Battlefield: Bad Company 2 – PC Review

Graphics & Audio

As you may have already noticed from the images, the visuals in the game pretty much speaks for itself. With surreal visuals and intense combat, the game shines as a true gem would. The character models are detailed and everything is taken into account, from hair to facial expressions. Up close, most things are photorealistic and very pleasing to the eye.

All this eye candy does however, come at a cost of needing a beefy enough rig to run smoothly. With a few settings turned down though, an average rig will still manage with good image quality and a decent frame rate. At maximum detail with an AMD Radeon HD 5830, running on the DX11 pathway, the game runs along quite well, roughly 60fps on average, judged by FRAPS running onscreen while gaming. It does this with 4x Anti-Aliasing at 1920×1200 on my Gateway 24” FHD2401 monitor.

8xAA taxes the system a bit more but nothing like the Horizon Based Ambient Occlusion (HBAO) setting. This setting adds a bit more life to certain scenes, most notably the “god rays” that shine through the trees in the jungle areas. Aside from immersion, the minimal image quality improvement versus the performance hit may not be worth it for some persons and I would recommend leaving that setting turned off; unless of course you simply must have the best possible visuals. I am one such person and my rig runs it at about 45fps average (roughly a 25% hit).

The audio is just as awesome. All the sounds in the game seem true to life and this is always a welcome addition. Virtually perfect audio instils a sense of realism to all that goes on around your character. One of my favourite sounds is reloading my weapons inside a building and hearing that little echo of rounds being chambered and weapons ready!

The War Tapes sound setting takes it up another level. War Tapes can be enabled in the options menu and further adds that chaotic feeling to the battles. There are additional background sounds like far away explosions and gunfire. There is also radio chatter during the load screens. I love it while some persons may not. I suggest you play around with that setting to see what works best for you.

There is little music in multiplayer but it is well-paced and gets you amped up between gameplay rounds but in single player…wow! The soundtrack makes you feel like you are one of the stars in an action movie and sets the pace for certain situations.

The graphics and audio are both masterfully done in Battlefield: Bad Company 2.