Xbox Living

The download for Battlefield: Bad Company’s conquest mode is now available as a free download via the Xbox Live Marketplace.  Stop reading blogs and go play it!

Despite Sony’s claims that its competition is starting to look dated, Microsoft is confident that the Xbox 360 has years of solid gaming left.

As Don Mattrick, Microsoft’s Senior VP of all things game, tells EDGE:

I think the ability to have a longer cycle to continue to drive value and innovate – there’s a lot of potential in the 360 that hasn’t been realized, and that bodes for a pretty good run in the market, and a lot of capabilities our box has that consumers are just getting used to. What we’ve achieved we‘re pleased with, but there’s a lot of runway ahead.

Analysts and gamers alike have been pondering over how long this generation’s consoles would stand.  Sony opted for a longer lifespan with its PS3 by developing a state-of-the-art system, which hurt their initial sales.  Microsoft took a more moderate approach, which begs the question: how long will it last?

Every now and then, a rumour pops up about the “Xbox 720″, but Mattrick’s comments suggest that we won’t be seeing that for quite some time.   Developers would like a longer cycle, at least — Final Fantasy XIII will now surface for the Xbox 360 sometime in 2009 or 2010, while BioWare is still hoping to get Mass Effect 2 and 3 out within this generation.

What do you think?  Are the graphics and capabilities of the Xbox 360 enough to stand up against improved games on the PS3?

Finally! Conquest is coming to Battlefield: Bad Company this Thursday, reports Kotaku.

Conquest mode is the main game mode in every Battlefield title, right back to Battlefield 1942.  The mode consists of five flags scattered throughout the map, each of which is controlled by a specific team.  Each team in turn has a certain number of control points to start out the game.  The first team whose points are depleted loses the game.

Your opponents’ points are depleted as you claim and hold flags as your own, so the team holding the most flags for the longest will deplete the other teams’ points more quickly.  You also deplete some points for each enemy you kill, so you don’t neccessarily have to capture any points to help out your team.

It’ll be nice to have some variety in gameplay after weeks of playing Gold Rush.  The conquest update is free for anyone who owns the game.

Next, I’d like to see some new maps.  It would be really cool to have a couple of classic maps, so we could play updated versions of Backstab and Bridge Too Far from Battlefield 2: Modern Combat.  How about it, EA?

Yep, another post about Battlefield: Bad Company.  The game’s just crazy fun, and (in my opinion) one of the best Xbox 360 titles out there right now.

But it’s not perfect, and there are a few things I’d like to see added.  I’m leaving out Conquest mode, because that’s coming, and it’s already been discussed.  So, in no particular order, here they are:

1. Team-Wide Communication

In Bad Company, teams are divided into squads of 3-4 people.  The idea is that a smaller squad is easier to coordinate, so you can have a few people working towards a goal, avoiding the chatter of the entire team.  You can communicate with your squad over voice chat — but there’s no good way to get in touch with other members of your team.

In theory, this may sound like a good thing–but in practice there are problems.  I run into this quite frequently, as I usually play with the Support kit.  The Support solider’s job is to heal teammates, repair vehicles and provide helpful ranged attacks and cover fire.

I have 78 teamkills according to Battlefield.com.  Exactly zero of those are intentional.  Almost all of those kills are from the mortar strike.

I’m careful, but sometimes there’s just nothing you can do to stop a teammate from running under a mortar strike you’ve just called in.  Yesterday, for example, I managed to get two team-kills when I called a strike on an island on End of the Line.  The strike was called to take out two opponents on the island.  In the time between my calling the mortar strike and it actually landing, a helicopter on my team managed to kill the two enemies and land on the island to repair itself.  Instead, my strike landed on the chopper, killing my two teammates.

Maybe it’s my fault for calling the strike with a helicopter in the area, but it would have been nice to warn those guys “don’t land there!”, or at least apologize for the kills.  Instead, I wasn’t able to say anything, and one of the guys intentionally killed me the next time he saw me.

I’d like to see them keep squad chat as the default, but provide a push-to-talk for team-wide communication, much like the Big Team Battle mode in Halo 3.  That way, you can keep the small-team coordination down but issue warnings when you have information useful for either your entire team, or anyone not in your squad.

Mortar strikes are effective ranged weapons–until your team members unwittingly charge into the target area.

2. Boot to Kick

I can easily forgive the guy who killed me after the mortar-chopper fiasco.  Although it wasn’t intentional, it was my strike that took out the chopper and the guy wanted to let me know he was unhappy about it.  (After all, he couldn’t do so vocally.)

