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Battlefield Bad Company 2: A PC Gamer’s Review

View of a village you are to raid in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (Click for full-size 1080p)

One of the things that frequently bugs me is how most ‘mainstream’ video games made by big time publishers almost always get “high scores” and lots of praises from the ‘majority media’ nowadays. All those nines and tens sprinkled in the scores columns of video game reviews, games are being pushed too close for comfort to the ‘perfect’ point to consumers, despite having flaws that should’ve dragged down the rating. This is where our occasional PC game reviews at HP Fansite come in – we get raw and messy into various PC titles to uncover the REAL truth: whether a game is worth spending your hard earned cash on… what’s good… what’s not… how the experience on YOUR PC will be (especially given the increasing number of people gaming on their notebooks)… how’s replayability like… singleplayer and/or multiplayer… and the works. All from the perspective of a true PC gamer (not some news editor who happens to work for a gaming magazine), plus collective opinions from my circle of PC gamer acquaintances.

Today, we’re taking an exclusive look at Battlefield: Bad Company 2. For the benefit of those who may not have heard of the game (how could you? It’s been the watercooler topic of most FPS/PC gamers since it was announced, gaining even more publicity during the time Infinity Ward announced “No dedicated servers” for Modern Warfare 2), Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is a first-person shooter game set in modern times. Overall, it’s a sequel to console-only first person shooter Bad Company 1, though you won’t be missing out too much if you’ve never played the first game before. The spotlight features of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 are a vast number of destructible elements (you can shoot through, blowup, cut and/or slash just about anything in the game, including making whole buildings collapse!) and ‘traditional’ Battlefield multiplayer with four classes to choose from, multiple vehicles you can drive and teamwork that you need.

That got your attention yet? Hit that link for more about Battlefield: Bad Company 2 for PC!

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Battlefield Bad Company 2 (Retail) Initial Impressions

Bad Company 2 main menu!

So I’ve been indulging a little guilty pleasure lately, playing Battlefield Bad Company 2, and delaying the HP Elitebook 8440p review. But rest assured, it was well worth the small compromise (plus, the review of the Elitebook 8440p will be out later this week). I’d like to take my big pair of headphones off and some time off the game to share a few impressions I’ve had so far about the game:

• The retail box is pretty
• The very FIRST map you play in single player is set in the World War 2 era. You don’t get your full set of gear and gadgets at first, destroyable elements are present along with a few explosions but not yet to the ‘full’ extent of modern day maps – think of the graphics in the WW2 map as a marriage between Call of Duty: World at War and Crysis.
• Despite the idea of the first map being set in World War 2, you still get 1) the rest of the game set in ‘present’ modern times and 2) you still get to man a machine gun mounted on the back of some Japanese truck while getting driven around by your AI teammates at full speed!
• Absolutely LOVE the vast variety of destructible elements in the game. Pretty much anything you see can be blown into shreds using explosives, or torn through using your gun!
• Optimization seems to have been done since “Beta” versions and the game now runs smoothly on many systems, including a Core 2 Duo wielding notebook. Nice! I also noticed a decent performance boost if you use a quad core system and/or graphics card supporting DX11 (like the ATI one used in the 2010 Envy 15)
• Again, if you have at least just a decent/midrange laptop, you CAN run this game well (albeit not at high settings) so don’t fret
• Multiplayer is as promising as it looked/looks in early videos around the net. Try the real deal in the retail game and it’s even more awesome (I’m gonna keep that a bit of a surprise till my “final” review of the game which I’ll be posting in the next 24 hours)

More to come in my final review of Bad Company 2 coming really soon!!!!

Big bad earmuffs!

Hey all, how was your week? Mine was hectic as ever.

