Nick Mangiaracina

When it was first announced that a sequel was going to be made for the Bad Company series, I immediately thought of all the talent at Dice that I felt was wasted. The fact that they had taken a previously PC dominated franchise and turned it into the consolified, toned down game that appealed to the lowest common denominator that Bad Company was, I had lost any hope that I would relive the appeal from Battlefield 2. When I had seen what Bad Company 2 looked like, and heard the explanation of what multiplayer would be like, I was intrigued. When I got to actually play the multiplayer and experience Rush mode for the first time, I was impressed. Upon finally touching the finished product, playing hours and hours of multiplayer and sitting down and playing the single-player, I realized that Dice had become a developer that wants to try new things, and to take those new things and build on them. While some have said Battlefield is always more of the same, I can't help but agree in that you can never have too much Battlefield.

This took me a few minutes to understand.  Available now on Steam is the four pack for Battlefield: Bad Company 2.  Now, the four pack is usually reserved for games where you want to play with 3 friends, so you guys all want to go in on the game and save a little cash.  Borderlands, 4 player co-op.  Left4Dead1/2, 4 player co-op.  Battlefield: Bad Company 2, 1 player single-player, 32-man multi-player, huh?  Oh right, four person squads!  Hit the jump to find out more on this awesome deal.

Another horrifying Friday is upon us, and as always that means playing games, events, and a lack of sunlight.  Although, if you're anything like me you've already been out quite a bit today and have enjoyed the nice day outside.  At least, it's nice in Chicago.  This weekend we've got a bit of a change in events, but overall it'll be the same jam packed video game style weekend you had planned since Monday.  Hit the jump to see the slight change.

With the new expansion pack for Dawn of War 2 coming out next week, I'm riddled with anticipation and excitement for the amount of time I'll be sinking into it.  However, if you're not an expansion person but still wish to play the original, there's some good pre-expansion news coming out for you.  A patch will be released preceding the expansion release that will update the game pretty substantially, as Relic is known for doing.  Hit the jump to find out all the gritty details, and even some good stuff if you haven't purchased the game yet.

After a very strange week with an ominous new patch revealing an alternate ending to one of the more interesting games of last decade, we come full circle with an announcement.  Portal 2 has been announced, and boy should nobody be surprised.  We spent the entire week waiting for someone to find out what that mysterious patch was about, and it only took 2 days of waiting to find out there was an alternate ending, a pretty lengthy time considering how short the game is.  Hit the jump for the full announcement.

Wowzers!  I never say that, but I'll say it now!  Wowzers!  Battlefield: Bad Company 2 had a pretty rough start, so rough in fact that our server didn't fill up until today.  This was due to a server error on EA's end that would drop connections after a period of being connected.  A strange error but one that was resolved earlier today.  This is good news for server hosts, and especially good news for Couch Athletics.  Hit the jump to find out super awesome good stuff for the community.

Twitter erupted this morning with Xbox fan boys and the leaders of that pack, Major Nelson and Aaron Greenberg toting about like they run the online gaming market.  Apparently some rumors surfaced about the NPD report stating that the Xbox 360 was the most used online system.  A statistic I'm sure developers are anticipating more than anything else right now, thanks to pirates.  Let's avoid a rant here, and go straight to the hilarity of misread NPD reports, hit the jump for the full story.

As you may have noticed, if you're a forum user that is, that Couch Athletics will be hosting it's own Battlefield: Bad Company 2 servers.  Today being launch day I'd like to officially announce a few things that may seem scary to your average CA TF2 player, but will be assuring so long as you read.  We've got some exciting announcements for BF:BC2 and have plans to bolster our Team Fortress 2 base, so hit the jump to see what we have in store for the month of March in gaming.

If you're an avid Starcraft player or fan of the game, chances are you know what iCCup is.  iCCup is basically the Starcraft version of CAL or CEVO with a standalone client that works alongside your Starcraft to allow you to connect to their own servers.  Well, even though that doesn't seem like a big deal for the decade old title, it is for a title that's yet to be released.  Hit the jump to find out who's facilitating illegal Starcraft 2 play.

Alright, so over the past year there has been outrage by fans on quite a few occasions.  First there was the petition about Left4Dead 2, then Starcraft 2's LAN play, then Modern Warfare 2's IWnet.  The fan revolt is somewhat refreshing for me personally, being an actual paying gamer and one who does occasionally feel screwed over by the developer.  However, these petitions are poorly executed and often started for relatively dumb reasons.  There's now a Battlefield: Bad Company 2 review petition that continues a string of dumb petitions.  Hit the jump to find out about stupidity on the internet.