Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 are not the same game, nor were they designed to be. I’ve heard countless people compare the two, but that’s just unfair, which has ultimately driven me to write what’s more or less of a rant.
It’s like comparing tits and ass – both are awesome but have different purposes. Sure, they’re both first-person shooters. Sure, they’re both modern combat, but that’s about as far as the similarities go. Oh, there’s one last characteristic they share – both are capable of coexisting without problem.
Modern Warfare 2, as with every other Call of Duty title, is a run-and-gun shooter with about as much teamwork as the New Jersey Nets. It’s mindless, it’s fast-paced, it’s frantic, and it’s fun. MW2 focuses on close-quarters combat with relatively short games. The maps are small and confined, and it works for what it is.
On the other hand, Bad Company 2 leans closer to the sandbox side of shooters. The maps are sprawling, open environments, which compensates for the fact that the game features vehicular combat (something that MW2 lacks altogether). Bad Company 2 essentially requires cooperation amongst teammates, and its gameplay is not nearly as fast-paced as MW2’s.
The two games have a number of similarities, absolutely. For instance, they both have unlockables, but are you telling me that if two things have common traits that they can be properly compared? No, not necessarily. Instead, the shared characteristics should be compared – don’t extend that to the entire games. How is Bad Company 2’s unlock system in contrast to Modern Warfare 2’s? Examining common characteristics is the only way two different games can be reasonably compared.
There is a lot of overlap between the two titles, I’ll admit, and they both cater to a similar audience. However, the game mechanics are so vastly different that one can hardly begin to compare the two without looking like a pretentious fanboy. Consequently, the immense differences are why the two can coexist and, moreover, why they shouldn’t be compared in the sense that one is better than the other. They are their own games.
