Bad Company 2 Tips and Tricks (Analysis)

So, today's post will be about Bad Company 2, a Swedish-made video game that beats the pants of (currently) anything else. If you don't like video games, skip this post and look forward to the Artist's Corner later today!

Okay I want to start off by declaring that the following 1-15 tips are not mine, but taken from a list on steampowered forums. However the red comments are mine, as well as the longer tips at the end =)

1. Hit Enter, while alive, to bring up the squad menu. Select on consoles

2. While planting or disarming the cap points, you can still fire, reload, etc without interrupting the process. You can also strafe to a degree, though not so much when you’re arming the charge.

EDIT: You can still look around while you're arming and disarming the bomb. You don't have to look directly at it. (via Bungle)

4. The cap points have hit points. If the defending team is guarding a point really hard, park a tank on a hill and shoot at the cap point until it blows up or you destroy the building it is in. Never knew this on, looks like its time for another C4 Rush

5. You can access your parachute from any height that would normally hurt you.

6. The stationary missile launchers are guided. After you fire you have some control over the rockets flight path.

7. Think outside the box. Some explosions can kill people on the other side of a wall. Red boxes, red barrels, Engineer RPG and stationary AT all have the explosive power to do this. The rifle mounted greanade launcher does NOT.


9. The engineer repair tool can be used for more than just repairs. It will damage enemy vehicles and can even be used to kill enemies in melee range. The medic’s defibrillator does the same thing for infantry, brings a whole new meaning to shock and awe.

"You can use your repair tool to make little holes in barricades or walls and use for shooting and coverage" (via Argie86) Great tip, even if bullets wear the wall down, you’ll get a head start to back away. Won’t save you DIRECTLY from explosions though (indirectly will help prevent you from being noticed)

10. "If you press Q (Orders), while aiming over a teammate (medic, engineer, assault), you request his assistance (healing, repairing, ammo)." (via Breitschwert) Not sure if select on playstation 3 does the same, will try it out and let you guys know.

11. "You can revive soldiers through windows and holes in a walls, if they are right next to the window/wall." (via Breitschwert)

12. Mix things up a bit. "The recon class can be played well without a sniper as an offensive class (shotgun+dynamite)." (via Breitschwert) Great trick that I used back in Bad Company 1, camping while defending outside a house in a bush with a ghillie and a silenced SMG lead to a ten kill-streak and effectively prevented their tanks from having infantry support (which means your buddies can focus on blowing them up). Sadly though, when the opposing players had enough they sent some mail over in the form of 60mm mortars, which ended that round for me.

13. It's a bird. No, it's a plane. No, it's a *BOOM* "Fly HIGH with the UAV until you need to fire a missile. You want to be an inconspicuous observer until you are ready to fire." (via Freyar) Alternative fire is also available, as well as the ability to swoop down like batman and slice ur prey. Just remember that the locking on/shooting process lags a few seconds, so you need to lead your targets. Try to stay hidden until you're completely sure you'll get a hit, then rain down some hellfire on that poor unsuspecting ghillie-suited bastard.

14. "If you shoot at something and get the hit marker, it means you did damage." If it looks like you hit but no marker, it means you missed it or did not cause any damage. (via zomgzomg) The greatest rule, I remember a machinima commentator bitching about not hitting people, though the same system applies in modern warfare 2. Weird.

15. In the first section of Port Valdez, if you are the attackers some times you spawn without your parachute not open. Just hit your Jump/Parachute button and it will open. (via classs) LEARNED THIS ONE THE HARD WAY (READ: EPIC FAIL)

(Use your grenade launcher if you're playing Hardcore: since health is down to half, the area damaging effect of grenades will generate many more kills- Awesome Lagger

(AT+ C4 and U+C4 Make life a lot easier for any soldier)

My own tips from my (very limited) Bad Company 2 experience:

Remember to use your microphone. Since bad company 2 has a killcam, use your mic to help YOUR squad. I can’t emphasize this enough. You don’t have to give exact coordinates and YOU SHOULDN'T as it uses up valuable time: on smaller maps use short words to describe landmarks- beach, Bradley spawn, Shacks, Cliffs, Forest.

On larger maps, use the objectives as well ( for example: A, B,C, Russian Spawn, Ship etc.). Note that although this doesn't work well on all maps (saying “snow covered building” on a Nelson Bay or Jungle trees on Laguna is quite fail), it keeps information circling. At it’s worst, everyone becomes confused, but at its best everyone on your squad knows what’s happening around them and can plan their action as a cohesive group (the failure rate of one man attacking a well-defended capture point is mindblowingly high, isn’t that amazing?), which brings us to….

2. S SPOT! SPOT! If you can’t harm it, SPOT IT, and your friend with the RPG will help you out. You still get the spot assist which is good too.

3. A Act as a unit: for ideas, try playing operation flashpoint. For example, When encountering a tank, the Asses (Assaults) and Meds(Medics) should scram and find some cover: not only to save their asses, but also to cover the other members from infantry. Ideally, the scrambling members should try and attract the attention of the tank, leaving the Geeks (engineers) and Recs (Recon) to take out the vehicle accordingly. One needs to play regularly with a constant team to achieve this, but the rewards of acting as a squad is many times that of acting as an unorganized mob.

4. B Blow shit up. Why do you think DICE made the buildings destructible? ! Got some snipers camping out in a house? Mortar strike the whole building. MCom entrance well defended? Blow a hole with a BMD-armoured vehicle and ram yourself in, disgorging lots of angry Russians in the process. Explosions are area weapons and can even kill people beyond walls, so do yourself a favor a save your ammo, hop in a tank, and blow stuff up (quote Haggard, gotta love him). Hey, you might even enjoy it in the process.

5. B Be unpredictable. Cheesy, I know, but still, do it. Use your mic and flank your opponents as A SQUAD. Get in their spawn and capture their tanks. Every second you confuse your opponents and deny them the chance to retaliate means more points for you and more time for your buddies to stop shitting themselves and take the fight to the other team.

RT Run and use the cover, be it foliage or buildings, whatever. It’s usually when a soldier slows to walking that the Recs (like me) squeeze off that oh-so-satisfying round that implants itself in their skulls. Don’t worry fellow recons, theres always fresh meat in the grinder.

Nn Next time: Weapons analysis, part 1!

Ne