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The original Bad Company spinoff in the Battlefield series kept the franchise's setting firmly in modern times, but if the Bad Company 2 ESRB description is true, you'll be seeing a return to WWII in the sequel. At the very least, the game's opening will bring players back to the Pacific side of the war, with the ESRB description saying, "In single-player mode, players conduct missions on an unnamed Japanese island during World War II and then move into the modern day through jungles, deserts, and snowy terrain."

Just like we've discovered in our way too many hours with the game's multiplayer demo, the description details the inclusion of "melee attacks with a power drill" (yes, seriously) and the characters use of profanity "during cutscenes and in the heat of battle." And yes, we're just as excited by the former as you might imagine.
[Via BigDownload]

It's time for the masses to try out Battlefield: Bad Company 2's multiplayer, as EA has seen fit to deploy a demo on the Xbox Live Marketplace. The 1.4GB download will see fierce fighting on the Port Valdez map in "Rush Mode." Access to the demo ends February 25, 2010, a week before launch.

For those interested in learning more about the single-player campaign, check out our hands-on of the solo experience with Preston, Sweetwater and the rest of B company.

Update: PlayStation 3 users will receive the demo on PSN February 4 in Europe and February 11 in North America.

Add Battlefield: Bad Company 2 – Demo to your download queue

During tonight's season premiere of Gametrailers TV, EA's Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was at center stage with first footage and details of the game's single-player experience. The episode revealed the original B Company would return, with players reprising their role as Private Preston Marlowe. The single-player story, which takes players from Alaska to South America, sees the rambunctious squad attempt to locate a devastating weapon system the Russians have uncovered.

Of course, destruction once again plays a major role in the game, but sadly the smooth soundtrack that accompanied the original game seems to have been replaced by a generic "epic" score. Hopefully it'll be the least of our concerns when the estimated "10 hour" experience lands on consoles and on PC on March 2, 2010.

According to the episode, a new multiplayer demo will land some time in February (perhaps the rumored demo date is accurate?) When contacted for an actual date for the new demo, an EA representative told Joystiq details would be revealed soon. Check out the single-player trailer after the break.

This Thursday at 12:30am ET, the new season of GameTrailers TV is set to debut with a look at Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Specifically, the trailer for this week's episode promises that the show will display the first footage of the game's single-player campaign (we've seen multiplayer already, after all). Beyond the Bad Company 2 footage, GTTV will also have a clip from the upcoming Halo Legends anime collection. This might be a stretch, but we're guessing there will be Spartans in it.

As always, expect any juicy details to wind up here on Joystiq once the episode airs.

UK retailer Game has listed the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 demo as starting on February 4, 2010. The demo will apparently run for three weeks on both Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. Although these details have yet to be confirmed by EA or DICE, the information seems rather specific and comes from a major retailer.

While we await a response from EA, we're going to keep watching footage of the stuff we hope to do in Battefield: Bad Company 2. Look for it on shelves in March.

[Thanks, J.Diffin]

One of the many volleys in DICE's Battlefield Bad Company 2 marketing campaign meant to sway Modern Warfare 2 loyalists towards its upcoming shooter was the promise of dedicated servers for PC players. That said, when the Swedish game development house recently announced a rental service for those interested in using said dedicated servers, some folks were less than thrilled.

According to producer Gordon Van Dyke in an interview with Eurogamer, the reasoning doesn't have to do with profits so much as protecting "the game's integrity on PC." Van Dyke also indicates that DICE's "authorized hosts" have already been chosen worldwide, though he notes that the studio "will see where the game goes and support it post-launch." At very least, PC gamers will get a chance to find out if the rental fee is worth it when the game goes into PC beta on January 28.

Electronic Arts is really pushing to gain ground in the battle for FPS multiplayer popularity. Speaking with MCV, EA Europe senior VP Jens Uwe Intat proclaimed that March's launch of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 will be the publisher's "first strong attack" launched on Call of Duty. By that stream of logic, we're guessing the Medal of Honor reboot would be the second?

Intat believes that if any studio can take on Modern Warfare, it's DICE. He reiterates that the "shooter" genre is important to the publisher and that EA is "certainly working on how [it] can get that crown back." Meanwhile, Bungie sips a mocha and buffs Halo 3 on the mantel.

[Via CVG]

Fiction: Wow, so, we were totally on the back of this ATV, bullets going everywhere and then jumped this ramp. Oh yeah, and then when we landed I went right up to this tank's butt and blew it up with an RPG, it was awesome! Then we ran into this factory, and we were like "woah," cause there were all these bullets whizzing by. Then we captured the zone, ran down some stairs and were staring down the barrel of another tank, but we were lucky 'cause our chopper blew it up from the sky. I totally didn't get hit by any bullets, it was like playing with nOObs!

