After some mucking about on EA’s part, Onslaught mode for Bad Company 2 finally made it to the Xbox 360. I spent a bit of time playing it and I thought I’d write up a quick review to answer the burning question in most people’s mind: “Is Onslaught worth $10 (800 pts)?”
First off, the site says Onslaught is “
1-4 player co-operative mode against AI enemies “. Now, you can solo some of the levels. Both Gibson and I independently solo’d Nelson Bay (on Easy) in about 22 minutes each. We went through and replayed it together, beat it (using only pistols, just to dick around), then did a speed run in less than 5 minutes. We probably could have gone faster… but that was good enough for now. I tried to solo Atacama Desert, I don’t think it is possible — at least not without some serious time spent studying the map. Dealing with the tanks is easy enough, but the cap area is too large to keep locked down on your own. I could survive indefinitely on my own, but simply couldn’t keep the enemies out.
In short, while it says “1-4 players”, for at least Atacama and Isla Inocentes, it is not possible to solo. Duo is doable on Easy. Gibson and I consider ourselves to be good players, but neither of those maps could we do on normal in just a twosome. Mostly the problem is helicopters and the fact that the enemy infinitely spawns. Speaking of the enemies, even on easy they have laser eyes. These guys wont shoot at you until they see you, but when they do… they are DEAD on you. They can be parachuting in from a mile away — they still have a better than 50% chance of hitting you. The snipers… well lets just say it is very health un-friendly.
Switching the difficulty to easy, Gibson and I duo’d all 4 maps with our times on each being less than 15 minutes each. We really want to go back and play them on Hardcore, it will definitely be hard, but having the support of 4 players will make life much more enjoyable. Also, the maps are generally the same from Conquest/Rush, but at different times of day. For example Atacama Desert is dusk, complete with tracers. Flying over in the helicopter makes it look like CNN footage of Baghdad — very freaking awesome.
My general evaluation of if something is “worth it” is $10/hour. I based that roughly on the price of movies. It might be too high for some, but it is easy to work with. As Onslaught costs 800 pts, or $10 (MSRP for points), I’d expect at least an hour of play out of it. To get through the maps just once each on easy is at least that amount. Then of course there is normal, hard, & hardcore modes. I really don’t know what hard or hardcore add to the table, but I presume they make it like hardcore in multiplayer — where you loose your health regen and radar (amongst other challenge “multipliers”).
We got our 4 achievements, one for beating each map on any difficulty. Now we want to go back and get the last 4 achievements — beating each map on hardcore. That will take a lot of time and practice (since I can’t clone myself 3 more times — if I could this would be cake).
So, is Onslaught worth 800 pts? Yes. Onslaught gives the game a little more online life for those times when you’ve got friends online to play with, but no good mutiplayer games. If nothing else, it is a great training/practice ground for regular multiplayer play. Plus you don’t have douche bag teammates that TKyou so they can have the helicopter, since you just have one squad.