14 DAY TRIAL // DICE has prepared an entire lineup of Battlefield Bad Company 2 PC news for us, and it gives off a bit of a mixed feeling. First, the great news is that the PC beta is finally announced and that it's coming fast our way. It will kick in on January 28 and end on February 25, so that will be an entire month to wreak havoc and catch up with the PlayStation 3 battle-fielders. The map that we'll get a chance to play is Port Valdez and it's a vehicle and infantry Rush map for 32 players, on a snowy setting.
DICE's official take on the map is that, “The battle for Port Valdez is fought alongside the waterline towards a great oil industrial landscape in the Alaskan mountains. Using basically everything they've got the Russian forces are launching an airborne assault to knock out the oil industries in the area. In their arsenal there are Main Battle Tanks as well as fast-moving Quad Bikes and mobile armored AA. It's a vehicle focused battle, but with plenty of infantry combat.” The great news from this description is that PC gamers will get to try their hand at some aerial combat, which is one of the Battlefield highlights and an almost-exclusive feature for an online FPS.
For Anti Cheat, DICE has decided to stick with PunkBuster, with the same setup that BF2 and BF2142 had. The beta keys will be delivered to everyone that has pre-ordered the game, but BC2's team is also working with retailers and e-Tailers, as well as with alternate channels to deliver the keys. It also announced that it was working closely with Steam trying to make the beta available through Valve's digital distribution service, but things aren't set in stone yet.
As for the bad news that comes to balance all the exiting nuggets DICE had for us, the PC community won't be as overwhelmed with attention as we were made to believe earlier on. “There will not be mod tools for BFBC2,” the Bad Company 2 blog reads. “However a majority of the the games logic is controlled by the server and there will be Serverside control options for the dedicated servers.”
As for the public server files, the story is pretty much the same. “We will not distribute these publicly. There are many factors for why we have decided this with the biggest factor being security & integrity of our game & Dedicated Servers.” While it remains to be seen just how much DICE will let the dev-community work with, this sounds very different from its earlier statements, when it promised to shower the PC community with lavish gifts.