14 DAY TRIAL // Battlefield Bad Company 2 will be out in March, and, while the beta testing session for it is currently running on the PlayStation 3, the PCs will have to wait for a while longer. And to make the wait even more excruciating, DICE has revealed another one of the title's modes. Squad Deathmatch takes the Team Deathmatch principles and brings them to DICE standards, which means they are twice what they should be. The gameplay video posted on the BC2 site takes place on the Laguna Presa map and shows off four teams of four players fighting for domination.
Everything that we expect is still present, like the classes and the general gameplay mechanics and experience, but they're added to a deathmatch scenario. The first team to reach 50 kills wins the round, but things are a lot more complicated, since, instead of two teams, we have four.
At the start of the map, each player is spawned randomly on its edges and needs to find their way to each other to become a compact, efficient fighting machine. Unity is not forced into the game, but it is a key element, since no single class can perform all tasks needed to overcome every possible obstacle.
However, the first time you are killed, you have a choice to either spawn on a certain spawn point on the map or on a fellow teammate to quickly be reintegrated in the squad, and not have to stall the entire team every time a member dies. In spite of the chaos that can ensue, the Squad Deathmatch setup, Laguna Presa is set up so that it can bring some order to the match, by implementing a point of focus for the teams, which is something all maps should have, in one way or another.
The map has a single vehicle present, in the center of the map, that can become a substantial advantage for the team that manages to control it. Overall, Squad Deathmatch looks like a great addition to the game, and it could really be something that could make its way to other titles.