As the dust clears away from the Medal of Honor beta, a lot of bugs were found and a lot of issues that were a pain in our asses when we played the beta. EA has provided a list of improvements that were made from feedback across the beta. What’s improved and fixed? Here’s the list:

Improved Hit Detection

This was a very big issue and came up many times in the forums. We are glad to say that hit detection has been vastly improved. We really tightened up the mechanics and essentially, wherever the bullet hits on the body — that is where the hit registers. It is even possible to shoot and have the bullet go between someone’s legs – it is that precise!

Weapon Pickups

Out of ammo? No longer do you need to find an ammo crate. Find the nearest dead enemy/friendly and pick up their weapon. And remember, the knife knows no ammunition, so if you really want to be Tier 1 — pull out that bad boy and start slashing your way to victory.

Support Actions Balanced

We heard the outcry and we have made adjustments. The support actions were tweaked and are now more difficult to achieve. There is always a fine line between what is too hard and what is too easy, but we think we have balanced it pretty well. It is just not fun when you are getting nailed with rocket and mortar attacks every 20 seconds.

Unlock Tree Expanded and Balanced

Your ascension to Tier 1 status will now be even more eventful. The unlock tree has been expanded for every weapon, providing an extensive series of choices.

Crash Fixes

Every beta has its crashes and the Medal of Honor beta was no different. We know it is frustrating, but it is all part of the beta process. The good news is that we have fixed the crashes and resolved a number of connectivity issues.

Major Graphic Overhaul

The graphics have been overhauled and upgraded. We are happy to report that the game looks even more spectacular than before.

Weapons

The weapons are essential to gameplay, obviously, and we made sure to concentrate on getting them right. The list is long and the changes are many. From zoom spread to damage inflicted, rest assured that every weapon has been modified.

These changes and fixes are just the tip of the iceberg. As we move toward the game’s release, we continue to improve the game every single day.

Be sure to follow the Medal of Honor Twitter & Facebook, and visit them at their official website. Medal of Honor launches on October 12, 2010 and is rated “T” for Teens.

Man up, we got a game to fix

Just today, DICE has announced that Bad Company 2 will be patched today for both North America and Japan, but Europe will get their update tomorrow (June 8th). Stated from the Battlefield Blog, here’s whats improved in the patch:

• Vehicles can now be damaged by friendly fire when playing Hardcore.
• The MG36 now properly has its red dot sight in Hardcore.
• Damaged vehicles no longer blink on the minimap for soldiers without a powertool.
• SPECACT kits can be used on all SDM and SR levels.
• 40mm Shotgun is now properly rewarded platinum at 500 kills not 1000.
• G3 and Mk14 can now use the AR Marksman specialization.
• Fixed a graphical issue when equipping the GOL with a 4x or Red Dot sight.
• Scoring is now awarded after a player’s death.
• Increased Tickets in Conquest mode and significantly increased Ticket Bleed when holding a majority or more of flags.
• The Conquest Horn now only plays for a short time when running low on Tickets.
• Updated the weapon stats in the Menu to reflect previous weapon balance changes (no additional weapon balance changes were made).
• Increased the power of the UH-60 miniguns at long range.
• Armored Vehicles are now more effective at running over soldiers.
• Fixed an issue on Isla Inocentes where destroying a fence would also destroy the building containing an MCom.
• Fixed various hangs and exploits.

Pretty good stuff fixed in this update, hopefully more details for the Onslaught Expansion will come out fairly soon as that’s what all BFBC2 players want.

Get ready to move out as BFBC2 has gone Gold!

The moment is here, Battlefield Bad Company 2 has finally gone Gold as lead designer David Goldfrab for BFBC2 tweeted:

“Gentleman and women start your engines, we are gold!”

Although the game isn’t perfected yet, they will still tweak any minor issues before the release date. Battlefield Bad Company 2 is set to ship out on March 2th.

Worthplaying.com recently obtained a very special interview with some developers from DICE, the creators of the addictive multiplayer, those of us who have played the demo, have come to know as Battlefield Bad Company 2. You can check out the full interview by clicking here, or checking it out on our site after the page break.

WP: Who has the honor to speak with us? State your name, rank and occupation!