I’ve been very busy over the last one week, attending several events and product launches (errr… non-HP ones unfortunately) and I recently received a pair of Panasonic ‘earmuff’ headphones as a gift. And let me summarize things for you: Best. Gift. Ever. If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you’d know that I’ve been enjoying loud, thumping bass along with crispy clear sound. I’m loving it! This pair of Panasonic headphones have better sound quality, bass thump and design versus my old, now-defunct Creative headphones. Well, not exactly defunct, it still works, but because of the dumb design, the second ‘upper’ band which keeps the ‘muffs over your head broke. Oddly enough, it’s made of plastic and there used to be a small, visible plastic ’seam’ at the breaking point – planned failure, huh? Don’t get me wrong, I love Creative’s in-ear buds though, just not their big headphones.

I know I’m supposed to post my review of the HP Elitebook 8440p and HP Envy 15 feat. ATI Mobility 5830. And I will… over the coming days. And I also caught a few more titbits about the ever-elusive Elitebook 8740w during the weekends – Will have that posted soon as well =)

HP Night Light illuminates Elitebook 8440p playing Left4Dead 2

HP Night Light in action on Elitebook 8440p running Left4Dead 2

Wondering how effective the HP Night Light is in HP’s Elitebook models? How about the gaming performance of the HP Elitebook 8440p when it comes to the sequel to everyone’s favorite zombie-horror game? Well, everyone, I’ve got a treat for you today: you get the answers to both questions in this single article! I just happened to be playing Left4Dead 2 on a friend’s newly acquired Elitebook 8440p (don’t forget to plug in the charger for maximum performance!) and come on, what’s a survival horror/zombie game without playing in the dark for ambience? So last weekend, I switched off all the lights in the room, whipped out the HP Elitebook 8440p and started up Left4Dead 2 for a little “Dark Carnival” multiplayer LAN fun!

As you can see, the HP Night Light (the little light above the notebook’s display) illuminates the entire keyboard pretty well and even the area around it (you can spot my travel mouse to the right if you look hard enough). What’s great about HP’s implementation of their Night Light is that it isn’t annoying or too bright; and there’s no light leakage, so the illumination is focused solely on the keyboard area.

As for gaming performance, I ran Left4Dead 2 (yes, with my newly installed Zoey skin/voice mod!) on a HP Elitebook 8440p configured with 2.53 GHz dual core Intel Core i5 540M, 8 GB DDR3 RAM, 320 GB 7200 RPM hard disk drive and 512 MB Nvidia Quadro NVS 3100M graphics with the following settings in Left4Dead 2:

• 1600 x 900 resolution
• No film grain
• 2X MSAA anti-aliasing
• 2X anisotropic filtering
• Vertical sync disabled
• Multicore rendering enabled
• Shader – Low (GPU dependent)
• Effects – High (CPU dependent)
• Model/texture – Medium
• Available memory – High

Turns out that the Elitebook 8440p performed pretty well with the settings above, with frame rates hovering around 24 to 40 frames per second: enough for navigating through all the action from saferoom to saferoom. I have one big tip for gaming on notebooks running the latest Intel Core i5 and Core i7 mobile processors: Always plug in the notebook to a nearby power outlet. This new generation of processors are even more picky and sensitive than their old Core 2 Duo counterparts – bringing performance down to minimal levels to stinge on power when running off the battery. Only when plugged in do these new processors run at full tilt, even letting Intel’s Turbo Boost kick in whenever possible, for maximum performance.

Oh, in case anyone is wondering, I tested the Elitebook 8440p with the uncut, butt-kicking version of Left4Dead 2. There’s word that the cut/censored version of Left4Dead 2 brings a noticeable frame rate increase thanks to reduced levels of in-game blood and gore (among other things).

Assassin’s Creed 2 for PC, mark your calendars

As many of you may know, while I’m not busy with books, papers, friends or HP products, I also love, love, love PC gaming. Did I mention how I recently picked up Assassin’s Creed 1 for PC, played it on a borrowed HP Envy 15 and loved it? No? Well, now you know. After playing Batman Arkham Asylum for PC last December (and writing about its singleplayer experience earlier this month), I sort of went on a “third person action” gaming spree. My “latest” third person perspective game was 2007/2008’s Assassin’s Creed 1, which I started and finished within last week – strange how I missed picking it up when it first came out.

