Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Battlefield Bad Company 2: Hints, tricks and tips

 

So this post is a bit off topic but I thought I would write down so tips for those who play Battlefield: Bad Company 2. I’ve been playing this game for most of the year and have multiple characters including a level 50, level 40 and a few level 20’s that I muck round with.

I will try and avoid the real basics here as there are plenty of FAQ’s round the internet and, as such, I will try and be a bit more specific.

Point 1: Lone rangers get owned. If you charge straight into the enemies base then you will get shot fast, particularly on full servers. Stick with your teammates or squaddies and your life expectancy will go up big time

Point 2: Fire and move, fire and move. If you camp in the same spot you will get spotted and killed, either by existing enemies or the one who just killed you will come back and kill you knowing exactly where you are. Kill 1 or 2 people from a spot and then move somewhere else. Sometimes I move somewhere to cover the spot that I was just in and then the person you just killed will inevitably come back for revenge and you can own them again from your new spot.

Point 3: Find a gun then stick with it: All weapons have different characteristics and will handle differently. Using one weapon till you know how often to click the mouse button and how much you can move when firing while still being accurate is an advantage. You also get a feel for how often a weapon needs to be reloaded. For example the F2000 runs out of bullets really fast so you need to be mindful of your ammunition whereas the AN94 fires much slower and doesnt need such frequent reloading.

Point 4: You gotta know the maps to be real good: People in the higher ranks will know most maps like the back of their hands. All maps have good points for advancing and defending. Hills that don’t look like they can be climbed, can infact be climbed. Using a heli to parachute onto the top of a boat can pay big dividends, especially if you can cover and mcom from there. A good tip while defending is too climb into the roof of a house, blow a hole in the wall and then jump out onto the roof facing away from the enemy. This way you can poke your head over the top of the roofline to own a few, or get them when they come past you as they have their backs to you. Be prepared to move after a few kills though as they will come looking for you.

Point 5: My own strategy: Attacking - When I feel like getting in the thick of the action I will usually play assault or recon class when attacking. For assault I use the M416 with red dot and smoke and for recon I use the VSS with Red dot and C4. The assault class is great for smoking mcoms just before you arm them or just advancing in general. If Im approaching a base and I see a few enemies close together I will quickly spot them and then let down some smoke on them. I then shoot at the arrows and even though I cant see them I can usually kill them. They of course cant see me and so usually get owned. If the mcom is in a small multiroom hut I will usually arm the mcom while smoking the room, then smoke the other room as well and go hide in that room. People usually expect you to be in the room where the mcom is and will charge blindly into the first room at which point…ownage.

With the recon class try and use your motion sensors a lot. If I can arm an mcom I will drop a bit of c4 on it at the same time and then drop a sensor at the same time as I run off to hide. Once people come to disarm you use the c4 and boom goes the enemy.

B: Defending – When defending I usually play a medic class or assault. Pushing forward to defend with your team is the best defence strategy as long as there are still a few people covering the base and any flanking attack. Having a lot of medics who can revive each other is a defence that is hard to beat unless there is a tank you can use. Furthermore if you come across a situation where you encounter multiple enemies at one time and one of them is a medic then that is the one you want to kill first if you have the option. There’s few things more demoralising then owning 1 or 2 people then getting shot by the medic and then watching him revive the 2 people you just killed.

My final tip is this….don’t use the Carl Gustav rocket launcher on infantry. All it means is that you really don’t know how to use a gun and so must gustav people so they have know chance of shooting you back. Some servers even ban people who practice this so don’t be a moron and keep your rockets for vehicles.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Vodafone Mobile Wi-Fi R201 Review

 

I recently got my hands on one of these Wireless Mobile Wi-Fi units and thought I’d give a quick review of what they are like.

The unit itself is about as wide and high as a standard playing card, maybe a tiny bit bigger, while the height of the unit is about 1 centimetre.It has a micro usb slot for charging and comes with a cable that can either be plugged into your laptop to charge, or into the supplied mains adaptor.

Physical setup of the unit couldn’t be easier as you just pop the back off, slide the sim card in, click the battery into place then close it back up again. Note that there is also a space for a micro sdhc card located under the back cover as well.

Getting connected to the unit was also very easy and simply required making a note of the WPA2 key on a sticker under the back cover and then using Windows to connect to the network. The unit has a built in DHCP server handing out addresses between 192.168.0.100 – 200 while the admin interface is located on 192.168.0.1

The basic interface looks like this

image

Within this interface you can configure any port forwards that you want to do, change your Wi-Fi settings (SSID, password, authentication type, MAC security etc), as well as using it to send/receive SMS.

Real life usage:

I tested the unit throughout my house where the signal strength varies quite a lot. In good reception areas where I was getting a full signal strength and connecting via 3G I was getting about 3 megs download, 1 Meg upload (according to speedtest.net).

Where the signal dropped to 2 bars (but still on 3G) I was getting about 1 Meg down and just under 1 Meg up

image

In both cases simple web browsing was fine and caused me no problems. Any kind of gaming on this would probably be out but for normal emaily, facebooky type of stuff I don’ think you would run into any problems. YouTube clips also were fine to watch and didn’t have to stop to buffer at all.

Conclusion:

All in all this device does what it says on the box. I have only tested it with 1 device connected to the Wi-Fi so am unsure how it would fair with multiple devices running at the same time but daresay that it would be fine. Vodafone claims that up to 5 devices can be connected at once.

So for now a thumbs up. I’m taking this device away on holiday so I can setup an access point at the Bach for everyone to get internet ( as we have no landline for adsl). For the size, cost (currently $199) and ease of setup I think that this is a winner.