As a die hard FPS gamer and a true fan to the Battlefield series, I can proudly say I have played every single version of this series. I have even hit up a few of the mods. Up until recently, my friends and I took part in the still-packed-multiplayer community of Battlefield 2 (2005), the modern adaptation of the original multiplayer masterpiece: Battlefield 1942 (2002).

Moving away from the standard PC gaming community, DI partnered with EA and created a whole new area of the Battlefield series solely for console gamers called, Battlefield: Bad Company. Straying from their norm even further, DI even came up with a somewhat decent storyline for single player campaign mode as opposed to no campaign mode at all. Naturally, many PC gamers were upset, but that didn’t stop me from playing it.

Anyway, DI announced the sequel to there series, Dubbed Battlefield Bad Company 2, and at the end of January, the PC beta was opened to anyone who pre-orderd. Oh yes, PC. DI must have listened to the cries of the true gamers because this game is now at the mercy of PC gamers as well as those dubious modders (make us proud!).

For those of you who haven’t played the previous Bad Company, I need to mention something that was supposed to make the game and set it apart from the rest, and which was also partly why many PC gamers were upset that it was console only. DI developed a new game engine that allowed the somewhat complete destruction of buildings. I’m talking – your in a building protecting an objective and a tank blows a hole through the wall you were standing against – yeah, it was pretty awesome. However, the destruction was limited, as you couldn’t completely knock down a building on top of your enemies; Until now.

Let me first state that what I have played so far of Bad Company 2 is a beta. This means that the game is not finished and has a lot of glitches and problems. That said, the destructive power of this game is still impressive. Where DI and EA missed out previously, they covered here. I have experienced first hand the sensations of an entire building crumbling to the ground around me and on my head ending my life. I have even flipped my 4X4 over by accidentally driving through a crater on the ground from mortar strikes while simultaneously dodging trees that are being sawed down by .50 cal machine guns. Needless to say, you get a pretty decent feel of being in a very active battlefield, as the destruction will make you thing twice about taking cover from an enemy tank behind a flimsy brick wall.

The graphics look pretty decent as well. Not amazing, but decent. It’s clearly a port from the console version. Although I can’t expect an entire world to be destructible and look amazing, DI truly tried to do both, and what they lacked in graphics they made up in other areas, like sound effects. Full surround sound capable, giving anyone with a 5.1 channel surround system a slight advantage when someone tries to sneak up behind you, and sound effects that will make you swear that you are standing on the battlefield.

Despite being a graphics junky, I know looks are not everything in the gaming world. Gameplay is a major part of making a good game, probably even the majority of it. Before I get into this I must again stress the fact that this is still a beta, so hopefully many of these things will be fixed.

That said, Bad Company 2 feels ported. It feels like DI took the console version of the game and went, “Lets make this for PC!” last minute. Hence the PS3 Beta being way before the PC beta. When I say it feels ported, I mean it feels sluggish. As a PC gamer, the advantages of having a mouse over a joystick when aiming are limitless in comparison to a joystick and controller. When ported from console to PC, the control mapping can cause some weird smoothing issues that despite playing with a mouse, you feel restrained like playing with a joystick on a controller. Not the end of the world, but not appealing either.

I may just be nit picking, but some things should have been looked over control wise when moving to PC. For example, I don’t care what FPS you are playing, there should always be a toggle for crouch. I do not want to have to hold down the “shift” key, aim down my sites/scope and try to maneuver. It should be click to crouch, click to stand up. Just another feature ported from the console version which shouldn’t have been.

Now this last control issue is a big issue for me. I love to snipe, and sniping is all about cover. For some reason, when DI developed the Bad Company games, they removed the prone (laying down) stance from the game. Something that had a huge effect on gameplay in Battlefield 2. Now add in the fact that you have to hold down the crouch button to stay crouched and you can see my frustration.

Other then some control issues due to an obvious port from the console adaptation, Bad Company 2 is pretty decent, even in beta. Weapons are mostly fairly balanced; Dice has even mastered bullet physics. Meaning, when sniping from really far away you’ll need to aim higher as gravity causes the bullet to drop. Ever since Battlefield 2 I had been waiting for a game that had BF2’s gameplay and Bad Company’s destruction, and although Bad Company 2 is not quite there yet, I don’t think DI and EA are too far from a game that is capable of such abilities.

Who know, maybe, if we’re lucky, Battlefield 3 will do just this… if it ever comes out that is.

Look for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 by Digital Illusions and EA Games, In stores on March 2nd 2010.

Extensions in Chrome are pretty nifty. They offer a one-click installation method and the browser doesn’t even need to be restarted for the changed to take place (are you taking notes Mozilla?). But this is nothing OS X and Linux users should be jealous of… since they got extensions back in December.

Something they should be jealous about is the bookmark sync feature. This new ability lets Chrome users sync their bookmarks with their Google account and maintain the same bookmarks across different computers. Sounds familiar? delicious.com (formally http://del.icio.us) has offered the same service for a few years now – but with the inconvenience of having to log into a web-based service to add and access your favorites. Google has simplified that by auto-magically syncing the bookmarks to your Google Docs account.

At the moment, the only one-up that poor Delicious.com still has is that you can share these links with others. While theoretically you could simply share the “Google Chrome” folder that gets created in your Google Docs file… Google has disabled the ’share folder’ feature for it. But it’s only a matter of time before Google deems Delicious.com as useless and no longer necessary.

Since we have posted our review of the Office 2010 Technical Preview, Microsoft has now released their public beta. Anyone can now download a (completely legal) copy here. This version should hopefully prove to hold more stable then the technical preview.

Via NeoWin

We have all seen Google come out with great services and success of these can even be shown by the company’s stock price of 315.76 (up 5.18% even with the current market status). Chrome currently accounts for 3.1% of the market and that is just while it is in its beta stage. That is more then Apple’s Safari (2.7%), which has been released for a good deal of time now.

Many people, especially web developers, are sick and tired of the compatibility issues with Internet Explorer and are welcoming Chrome with open arms as another standards compliant browser. Now with word that Chrome may be leaving beta status soon, what should we expect? Hopefully some toolbars. For many people, that has been the only thing holding them back. But on the browser front, people switching to Chrome are going to have to switch from something.

Personally, I think the main reason IE holds such power right now is due to its loyal base of users who don’t know better and just use what is on their computer. These people will not switch unless they are shown the light.  As Gizmodo puts it:

“What does it take? Cash money. Many of you know that Google is the reason Firefox did so well in the first place: As far back as 2005, Google was paying major dollars to those who referred Firefox downloads that included the Google Toolbar. But Firefox never seems to have had the cash to buy its way to the PC makers’ desktops. The kind of payola that puts heinous crapware on Dells, HPs and other PCs will soon be put to work in the new browser war, one where Microsoft will for the first time have a serious threat on its home turf.”

Hopefully the combination of cash, simplicity, ease of use, and “new generation” clout will give Chrome the advantage it needs to beat Microsoft out of its thrown for the better good of…pardon the corniness… “webkind”.