The BC2 Patch: Knifing and Review Begin

Sorry about the missed update yesterday. The family went to a party I didn't know we were going to and that messed up the rhythm of the day. I'm back, though it's my father's birthday tomorrow, so we'll see what I can cook up.

Tonight's topic is, as promised, the beginning of a review of the Bad Company 2 update. I'll speak to knifing in this blog. In future entries, I'll touch on further problems that arose in the second major update, as well as any statistics changes I can find.

But knifing's back. Everyone cheer! When BC2 first launched, after the obligatory problems with any big launch, knifing was a whole new experience. I believe that in Call of Duty, especially the newer ones, the knifing is a little overdone. I know that the Commando perk in Modern Warfare 2 is a bit much (and that's putting it mildly). Therefore, when I first knifed someone in BC2 I was surprised, but not negatively or positively so. The animation was exceedingly slow and the hit registration needed work. That is the negative. The positive is the satisfaction actually knifing someone gave you. You had to really work to get the knife, and on the big maps for any game mode save Deathmatch, going knife only, as is possible in Call of Duty with a fair bit of skill, became a task of almost monumental difficulty. Granted, it is possible, and people do it. Some of them even go positive doing it. They are, however, an even greater minority than in the Call of Duty franchise. I know of only two or three in BC2 while I'm sure there is at least ten times that number, if not more, in CoD.

Then the patched the game in April. Knifing went to hell. Strangely, knifing from behind did not work. You had to be within 180 degrees of your enemy's front if you wanted to get the knife kill. On the other hand, the longer knife animation was not always necessary for the knife kill. A simple swipe got the job done. Hit detection in this regard was much improved, and it was still satisfying to out think your opponents in fights when you've both run out of ammo (which is easy to do between players of equal skill or fail level). Overall, though, knifing fazed out of fashion if only because it was now even inefficient than using guns.

In the recent update, which came out on June 29th, my birthday, they fixed knifing. Anywhere near the opponent and suddenly he's dead. Right on! Unfortunately, the awful hit registration returned as well, and there is, once again, a little bit of a lunge when you knife someone, sometimes. Other times, you just fail. In all my time before knifing returned, I didn't get a single melee efficiency pin, a hard pin to get. I can now claim at least six to my name in the twelve or so hours I've played since the 29th.

This part of the update I give a 9.