A wonderful surprise awaits Xbox 360 owners today, as the long-awaited multiplayer demo for Battlefield Bad Company 2 has finally arrived.

Bad Company 2 represents the biggest challenger to Modern Warfare 2’s supremacy. Though it is unlikely Bad Company 2 will remove Modern Warfare from its perch, it will hopefully make a large dent in its popularity. My dislike of Modern Warfare 2 is well-documented. I consider it nothing more than Halo in disguise with dopey gameplay, poor balance, sloppy design and worst of all, completely broken multiplayer (on every platform!).

Modern Warfare 2 was a major disappointment.

Bad Company 2 looks like a completely different beast.  Grit, carnage, tactics, teamplay, vehicles, aircraft, objectives….and a completely destructible environment. In my humble opinion, Battlefield Bad Company 2 will mop the floor with Modern Warfare 2, offering far more gameplay and variety, graphics every bit as good (if not better, considering the environmental destruction), and best of all: dedicated servers, so multiplayer will actually be smooth for everyone, not some illusion of balance that Modern Warfare 2 foolishly believes is acceptable.

Unsure how you feel about the forthcoming Bayonetta? Not quite sold on playing a character who looks like Sarah Palin and carries a big chain? I hear you. Fortunately, a demo will be appearing in North America on December 3rd for both Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

The Official PR Line:

The Tokyo Game Show is right around the corner and Microsoft has announced what they will be showing, both in terms of playable games and game videos. Here’s the list:

Playable:

• Samurai Spirits Sen
• FIFA10 World Class Soccer
• Lost Planet 2
• Mushihime-sama Futari Ver1.5
• Dynasty Warriors Strike Force Special
• Ninety Nine Nights 2
• World Soccer Winning Eleven 2010
• Front Mission Evolved
• NieR Gestalt
• Bayonetta
• End of Eternity
• Dragon Ball Raging Blast
• Tekken 6
• Steins; Gate
• Forza Motorsport 3
• Infernal: Hell’s Vengeance
• Halo 3 ODST
• Assassin’s Creed 2

Video Only:

• Splinter Cell Conviction
• Castlevania Lords of Shadow
• Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
• Alan Wake
• Fable 3
• Halo Legends
• Halo Reach
• Crackdown 2
• Borderlands

Xbox Live Arcade:

• 0 day Attack on Earth
• Bomberman Live: Battlefest
• Ray Storm HD
• Shadow Complex

Bethesda, best known for Fallout 3 and Elder Scrolls, is slowly evolving into a publisher of 3rd-party titles. WET, created by Artificial Mind & Movement, is one of those products and if the demo is anything to go by, Bethesda may want to stick with creating games. It may be worth noting that Activision Blizzard was the original publisher, but the game was canned when the two companies merged. Perhaps they knew something Bethesda didn’t….

Quick review: It’s Stranglehold with a chick. That’s either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how much you like Stranglehold. Feels like a clunky mess that will get boring real quick, but hey, what do I know? Check it out yourself on Xbox Live. Weighs in at about 600 megs.

Fancy yourself some off-road racing or hip-checks? Two new demos have arrived for the Xbox 360, including Codemaster’s tasty-looking Dirt 2 and EA Sports’ NHL 10.

A demo for hardcore flight-sim IL-2 Sturmovik is now available on the Xbox 360, weighing in at 1.22-gigs. Demo contains two playable scenarios, including The Battle of Britain and The Battle of the Bulge. Hopefully IL-2 Sturmovik isn’t too dumbed-down when compared to its PC brethren, as the Xbox could use a flight-sim with meat on its bones, not another glorified shooting gallery like some other games I could mention.

If you’ve been eagerly awaiting Electronic Arts’ Fight Night Round 4 then you’ll be please to know your wait has been shortened by five days. Originally slated to hit shelves on June 30, EA has announced a new release date of June 25.  If you haven’t played the demo, which is available on XBLA and PS3, then you are depriving yourself of some excellent gameplay and graphics.

So you’ve played around with the single player demo of Red Faction: Guerrilla that was released a few weeks ago. If you’re anything like me, you were totally unimpressed and bored within five minutes. Dated graphics, dated gameplay, no real point in existing. But hey, that’s just my opinion. Perhaps multiplayer is better? If you have an Xbox 360, you can now download the multiplayer demo and determine if it represents the game’s saving grace. PS3 owners will get the demo when Sony updates their store later in the day.

Gamers can now plunk down 800 Points for Bethesda’s latest Fallout 3 expansion pack, The Pitt, which has just now arrived on Xbox Live Marketplace.  Like everything Bethesda creates, it’s buggy as hell and some gamers are warning others not to make the purchase until a better version is posted or a patch is released.

Players are reporting tons of graphical glitches, floating exclamations marks and missing textures. Some NPCs are plagued with rainbow colors in place of textures and yes, the game is freezing on people.

Good job, Bethesda…at least you’re consistent.

If you want more gory details, you can follow angry threads here, here and here.

Activision really wants you to buy Guitar Hero: Metallica, a game supposedly so amazing that it merits a dedicated release at an absurd price-point, instead of a budget-minded DLC download -cough-cough-.  Fortunately, Activision has released a demo to Xbox Live that will allow players to check out four different tracks, including Sad But True, Seek and Destroy, No Excuses and Queen’s Stone Cold Crazy. Single-player and band quickplay is included in the package, as well as head-to-head, Face-Off, Pro Face-Off and Battle. Not a bad feature list for a demo.

Source: Major Nelson