully short of MW’s, but was amusing to play through nonetheless.  Also incorporating land, air, and sea vehicles the game felt more like an actual battle, as opposed to the counterstrike-esque feel that Modern Warfare brought to the table. It wasn’t really in direct competition with MW because it wasn’t really the same sort of game, and so it thrived in its own quiet way.

It’s sequel on the other hand managed to deliver on everything that was great about the first game.  Still not really in direct competition with the MW line, BF:BC2 ramped up the team play and map destruction.  Entire buildings can now collapse, and the animations are smooth and realistic.  One could make the argument that it didn’t introduce any more new content to it’s formula than MW2, and honestly they would be right.  However, there are two extremely big factors where this is not the case.

BF:BC2 is an almost completely bug free multiplayer playground.  The closest things I could possibly call glitches are really just creative player ingenuity and teamwork.  There is nothing unfeasible about strapping C4 to one of your off-roaders, driving it straight into the enemy building, and then detonating it, whereas the idea of a player exploding automatically upon death in MW2 is absurd and unfair.  On top of that, BC2’s content patch was completely free for anyone that purchased the game new (which to be honest, is everyone that I know that plays it).  By choosing to release a FREE content patch on the same date as Infinity Ward’s $15 dollar bugfest, DICE effectively challenged MW2’s supremacy.

As I said earlier, these games really don’t fit into the same category of play, and there is no reason you cannot enjoy both of them.  MW2 is a fast paced shooter while BC2 is a team based battle simulator.  However, they are close enough in style that, if Infinity Ward doesn’t pull themselves together and fix their game, their customers (myself included) will give up entirely in favor of the much smoother, enjoyable, and cheaper experience that is BC2.  Infinity Ward got sloppy, and DICE is more than happy to take advantage of that.  If MW2 manages to clean up its act and Infinity Ward stops gouging their customers, then perhaps BC2 will find itself in hot water some day.  But either way, with these two developers attempting to best each other with a better game, the players win.

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