Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is, for many players, the high point of the entire series, because it managed to combine a relaxed tone with very well-balanced combat across sprawling maps. The campaign follows a squad of soldiers whose humor and friendly ribbing lighten an otherwise serious story about a secret weapon, taking the player from snowy mountains through jungle to desert cities. It's entertaining and well put together on its own, but the main reason to install the game always was, and still is, its multiplayer.

The key innovation was environmental destruction, which here made full tactical sense for the first time. Building walls can be shot through, blown apart with explosives, or leveled by artillery support, so a team defending a house can never feel truly safe, and attackers can always create their own entrance. The Rush mode, in which one side defends pairs of objectives while the other destroys them, became iconic precisely because of how the map gradually turns into ruins over the course of a match. Four classes with their own gear, plus vehicles and helicopters, round out a rich variety of situations, and the unlock system keeps players engaged for dozens of hours.

On PC it was a good-looking title with engaging lighting and dust effects, though it wasn't as demanding as later entries. Weapon and explosion sound design was top-notch, and the game could convey through audio alone that a battle was raging somewhere the player couldn't see. Reviews were very positive, and many looking back highlight precisely the balance, in which no single weapon or vehicle dominated. Today Bad Company 2 mainly serves as a reminder of how well a shooter works when built on simple rules and a changeable environment; its pace is slower and easier to read than that of many current competitors. The player has time to decide, read the map, and coordinate with the team, instead of just reacting to blinking icons. That's exactly why many people return to it even years later, and its name still comes up regularly whenever the best entries in the series are discussed.