Since I mostly play Conquest and Rush, I’m only a little excited about this.  But BF: BC2’s VIP Map Pack 3 will be available tomorrow.  VIP Map Pack 3 will unlock Squad Deathmatch for Nelson Bay and Squad Rush for Laguna Alta.

Although this is the 3^rd round of “Map Packs” without any new maps, it’s still pretty cool that EA continues to make new content available for a game that’s already so good out of the box.

Really, though, a true map pack would be greatly appreciated some day soon.  Some new unlocks would be nice, too—you know, for all of us that unlocked everything a week after release.

Oh well, at least all three of the map packs have been free for those of us who bought new copies of the game.

For those of you who saved $5 by buying a used copy at GameStop, you will need to purchase a VIP code for $15 from EA’s in-game store in order to access the new modes.  It’s a bummer, but at least at this point you are getting some worthy content.

If you’ve been playing Battlefield Bad Company 2 non-stop for the past month-or-so like I have, you’re probably addicted to the action but getting a little tired of being spawn-killed at Atacama Desert and generally playing the same handful of maps over and over again.  I mean, how many times do you need to see the opposing team come to your spawn and steal your chopper before you realize that it needs to either be heavily guarded or in the @$#% air at all times!?  But I digress; the action of Battlefield is hard to beat, so we deal with its little annoyances.

But with a new batch of maps for BF: BC2 way too far in the distance, there may come a time when you just need a break— either when frustration ensues or when you just thirst for a more casual experience.  When that time comes, I have suggestion for you that you might want to remember.

Battlefield Heroes is a third-person shooter that looks a lot like Team Fortress 2 but plays very similarly to Bad Company’s Conquest mode.  Much of BF: BC2’s signature gameplay is incorporated into this pick-up-and-play member of the Battlefield family—including land and air combat and specialized character classes.

Heroes won’t blow you away or anything, but it’s a familiar bit of casual fun that you can play for free on your PC.  And if you already own Bad Company 2, EA’s giving you 700 Valor Points (and 1350 more for every friend you refer  via Facebook) in the game to purchase items for your character—and you should take anything EA gives you for free.

So, if you haven’t signed up yet—and according to EA over 3,000,000 people have—you might as well give it a try next time you get frustrated with Bad Company 2 or are just looking for a fun game to play that costs no money.

Knife zoomed-in jerks that pay no attention to their surroundings now!:  http://www.battlefieldheroes.com/

Since there is so much interest in Battlefield: Bad Company 2, we figured we'd inform you of a little tournament being put together by GameStop, MLG/Gamebattles and Xbox 360.  Maybe you’ve heard of it already; maybe you haven't.  Either way, the deadline for entry is 3/14 (that’s Sunday, people!) and if you haven't registered yet you should probably get on it.  The tournament is for teams of 4 and you can play from your house.  So you can essentially team-up with anyone from anywhere.  And since we have such a great community of like-minded gamers here, we figured we'd create a space for you all to meet and maybe team up to play together in this tournament.

Head on over to our forums at KontrolFreek.com now!  You can discuss BC2, recruit, form squads or just yell at each other.  Just hurry, the deadline is near.

For more info on the tournament visit: gamestop.com/battlefieldbadcompany2.

See you on the Battlefield!

It’s no doubt that by now, if you own a PS3, you’ve downloaded the MAG open beta and run it through its paces a bit.  And by this point you’ve probably made the decision if you are going to buy it or not when it comes out on January 26^th.   And chances are, if you played the game for less than an hour-or-two, you’ve decided to not purchase the game and have gone back to playing MW2.

So if I’m right and that’s your story, I have written this mini-review on the beta just for you in hopes that you’ll give MAG a little more time—because if you haven’t put in a good bit of time getting to know the game, you haven’t really uncovered many of the things that make MAG so addictive.  Sure, once the full game comes out later this month my little review will probably mean squat, but it should at least give you an idea of what to expect with the full release.

Let’s first start out by addressing the pink elephant in the room:  MAG’s graphics don’t look to be on par with a certain shooter that came out a few months ago.  Frankly, Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 makes MAG look like a PS2 game.  But once you consider the amount of action going on and the ridiculous number of players on the screen at once, you see that the subpar graphics are justified.  If MW2 had as many players as MAG does playing in one game at the same time, you could bet your noobtube you’d have complete network failure.

Zipper Interactive has really raised the bar in terms of player-count on consoles.  Gears Of War 2 maxes out at a mere 10 players.  Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 allows only 18.  Battlefield: Bad Company has room for 24.  Killzone 2 boasts 32 players.  MAG lets 256 (TWO-HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FRIGGIN-SIX) players shoot at each other at the same time and runs near-flawlessly while doing it.

Impressed?  You should be.

MAG’s not running perfectly quite yet, though—occasionally servers would go down and drop me from games (usually when I was doing really well, which was maddening).  And sometimes it took a while to get in to a game, but only a few times did I experience lag during play—and it was always very minor.  Of course, these things are to be expected with such an ambitious player-count; and that’s why the beta is public, after all.  By the time MAG hits shelves, most of these issues should be fixed.

Now lets look at the actual gameplay of MAG.  Playing with 256 players is as hectic as it sounds.  In the two game types available in the beta, Sabotage and Domination, your main goal is to either attack or defend control points across the game’s large maps.  Sabotage is like “Domination-Lite”—as you only have three structures to attack or defend and only 64 players playing at once.  Think of it as training for the enormous Domination, which Zipper probably figured was too big to jump right in to and start playing.  Domination, as stated before, is seriously huge.  It has the same basic premise as Sabotage but adds manned-turrets, bombing-runs, UAV’s, advanced squad-perks and a vehicle-or-two that you can control.

Some of the advanced features (like airstrikes and squad-perks) require you to be a Squad Leader, Platoon Leader or Officer in Charge.  Becoming one of these leader-types takes quite a bit of leveling up but gives you abilities that can change the tide-of-war in a second for you and your comrades.

The whole thing sort of plays like a mash-up of Battlefield: Bad Company, Modern Warfare and SOCOM.  And at this point MAG may not be as good as any of those—but it definitely deserves a good portion of your time.  Zipper has crafted a game that finally makes you feel like you’re a small piece in a really large war—which is probably how you would feel in an actual war.  Trust me, MAG will inspire developers to think bigger, and that’s good for all of us.  Can you imagine playing Call OF Duty: Modern Warfare 6 with 500 players?  I can, and it’s all thanks to MAG—the father of Massive Action Games.