So IRC discussion reminded me I wanted a place to talk about how surprisingly good this game is.
I played BC2 in desultory fashion last year, when the weapon balance was all ****ed up and the hit detection was glitchy, but after the utterly hilarious crash-and-burn of Halo Reach and Medal of Honor and the promise of yet another round of Modern Warfare mod sold for $60, I came back to it and found to my surprise that the game was in really good shape.
With the hit detection patched up and the weapons balanced out, I think this is the most finely polished, rewarding multiplayer shooter that does not involve hats right now. The graphics engine is gorgeous but runs smoothly, the multiplayer levels put on a good clinic for Reach's fumbling two-map Invasion offering, and since it's on PC and has an actual server browser, you don't have to sit through matchmaking only to play with jerks - admins can ban those jerks! Vehicle handling and the environmental destruction also make other contemporary shooters look pretty 2001.
What really blows me away about it is how much it looks and sounds like a scripted sequence. Seeing tracers arcing up into the sky and watching a chopper kick up dust as it sideslips over the desert floor (how do they manage all these volumetric effects and keep performance up?) I feel like I'm in one of those stupid scripted shots in a Call of Duty game, except it's actual players doing actual stuff.
And I know a bunch of HLPers play it, so, sound off. I'm working on platting the VSS right now. It's ridiculously good.