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.

For those of you thinking, “I don’t need a new computer yet”… take this into account: – the average lifespan of a computer is only 3-5 years, according to this article. However, in terms of compatibility with software and new hardware it’s more like 2 – 3 years, depending on what it’s being used for. That’s not to say you can’t continue to use 10 year old PCs; however, it probably will not support newer programs and hardware.

There is a decent majority of people today in this technology driven world who have little-to-some knowledge of computing hardware. But even if you don’t, the chances are high that you probably know someone close to you who does.

Computers today are a necessity. They have become an integral part of everything we do and it’s because of this we can spend countless hours deciding on what to get next in our attempt to support our ever-changing needs.

So… do you build or do you buy?

Buy Pre-Built: Let’s start with the “easy” way out. For some, this method is quick, easy, and painless. Either walk over to your nearest Best Buy, log onto HP’s homepage, or break into your friend’s apartment and steal his $2,000 dollar machine. Of course when he tells you the story you will suggest that the government came and took it because of all the movies he downloaded.

Either way, many of you have more than enough knowledge and common sense to know what you want out of a machine will opt to talk to a Sales “Expert” and have them pick the right pre built pc out for you. The problem? Most times you’ll end up paying $100 – 500 more than the actual hardware in the machine is worth. Not to mention the useless software it comes riddled with that only makes the computer slower and less effective. The benefit? Saves time, effort, and most computers come with a decent guarantee. Many people who opt for this method are either lazy like my fellow blog writer Will Kievit, or are intimidated by testing the waters of building their own machine.

Build: I am probably the worst person to describe the cost benefits of building your own rig. This is mainly because if I had the money I could easily drop $4 – 5k on a gaming computer without flinching. The main reason for the high prices though, is that I would build a computer with extremely high specs to prolong the short “lifespan” of a gaming rig.

Just to give you some numbers too look at, a fast pre-built gaming rig with the following specs: 2.93 GHz Core i7, 8GB DDR3 1333 Ram, 1TB HDD, Blu-ray drive, GTX 295 with 1792MB of ram 800 watt PSU, Keyboard and mouse, will run you about $1839.99 before taxes. These numbers will change based on the type of computer your building. I chose a gaming rig because they are the most difficult to save money on. Lower end computer will have a larger gap in price for pre-built vs. personally built, especially with companies like Apple, Dell or HP.

Laptops can fall into either of these categories. Although the freedom of designing a custom laptop isn’t as high as designing desktop computer, you still get a lot more options. However, in the case of custom laptops, you will end up paying more because it’s the manufacturer who builds them, not you. Of course there is Apple, who makes very good computers, but will cost you way more than the equivalent powered PC.

It all comes down to you and your wallet:

Lazy and rich: Buy pre-built.
Broke and constructive: Build your own.
Constructive and rich: build a $4,000+ rig and then give it to me.

Oh and there’s one other category I forgot to mention: Those who are afraid that they will have wasted their money on pieces of hardware that might not work once they get it all together. To you I say: READ MY NEXT POST, you may just get over your fear.

Dubbed “Hybrid SLI” this baby has the beautiful GTX 275 GPU and the GTS 250 with well over a gig of DDR3 memory between the two GPU’s (1280MB). The GTX 275 GPU is used for handling all graphics and renderings, while the GTS 250 is dedicated to rendering all the PhysX calculations. With the two GPUs, the abundance of memory and the combined clock speeds this baby pumps out about 179.8 GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

I bet all of you crazy, liquid-cooled, overclocking, Crysis loving (mmm so pretty), performance junkies are probably wetting yourself right about now. Especially because now you can toss that PhysX card into the trash and use that extra PCIe 2.0 slot for your third beauty, and triple SLI the crap out of your rig.

If your looking for performance numbers to validate the purchase of this baby I am limited in my benchmarks as I am going off what I have read myself thus far. However, I can tell you that games that support dedicated PhysX PPU support show anywhere from 20 to 40% increase in performance vs. using just the CPU to do your PhysX Calculations.

So what will one of these little pieces of heaven cost you, you ask? Probably retailing well above $300. However, it seems as though EVGA will be tossing in a copy of Batman: Arkham Asylum with the purchase to make you feel a little less guilty for using that tuition check you got from your parents to pay for it.

Thoughts on this little device? I for one, never really thought the PhysX thing would kick in before NVDIA developed a new computing technology for physics engines, so I’d love to hear what you all think/wanna see from NVIDIA with these new cards.

Infinity Ward happen to mention on a fan site, (yes fan site, not even there own site)  that they would be doing away with dedicated servers. This doesn’t really have a strong impact on Console gamers other then the method of how they navigate through server lists, but for PC gamers it means no more modding, no more custom matches, no more custom anything in regards to multi-player.

Apparently the new system will resemble the Xbox live connection experience. As a non-Xbox owner I cannot comment on what this means, but I can only guess it has something to do with connecting directly to peers. So if the peer logs off mid match, the rest of the gamers connected to that peer get booted. Please, please, someone enlighten me on what this means, because I’m pretty upset. Not as upset as the 200,000 PC gamers who said they will boycott the game, but still mad enough to take a few minutes away from replaying Call of Duty Moder Warfare 1 before the new release to write this blog post.