My love for the Battlefield series of games extends back to Battlefield 1942 which was released my freshman year of college. My roommates and I spent countless hours killing each other in the most creative ways possible.  Running each other over with jeeps, wing walking on airplanes, strapping explosives to pretty much everything in the level.  What made the game great was the open ended gameplay, large levels, and the introduction of vehicle based combat.  Battlefield: Bad Company 2 carries on this tradition of inovation.

While Bad Company 2 improves upon the multiplayer fun my roommates and I enjoyed, the single player game may seem a tad lackluster.  It is your standard military game plot, and if you have played Modern Warfare 2 and Crysis you can pretty much piece it together in your head.  The game follows the same group of soldiers that the original Bad Company title did, only this time the character’s personalities feel much more fleshed out.  One of the best examples of this, and my favorite part of the single player campaign, is the banter that occurs between your squadmates when there is no action happening.  They talk about their past, make jokes about each other, and fill the “boring” parts of the game with something worthwhile.  In fact, I found myself just sitting there in order for them to start talking.  When I wasn’t sitting around I was busy blowing up destructible environments, wreaking havoc in tanks, and sniping baddies off rooftops.  It is not that the single player game is bad in any way, it is just that the aforementioned activities are so much more fun when you are killing “real people” and you are not interrupted by predictable and stereotypical “plot”.  Which is where multiplayer comes in!

Bad Company 2 is quite possibly the best military multiplayer game around.  If you are a fan of military action movies and want to feel like you are in the film, this is the game for you.  The combination of destructible environments, vast weapon / vehicle choices, incredibly detailed maps, and variety of classes make Bad Company 2 an amazingly cinematic experience.  The amount of action happening in a level makes you feel like a small part of an epic battle that is raging all around you.  Watching the action take place from far away as a sniper is equally fun.  I often play this class because it lets me orchestrate parts of the battle by killing key targets or calling in mortars on certain locations.  No matter how you play Bad Company 2′s multiplayer, every match is a truly riveting and unique experience.

The single player campaign of Bad Company 2 is lacking in depth of story and does not really bring much new to the table, but it is a solid game none the less.  Luckily the multiplayer easily makes up for the single player downfalls and then some.  Once again the Battlefield series delivers an immersive military experience and sets the standard for multiplayer games to come.  9 out of 10.

I used to make fun of my friends for liking Guitar Hero and the other various “band games”.  I used to tell them how ridiculous they looked and that they should spend their time learning to play real instruments.  I will be the first to admit I was wrong.  These games can be pure gaming bliss… and The Beatles: Rock Band has shown me the light.

Like other band games, the premise of The Beatles: Rock Band is keeping rhythm with the games colored bars as they fly by the bottom of the screen.  This is done by strumming or banging on whatever plastic instrument you choose, or you can be the poor sap that gets stuck with the microphone.  All this seemed moderately amusing to me before The Beatles: Rock Band came out.  Sure it is fun to make-believe you and your closest friends are in a band together.  Sure it is fun to watch them curse at little colored bars and tiny plastic instruments.  And yes it is even fun to get intoxicated enough that you actually want to be the poor sap with the microphone.  Still, band games always seemed like party games and not “play at home by yourself” kind of games.  I think this is mostly dues to the selection of songs.  Yea there are a few really great songs in Rock Band 2, but there are also only so many AFI and Paramore songs that a man can withstand before he goes insane.  Solution for me: Make all the songs Beatles tracks!!

The second the game starts up you can tell that a lot of love was put in to it.  George Harrison’s son Dhani was one of the main collaborators in the making of the game, which explains the attention to minute detail.  The menus are fast and responsive, the graphics are clean and crisp even on the Wii, and the sound effects and music in the background just scream Beatles.  Online play is a lot of fun even on the Wii, even though it is still a pain networking with friends; a problem that is circumvented by getting this game on another system.  Harmony vocal sections have been added so you can use up to three microphones.  This mode is particularly nice if you are playing an instrument and singing since it does not require the tapping of the microphone at certain sections.  You can also purchase special Beatles style controllers for the game… I picked up Lennon’s old Rickenbacker 325.  Awesome.

The only downside to this game I have found is the releasing of downloadable content.  The game comes with 45 tracks and three DLC albums set to be released by late December, but after that it is anyone’s guess.  While there is potential for the entire Beatles catalog to be made available, this will be unlikely, according to John Drake of Harmonix.

All in all this is not only an amazing game, but also an amazing piece of art and a wonderful addition to any Beatles memorabilia collection.  Even if you are not a Beatles fan I would still pick this game up, it may just turn you in to one.  I give The Beatles: Rock Band an 8 out of 10.