I’m Patrick Bach, and I’m a senior producer for Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

WP: Did you also work on the first Bad Company title?

PB: Yes, I worked on the first one as well.

WP: One of the things that people either loved or hated about the original title was the humor. Some people really got into it and others didn’t. In your presentation, you said that the second game is a little more serious. Is that referring to the gameplay or the story line?

PB: It’s actually referring to both the gameplay and the story line, but that doesn’t change the characters. They still have the same personalities, and there will still be the bantering between the squad members. There will still be elements of humor within the characters, of course, but the whole story line and the settings they are put into are quite more serious.

WP: What about the level design? Not to start off on a negative note, but again, one of the complaints that people had with the first game was that things felt a little too forced or too narrow. Have you tried to open things up at all to make things a little more organic?

PB: What we found from the first game, based on our personal biggest problem and a lot of feedback, was that the game was a bit bland. It felt more or less the same all the time, and like you said, it felt a bit forced when it came to gameplay. Of course, we put a lot of energy into making sure not only the missions were varied but also the gameplay elements, that it feels more natural to go from A to B to C. We also have sandbox elements and driving sections and tried to get more variation into the gameplay.

WP: In the presentation, you described the game as stretching from Alaska down to South America, so that’s one snow level and one jungle level. Are there any levels set in North America, or after Alaska, does it occur solely in South America?

PB: Not that much. I can’t go into detail exactly, but the main part of the game will be set in South America.

WP: Another story question. It’s been quite a while since game developers have used the America-versus-Russia theme. What made you guys decide to go back for an old ’80s Cold War classic rather than pulling from current events? So many games today deal with the Middle East and terrorism. It’s almost like an ’80s flashback, but in a good way.

PB: The idea is that Russia never really died away; they just kind of went to sleep and now they’re starting to get bigger again. It’s a classic drama if you have the fight between Russia and the U.S., but also the point that Russia is negotiating with the South American countries and building more and more military bases on South American soil. It’s like during the Cold War, when the U.S. started to build military bases and missile ramps pointing from Poland into Russia. Russia’s now doing the same thing but in South America. If you spin on that idea, you can easily see that, looking at how the economy looks today, things could easily go sideways and turn into a situation like this.

WP: In terms of straight gameplay, how is it going to play out in terms of which character you play for Bad Company 2? Do you get to choose? Does the game follow you? Do you go from one squad member to another based on the story line?

PB: No, you will only play as one character throughout the whole game. We want the game to focus on you being this character instead of jumping between characters and getting all confused. You want the classic storytelling arc throughout the game where you play as one character and you have the other characters around you that you get to know better and better as you go through the game.

WP: From a creative standpoint, on the character side, you obviously got the base of the characters from the first game. When you’re bringing the squad back, how did you decide that this is how they’re going to react, this is what they’re going to do, and these are the weapons that they’re going to carry?

PB: In the first game, we already had character descriptions that were quite deep. For different reasons, that didn’t always show. One thing that we did now is that by putting them in other situations where they get more stressed and pushed to the edge, you will get other reactions out of the squad members that you might not have guessed when you saw them in the first game. By twisting the situations, you’ll get more interesting personal reactions from the squad members.

WP: You’ve described Bad Company and Bad Company 2 as “sandbox” games, but every developer has a different idea of what that means. What does “sandbox” mean to DICE?

PB: To DICE, it’s a classic Battlefield expression. To most people, sandbox means that you provide the playground and then you provide the toys. By having specific gameplay physics on top of that, you can build your own gameplay depending on how you see it. It’s more a set of rules rather than a linear way of playing a game. To DICE, I would say that it’s a combination of the open environments, vehicles and infantry and on top of that, destruction that would actually change how the world looks and plays over the period of the map session. That’s kind of what the Battlefield recipe’s all about.

WP: Engine-wise, what’s been going on behind the scenes since the first game? What kind of tweaks can we expect to see in the visuals and physics?

PB: We’re using the Frostbite Engine, which is DICE’s own engine. We’ve been fiddling with, more or less, all systems, so looking at the graphics, it’s obvious that we improved that quite a lot. Physics-wise, the vehicles will handle better. There’s a more detailed physics model. The game will sound better than ever before. Of course, it’s not only the engine but the work put into creating the assets, and those two things in combination will make a huge difference when it comes to the quality from the first game to the second game.