But there are also those who team-kill with a more malicious intent–the most blatant being over the artillery strike.  The artillery strike is a strong weapon that allows you to call in a massive attack on specific areas of a map, once every 30 seconds or so.  With the strike, you can do a lot of damage from afar, taking out enemy vehicles, snipers or groups of opponents.  It’s a fairly quick way to get points, if you’re good at it.  There are a few trophies and patches that can be earned through using the strike, including the Big Guns trophy, which contribute towards two Xbox 360 achievements.

Apparently, some people feel entitled to use the strike themselves, to the point where they’ll kill a teammate who is using it.  I’m willing to call out one such douchebag, whose gamertag is Imperial Fleet.  This guy repeatedly killed members of the team to use the strike, sometimes even destroying the machine itself (meaning he has to wait for it to respawn).  If you look him up on Battlefield.com, he has 985 total kills, and 230 team-kills — meaning that for every four kills this guy gets, he kills a team-member in the process.  Just horrible.

Stats like these do not inspire confidence.

A player gets kicked from a round automatically if they get a score of -150, which means they killed 10 teammates without earning any positive points.  But that doesn’t seem to be enough to stop people from being jerks.  Team members should have the ability to vote against a player, and if enough people want them out, they go.  Either that, or kick them after a certain, lower number of team-kills.

3. Parachutes

One of the funnest things to do in Battlefield 2: Modern Combat was to take the helicopters across a map quickly and parachute into an objective.  Bad Company doesn’t have parachutes–meaning that you’re pretty much comitted to landing your helicopter or dying in it.  The game even has an achievement called Darwin’s Parachute, which is earned by falling from a chopper without a parachute (and dying).

So what’s the deal?  Parachutes are fun for both sides, whether you’re gliding down with one, firing off rockets as you descend, or a sniper taking the parachuters.

Helicopters in Battlefield 2: Modern Combat (left) had more options, including parachutes and space for multiple gunners and passengers. Battlefield: Bad Company (right) removes the chutes and cuts occupancy down to a pilot and a gunner.

There are updates coming–Conquest mode (the main game mode in every other Battlefield title) will be along shortly, as well as private games and clan support.

But despite this room for improvement, Bad Company is an incredibly fun (and addictive) game to play.  It’s been receiving great reviews, so if you’re not already playing it, check out more reviews and ways to buy Battlefield: Bad Company.

So that’s my take–what about yours?  What would you like to see added to Bad Company?

Any fan of the Battlefield series will know that Conquest is what it’s all about.  In fact, Bad Company was the first Battlefield game to not feature Conquest as a game mode.  Fans of the series weren’t happy about this, so EA’s DICE studio announced that they’d be adding Conquest to Bad Company (for free) after the game’s release.

Now, a month later, we have our first glimpse at Conquest mode in BF:BC.  No release date has been set yet, but the team behind the game has given us a screenshot, a few new details, and a promise that it’s coming very soon.

For those of you who haven’t played any of the previous Battlefield titles before, here are the basics of Conquest.

• Each map contains five flags placed throughout the map.
• The goal is to “capture” each flag by controlling the surrounding area (standing near it).  Points are earned the longer you hold each flag, and at the end the team who controlled the most flags for the longest, or eliminated the other team, wins.
• You can only spawn next to flags you control, and when your team controls no flags you’re not able to respawn.  It’s up to the rest of your team to re-capture flags before everyone is wiped out.

It’s not unlike the “War” mode in Call of Duty 3 or the “Territories” mode in Halo 3, except there’s no flag-to-flag progression and either team can recapture a point at any time.

EA has said that four of the existing maps have been redesigned for Conquest, suggesting that not all maps will be Conquest-ready.  New lighting and weather effects will also be added to add a little more realism to the battle.

EA also announced today that they’re shutting off some of the demo servers next week, and encouraged those still playing the demo to get in on the action.

I for one am greatly looking forward to Conquest.  Gold Rush is a fun game mode but I really do miss the classic Battlefield gameplay.  Hopefully we’ll get a release date (or a release) soon.

Well, barely interesting.  A few details have emerged on the upcoming Xbox Live Arcade title, which was announced at E3.

Portal: Still Alive will not extend the Portal story.  Sorry, no news about what’s happened to Chell.  No details about the wherabouts of GLaDOS.  Not even confirmation of the Companion Cube’s fate.  Instead, it will essentially be a collection of newish maps with the same Portal gameplay as before.

If you caught the “ish” above, you weren’t reading it wrong.  The maps are adapted from Portal: The Flash Version Map Pack, a third-party add-on to the original game.  Those maps were originally developed for a Flash version of the game.

So while we’ll be able to enjoy a few new puzzles and earn a few more achievements, Still Alive doesn’t seem to be quite as exciting as its title implies.  Valve has said that more Portal is on the way, although no specific plans have been annoucned.

So while GLaDOS may be still alive, you won’t find her here.