Reality: F*ck, man! I bet you it's some 12-year-old who keeps sniping us every time we get on these vehicles. Gawd, hold on, waiting to respawn. Oh, there's a tank over there, let me run up to it with this RPG. DAMN! Got too close, stupid proximity from blast killed me. Yup, I'll respawn with you guys in a sec. WHOA, whoa, whoa, what's with all the shooting, where'd those ... dead. Wait up, one sec. OK, let's get this other tank. Why isn't that helicopter helping us? Down here, helicopter! Come on, down -- dead.

Rebuttal: Perhaps Battlefield: Bad Company 2 won't be like the "reality" described and it'll be more like the video. Or, just maybe, we're being shown in the video what the game will look like once the Modern Warfare 2 hacking community starts playing it.

If you find yourself coming up short in your quest for victory in the PS3-exclusive multiplayer beta for Bad Company 2, the development team at DICE has a few pointers to help reduce the gap between your win and loss statistics. Bad Company 2 level designer Inge Jøran "Pirelli" Holberg posted a laundry list of tips for attackers and defenders for the beta's Arica Harbor map.

With the map's design in mind, Holberg's tips feature a slew of ideas on how you can destroy specific areas of the map to redirect adversary foot traffic -- right into the sights of your favorite firearm. Our tips? Keep shooting people on the other team and you're bound to win eventually. We're professionals here, folks.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2's associate producer and dedicated server of official blog updates, Gordon Van Dyke, has assured fans that the PC beta will still happen -- though later than expected. "With the huge success of the PS3 Beta we decided to drastically increase the PC Beta's capacity to insure as many people as possible could participate," Van Dyke wrote. "Unfortunately this meant we had to delay the Beta to very early next year giving us more planning time to make it happen and implement more optimizations."

The PC version of DICE's first-person, military-person shooter will boast full support for DirectX 11, a maximum of 32 active players (Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions go up to 24), clans, friend lists and dedicated servers, which is that controversial thing we referenced in the previous paragraph.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 will arrive on store shelves in March 2, 2010. It's the one that ups the lone-soldier-walking-towards-you ante with some helicopters, a tank and another soldier that is slightly farther away.

There's one major thing Battlefield: Bad Company 2 possesses that its insanely hyped competitors lack: A liberal dose of good old fashioned profanity. Of course, we haven't played said competitors, but we can't imagine another game's characters drop bombs of the "S" and "F" varieties as freely as those seen in the trailer above. Well, except for the two agents in House of the Dead: Overkill, but that's a special, special exception.

Fortunately, it looks like there's some solid action in there to accompany all the dirty words. Check out the trailer for an uncut, uncensored and unsuitable for work gameplay chunk from a multiplayer match in BBC2. The game, that is -- not the brainy British television channel.

Such fantastic, eloquent wordplay! Man! You see, the headline says that developer DICE's latest first-person shooter marches into the early 2010 battlefield ... because March is when the vehicular, open-world mayhem begins (that's the 2nd in North America, the 5th in Europe). Perhaps it went over your head: "march" is what soldiers do ... into a battlefield. Woah ... but isn't that also the name of the franchise? Oh, snap, it's Battlefield!

So, let's recap: Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is marching this March into a video game battlefield because that is what soldiers do and this is a video game called Battlefield about soldiers in a battlefield. This March. Battlefield.

Field of battle.

Light on gameplay but heavy on murder the first trailer for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 got "world exclusive" status on this week's GameTrailers TV (after the break).

Showcasing the cycle of "smoke a cigarette, kill a dude, get killed yourself" in a MadWorld-esque aesthetic, we can't help but wish for actual gameplay footage from the game -- the first Bad Company 2 screen was madness! We'll expect to hear more from publisher EA and developer DICE as we near E3 2009 in June. More on murder, that is.

Listen up, fans of slow elevators and shooting everyone in sight. EA's recent financial earnings call divulged information indicating the publisher is readying sequels to BioWare's sci-fi RPG, Mass Effect, and DICE's multiplayer-driven FPS, Battlefield: Bad Company. There isn't that much else to report, other than EA CEO John Riccitiello saying that Mass Effect 2 would be available on "multiple platforms" and Bad Company would be "back on consoles" in Q4 of fiscal year 2010, which translates into normal people speak as sometime between January and March 2010.

We'll try to corner more information on these two titles and update as soon as we can.

Update: First screen of Bad Company 2 released.

In a move that isn't likely to shock readers of this website, EA's Frank Gibeau recently told Variety that Electronic Arts is planning sequels to Battlefield: Bad Company, and Army of Two. Dead Space executive producer Glenn Schofield also confirmed that a Dead Space sequel is in the works as well. Dead Space fans will also be happy to hear that Dead Space novels and toys are under consideration. We're hoping to see some Necromorphs with limb popping action. No concrete details on any of the sequels, such as when we might expect them, were given.