Screw the queues! Give me my Assault Rifle

It's Sunday night here in the UK and I've just finished playing football, had dinner and watched some TV with the Mrs. It's the only real time of the weekend when I usually get a solid hour of gaming before going to bed in preparation for the week ahead. I logged into Star Trek Online to try and invest more effort into my character because I haven't spent much time in the game since launch but I've been enjoying it so far. I logged into the game to see there was a queue of 650 people and the number was going up fast. In about five minutes I went down 3 places so I thought screw this, I'll go and play some Battlefield Bad Company 2.

I pre-ordered Bad Company 2 based on some feedback I've been reading on the LANArchy forums, a group of gamers who organise LAN events near London. I knew they would be playing it at the next couple of LAN's so I saw the £26 bargain on Play.com and took advantage. If you pre-order you get into the beta with a single large map with a push and take style of objective gameplay. When I first tried the game something didn't feel right, first of all I died a lot... now this isn't really something new when it came to FPS games but usually I get the odd lucky shot or something, the points also went up really slowly and I started to think there was a huge learning curve. Before I went to football tonight I changed the settings to medium (textures still set to height) and the game really opened up. It was so much more responsive, still looked amazing and I got 3 kills in a row right after the change!!

I thought I would get low FPS with PC performance issues, but it didn't feel like the usually frame rate drop, it seem to loose it's responsiveness in combat but didn't feel like it was frame rate related. If you're playing it and having a hard time then it's maybe something to try.

I've been playing the game for the last hour and had some great matches. It's been a while since I've had the same sort of feeling I had when I used to play Battlefield 1942 and the Desert Combat mod. The infantry combat is a mix of intense gun duals and strategic placement and tactics, there are just enough vehicles to provide those "Oh shit... it's a tank" moments whilst not spoiling things. The built in stats and leveling system is also great fun, I looked forward to checking the stats and unlocks after each game and they persist which almost adds those MMO elements of progression to the game play but the core game is what it's all about.

There is only a single level in the beta so I can only imagine the other 7 that are being included in the retail release in March. So from having a bad experience waiting in line in STO it's actually turned out pretty good as I've had some of the best FPS style combat that's not been at a LAN for a long time. Thank you the 650 people waiting in line for the STO server!