WP: Aside from the obvious “We have to ship it” deadline, how do you decide internally at DICE when the game is done? What is that moment when internally, the team decides that it’s done?

PB: We tried to set that quite early. You have a lot of different milestones on the project where you lock down the scope of the game. It’s also based on the routine from the actual developers, that you know how much you can build. When you have the scope, you can easily say that, “We can get to this quality level based on this scope with this set of talent that we have in the company.” It’s hard to give a specific date that, 50 days before launch, you make this decision. It’s more of a gut feeling from all the talent that you have in the game, whether you’ll be able to pull it off. Yes or no? If you get a “yes” and you have a lot of trust in those talents, you just go.

WP: Getting that intuition, knowing that talent, how much of that is knowing the systems themselves? It’s 2010, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are almost pushing five years. Are your developers still pulling more out of the systems, or do they know what they can do and there aren’t a lot of questions or last-minute surprises?

PB: I think both. If you look at the console platforms, the PS3 and X360, if we had another go in making a new game on the same platform, we could probably make it feel almost as much more as this game looks to the previous one. There are a lot of small tricks and quirks that you can take advantage of in both systems, so there’s still a lot of gold to be found in the consoles.

WP: Looking at console versus PC, since the advent of digital distribution with Steam and broadband becoming more common, it’s almost like we’re seeing a resurgence in PC gaming. As a developer, is console versus PC really an either-or question, or has it gotten back to the point where you need to develop for all of them?

PB: At DICE, we never really let go of the PC. Bad Company 1 was an exception because we initially designed it to be a console-only game. We got a lot of negative comments about that when we released the game because people asked, “Hey, this is a real Battlefield game. Why aren’t you releasing it for PC?” This time around, we decided, yes, let’s make Bad Company 2 for the PC so that the audience can enjoy the game as well. We’re not taking it lightly and just making a port. We actually have a big PC-focused team just working on the PC version of the game. I think the PC gamers will be amazed with the quality that we get out of the PC. We have DirectX 11 support, we support all the latest sound and graphics, and we even have support for nVidia’s 3-D screens, so there’s a lot of cool stuff going on when it comes to the PC version.

WP: You mentioned a new multiplayer mode and a new hardcore mode in your presentation. Can you briefly expand on both of those?

PB: Well, first of all, the squad rush game mode is a very competitive game mode that is more or less squad versus squad. It’s designed to have you and your friends meet another group of people and have these quick and fast game sessions. It’s a very quick and aggressive game mode.

We also have the setting that you can use for all game modes, and it’s called hardcore. Hardcore means that we double the damage of the weapons so it’s more or less one shot, one kill. We remove most of the hub elements, so there’s no reticle, no ammo counter, so in that way, it turns into a more visceral and realistic experience.

WP: Is that a per-user experience? When you create a multiplayer game, if I want to, can I play on hardcore and get that experience? Or does everyone have to be on hardcore?

PB: It’s a server setting so everyone has to be in on it, so you can choose whether you want to play hardcore or not in any of the game modes: conquest, rush, squad deathmatch or squad rush. It turns the game into something that is a lot more fast-paced and dangerous. You change your play style immediately when you get into it.

WP: If you had to sum it up in two to three sentences, what really makes Battlefield: Bad Company 2 a game that’s worth playing?

PB: If you like a very deep and long multiplayer experience that competitive, easy-to-use and high quality, then this is the game for you. If you want a single-player that is dramatic and varied, with cool storytelling and cool characters and all these cool environments, it’s all part of the same package. I don’t see a reason why you shouldn’t pick it up.

WP: Is there anything about the game that we haven’t talked about that you wanted to add?

PB: One thing that’s also very interesting is how we see our customers. We see the game as the first step to a longer experience. We have an in-game store where you get free content or you can buy new content to the game, so it’s a very integral part of the game that we will have a long post-launch campaign. I think people will be thrilled to see what’s in that already. On day one, you will get some really cool stuff.

