Battlefield: BC2 Demo on Xbox Live now!

    Single player is all very well, but multiplayer is what I really enjoy. I've been playing the Battlefield: Bad Company campaign for a while now; overall, the game has fewer "Oh, wow!" moments than the Call of Duty games. You rarely find yourself stunned by some visual image playing BC. But the basic gameplay, frankly, is better than CoD. If the wow factor of the CoD games could be blended with the superior single player gameplay of Battlefield: Bad Company, you'd have the perfect military single player shooter.
    I'm weighing whether I should try out the Bad Company multiplayer. See, I can usually only be married to one game at a time for multiplayer, and right now that's Modern Warfare 2. Yes, I know: A shooter is a shooter is a shooter. Each game has its own feel and rhythms to it. When I play one regularly, I fall into the groove of it, and it's disorienting as Hell when I switch to another one and even more disorienting switching back.
    In the past, the transition back and forth has been really painful. When I first got engaged to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on the PC, I used to also play a lot of Half-life deathmatch and Unreal Tournament 2K4 on the PC also. Half-life deathmatch I loved, but it always irked me that I could empty a whole magazine into another player, he'd shrug it off like nothing, and kill me with a .357 Magnum headshot. UT 2K4 I also enjoyed a lot, but I played it against bots. I never played long enough to ever ramp up the difficulty much. Bad enough to get your ass kicked by a human being; it's degrading to be pwned by a bypassing cloud of electrons. (Remember this, tho: Loque cheats.)
    So, I'm going to try and finish the single player for Battlefield: Bad Company and then, I'll decide whether I want to cheat my current mate, MW2. On to the links:

• Modern Warfare 2 tops on Xbox Live.
• Late-to-the-party reviews: The Vector (9.5/10); GamePro (4.5/5).
• IGN MW2 Xbox Live webathon Haiti charity event. IGN Haiti charity eBay store.
• Life After MW2: Games to cure your Level 70 addiction.
  
• Previously overlooked: Fudzilla notes MW2 patch in the works. 1 March 2010 DLC release date just a rumor.
  

    More Gaming Links:

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 round-up: Download the demo on Xbox Live right now! EA's Gordon van Dyke blogs about the BC2 PC beta; PC pre-order unlocks and beta info. GameDaily: Battlefield: BC2 Interview. ConnectedConsoles: The real reason the Bad Company 2 beta didn't come to the Xbox 360. Destructoid: Is BC2 the next billion dollar shooter? DICE: EA's goal is to beat Modern Warfare 2. BASHandSlash: BFBC2 video interview link with Patrick Bach.; GameReactor YouTube interview with EA's Gordon van Dyke.

• Mass Effect 2 review round-up: GameDaily; GameTrailers; Ars Technica; Gaming Union; TeamXbox; GameSpy; Bit-Tech; ZergWatch; IGN; Product Reviews; JoyStiq; 1Up; AtomicGamer; PCGamer UK; IncGamers; Official Xbox Magazine UK; EuroGamer; GamingNexus; NeoSeeker; GamePro; Destructoid. VooDooExtreme's round-up, which gave me half this list, tallies up a 9.6/10 for Mass Effect 2 so far. Metacritic's crap-o-meter is currently at 97%.
  
• GameTrailers: Mass Effect 2 gameplay and more videos.
• GameSpy: Medal of Honor reboot boasts 2 game engines. Single player will be Epic's Unreal engine; multiplayer will utilize the Frostbite engine familiar to Battlefield players.
  
• Kotkaku: Gears of War characters in Lost Planet 2 trailer.
• Halo: Reach: 1Up Halo: Reach screenshots; GameInformer: Reach Developer Commentary;  Noble Team Profile #1.
• MaximumPC: Bioshock 2 PC Digital Rights Management detailed.
  
• Joystiq: Microsoft files motion to dismiss Datel lawsuit. The Asian manufacturer filed suit against Microsoft when it locked out third-party memory units. An Xbox 360 software upgrade now prevents the use of any non-Microsoft units for storage of player profiles or game save data.
• Kotaku: Microsoft faces lawsuit over Xbox 360 pricing.
• GamesRadar: Top 7 Longest Videogame Endings.
• Major Nelson: DL Xbox Live Achievement Sound Effect.
  

    Non-Gaming Links:

• MaximumPC: Yesterday's link reported that the Nexus One blocks naughty words. Today, MaximumPC tells us how to thwart Nexus One Naughty Word filter.
• UGO: That's not a f*cking computer.