Since it’s an old game, I won’t be writing a full length review about it (though you should lookout for my reviews of Batman Arkham Asylum 1 and Left4Dead 2, as well as a few new HP notebooks, in the coming weeks). But simply put, it was a game with a great storyline, decent character development, lots of nice scenery and part-action, part-stealth gameplay. Though it had its fair share of issues such as missions that get slightly repetitive after awhile and jagged edges/below average image quality (due to either lack of anti-aliasing and/or upsampling from 720p to 1080p, not sure which one, because the PC version of Assassin’s Creed 1 was a direct console port), I still loved it as a whole… and I’ve been looking forward to Assassin’s Creed 2 for PC since.

Well, the release date of Assassin’s Creed 2 for PC, the direct sequel to the original game, was announced less than 12 hours ago – mark your calendars for March 16, 2010, if third person adventure games are your thing (or if you just like intriguing storylines). I hope that after all that waiting (and delay, compared to the console versions which were already out since November 2009), the developers have gotten their act together to go that extra mile to make Assassin’s Creed 2 less of a console port, and more PC optimized (real 1080p and anti-aliasing up to 16X CSAA please!).

While I’m all up for Assassin’s Creed 2, and really happy for the fact Ubisoft is including the full game (unlike consoles, whose players have to buy the two DLC’s which were supposed to be part of the story), they’re charging a whopping $60 for the game. For the record, the MSRP of new PC game titles has been and is usually $50. And I think we have that console game (which was lazily turned into a crippled, console-lified PC game) to blame for starting off the “$60 for PC games” trend. Yes, I’m sure with the launch of Assassin’s Creed 2 as the second ever PC game with a $60 price tag, many PC gamers are praying hard that the disgusting, plain horrid “$60 trend” set by Modern Warfare 2 will not become a norm as other developers release games in the future…

Thanks for the Left4Dead 2 update, Valve!

Playing as the happy chainsaw-wielding Coach in Left4Dead 2

In some other news related to gaming, I’ve just updated Left4Dead 2 to the latest version (I think) after a long while of not playing the game due to crash issues, which some may remember, I posted about more than a month ago. Well after keeping myself busy with other games, relaxing during the Christmas/New Year holidays and more recently, covering HP-related CES news, I’ve finally had the time to start up Left4Dead 2 and pull in some new updates. And guess what? I just finished the first campaign, Dead Center, on singleplayer and it worked the whole way through without a single crash/lag situation happening! Yes, we bumped into the Wandering Witch several times, the bots AKA computer-controlled characters disturbed her and had to take her down (one of the biggest causes of Left4Dead 2 crashes which even Valve themselves acknowledged)… did that a few times without crashing at all.

I’m off to get myself something to eat before I test out the other campaigns, then later today, I’m planning to celebrate this occasion (yes, hurrah for games with LAN support!) by bringing my Pavilion dv4 over to a small L4D2 gathering/LAN party with some other L4D2/gamers I know. Once again, I’m overjoyed that Left4Dead 2 seems to work very smoothly after being updated… that’s another PC game with decent multiplayer and LAN support, for the win! I’m glad I got this game – initially for its singleplayer/multiplayer replay value and multiplayer features (yes, like LAN support and dedicated servers which should be standard in the PC world), and now, good support by the developers for the game. In fact, in my books, any game with either a long, in-depth singleplayer mode (ie Metal Gear Solid 4 and Arkham Asylum) and/or replayable singleplayer/multiplayer (ie Left4Dead) is a kazillion times better than this certain game with overly short, fairly linear singleplayer, apparent disregard by developers for the PC version and poor, extremely crippled multiplayer.

Update: It works!!! It works!! All the Left4Dead 2 campaigns played smoothly for me without any crashes I experienced when I initially got the game. Gamer review of Left4Dead 2 to follow soon…

P.S. I’m in the process of trying to acquire the new ATI Mobility 5830 totting HP Envy 15 for testing… so in case you’re curious about benchmarks and such for the new Envy 15, now you know that’s on my “to-do” list this spring. Have a great weekend everyone.