WP: We saw the launch of Battlefield 1943 on Xbox Live Arcade, and that went well. Has there been any more talk at DICE about going back to those older PC properties for PSN and Xbox Live? Were you happy with what happened, or was it an experiment that didn’t work out?

PB: It started as an experiment, but it turned out to be much bigger than anyone could have anticipated. I think we’re the best-selling Xbox Live title ever produced, and we got pretty good reviews. The customer feedback has been extremely good. From that perspective, it’s a complete success, and you never know what will happen in the future. It’s definitely something that we got a good taste from, so you’ll never know what happens.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So, you can’t just wait any longer on Battlefield Bad Company 2? Well do we have some awesome video to show you. Above is purely gameplay footage of the new title in action and it looks amazing. Could it be the Modern Warfare 2 killer? Give us a shout in the comments. Also, this video isn’t for kids under the age of 18. Enjoy!

“Hope that you all watched the trailer on SPIKE! That was, indeed, all GAMEPLAY footage. MOH. IS. BACK. 2010. #MOH”

Looking at the trailer, it was impressive and looks really good, now we’ll wait until we see more down the line and of course wait for the final product. In case you haven’t seen the trailer take a look here:

Your in Bad Company now

Posted on the PlayStation Blog, DICE’s Gordan Van Dyke has just posted interesting info regarding the Battlefield Bad Company 2 Beta. It will be exclusive to PlayStation 3 and the only way to get in is by one of the following:

• Special limited giveaway on the PlayStation Blog (details TBA)
• Pre-ordering the game at participating retailer
• Checking out selected gaming sites such as IGN or GameSpot in North America.

The game looks awesome so far, hopefully we can snag a couple beta keys you our readers.

A-Ten Hut! The Long awaited Battlefield: 1943 has finally hit the PSN and many are playing this really good download.

DICE is back at it again using the Frostbite Engine to create World War II as they saw it in the Pacific. There is no story in this game so that just leaves multiplayer and you know what that means, kill, kill, kill, why do you ask? Because DICE put a twist into the game, not only is it just a multiplayer game with many people online with PSN, this game is a community battle to unlock a totally new game mode and map. What does that mean?, it’s a battle between PSN and XBOX Live to see who can reach 43 Million Kills, once that’s achieved the community that wins get’s the 4th map unlocked with the game mode Air Superiority with means nothing but dogfights and alot more mayhem.

Battlefield: 1943 is a Downloadable game for the PSN and yes it’s another First Person Shooter involved in the WWII era but it’s set in the pacific area of operations and we haven’t seen alot of those. But, the game is really simple as other Battlefield Games are, simply capture a point on the map and try to weaken the enemy reinforcements so your team can win the game and move on to the next map. There aren’t a whole lot of maps in the game though but their really big and when your in the action you’ll want to respawn asap to capture the next point. You also choose from three diffrent classes which are infantryman, rifleman, and scout. You cannot customize them which is troublesome but it show which class your good as and how we’ll you know the tatics behind the class. Vehicles also are in the game, and their put to good use throughout your entire play through of the game.

Graphics in the game are real good, areas look like they have been look through thoroughly, as the ocean is so clear you can actually see the bottom floor. Animations however can be better as they can sometimes look slow and clunky. Sounds, are just a reminder of Battlefield: Bad Company, in my terms they sound great, from aerial bombings to gun fires and to your characters ears almost being blown out, it all sounds amazlingly realistic. Only issues I found were that sometimes games can’t be found even though you were connected online and that there are some barrell placements around the maps which means that not everything is fully destructible but you can still do alot of damage.

Ok, I told you about the game and you seriously need to go download this game off the PSN Store, everything in there is well worth $15 dollars but you just feel like you got a whole lot more just by playing it. DICe has produced a great game that is worth the money and your playtime. Also trophies are easy as pie (just pointing that out).

Scores:

Presentation: 8.5

Though only multiplayer, you’ll still have a blast a good use of the Frostbite engine.

Graphics: 8.0

The maps look great but not the animations of the characters

Sound: 9.0

Seriously good and realistic.

Gameplay: 8.5

It’s another FPS, but there is a whole lot to do.

Replay Value: 8.5

Like I said trophies are really easy but the action is even better although there are only three maps.

Final Score: 8.5