SOLD. 24 is not 64 (which tend to be too laggy imo), but with all their tech I can live with 24 if well designed. BFBC may be the best looking game I have seen yet, but also the most ambitious. They are right when they took a crack at GOW: They wanted to make a game that could not be done on the Xbox. If they can get the destruction down right, AND online... wow. The next year of FPS is crazy. Battlefield, Brother in Arms, Team Fortress, Call of Duty... some amazing efforts to progress the genre in various ways.

Overlooking the KB/MS bit for a moment, they did say they were dropping the BF:MC "design" choices for BF Bad Company. GREAT decision IMO. Make it traditional BF. The problem is that it is now 2008, and I am guessing: Fall 2008.

That said the Xbox/PC are getting some good MP games outside of Halo 3, at the tip of my tongue are Quake Wars (BF like game from Splash Damage, makers of the first Enemy Territory), Team Fortress 2 by Valve, Call of Duty 4 by Ininity Ward, and Brother in Arms by GearBox. Those are going to be some good-to-killer MP games.

Some of those screens were in the latest issue of Edge which also ran a feature on the game. Must say looks like it's coming along and it certainly piqued my interest in the game. A good read if you can get a copy.

Funny how EA have got a few interesting things going on yet attract a lot of stick (plenty justified I might add!). There's this, Boogie, Rock Band, Army of Two and a few others in the pipeline I'm sure.

Dedicated servers alone aren't even sufficient as 64 player servers are in need of not only high system resources but also great up-/down- stream bandwidth as well as sufficient "access" via the backbone (e.g. a high speed connection in boonsville Montana isn't going to be nearly as good as one in Chicago, New York, Dallas, Atlanta, Seattle, or LA -- all major hubs where there is major convergence of carriers).

I have ran a number of BF, 42 and 2, servers and the resources necessary to get a smooth experience on all of their offerings... yeah, not pretty. Most *dedicated* BF servers in facillities that host 64 player games are laggy (be it insufficient outbound/inbound bandwidth, insufficient memory or proc cycles, etc). Having played for years and frequently a variety of clan TS channels I would say this is nearly universally the experience of everyone I have played with.

We tested quite a few server facilities (interestingly I used to work in the data center industry in the US) for our clan and the cost for getting a solid 64 player server in regards to system resources as well as server/datacenter connectivity was high due to the limited number of folks able to deliver such.

Of course you live in Europe so that may substantially different. But by tracing your IP/Network I can see that you would have a horrible time in my area of the East Coast getting access to a solid server, let alone a 64 player one (not just a horrible ping, but also very erratic packet loss).

I am *not* saying it is impossible. I have played on some nice 64 player LANs. I have also, on rare occassion, found servers that were geographically close and resource adequate and ran well.

But that would be the point: in the US (by far the biggest market for this) this scenario is rare. There are far more crappy 64 player servers out there than good ones. Dare I say most server admins tend to lean toward more people versus capping at the right level for a smooth experience (i.e. the server tanking as it becomes full).

On BFBC, I do wonder how they will be handling dynamic destruction online. If it is truly dynamic they will need to do the damage server side then send the clients the resultant data. Being dynamic if I shoot a wall with a rocket, and send that contact data to 64 clients, it will be different 64 times in terms of fracture points and such.

Anyway they do it they are talking about a significant increase in server processing as well as data tranmission--you have 24 players + all their weapons being fires + [now!] all the building "states and status" as well as the debris. I wouldn't be surprised if they were requiring ded servers. I definately don't see how the Xbox 360 is going to handle this game, with 24 players, on most US connections. While downstream bandwidth is growing, upstream data transmission is the pits in most areas. Most of us are on cable or DSL -- and in many cases most would struggle to serve 12 players of most online games -- so 24 with complex/dynamic environments is going to be interesting to see.

@ Deft: DICE was independant until EA threatened a hostile takeover. So is it fair to call them an EA product? :|

The game has already been seen running on the 360 in realtime and it looked that good. There is a vid running around, the cutscene, that is a direct feed from the 360.

I'm not a big fan of the console BF games, but this is looking pretty good. BF2 would never work on consoles.. so they're doing something different. That's okay with me.

I'm waiting for BF3 though. Please DICE, pretty please? 2142 will make your triumphant return that much sweeter.

Oh.. and 24 players is good.. how come ET can't manage that on consoles.. the game is only 24 players on PC.

Do want!

It just has a pretty complex interface for an FPS game, which isn't that typical on consoles.. I guess they could streamline some things, but the game can be a handful (movement mostly) on the keyboard too. It'd be a different game already, so I think this approach makes the most sense. Just make a different game.

Quake Wars and Frontlines will probably be a bit more suited to console schemes since they were both being developed with that in mind from the beginning. After played ETQW I do think movement will be a bit clunkier on the pad.. but it'll probably work.

Well, it is Modern Combat 2. It just has a campaign, some character, and destructible environments. Oh, and hype.

There's plenty of relative hype, compared to the first installment in the series. And I think it's pretty obvious that the campaign here is more of a focal point than it was in the first Modern Combat.. they're dressing it up with loads of character and I would imagine a better story to back it up. It's all relative--compared to Halo 3--Call of Duty has virtually no hype at all. It doesn't mean that there's no hype.

What matters (to me) is that the class model closely resembles BFMC, and that it lacks the things that made BF2 a leap forward for the franchise. Bad Company should please fans of Modern Combat, or people looking for a simple approach to class based FPS on consoles.. but I'm waiting for DICE to reveal the goods on BF3 myself.

From gameplay videos, that much as been pretty apparent.That's crazy talk, Halo 3 has the biggest hype machine ever.