Xbox Living

Battlefield veterans have the option to bring some guns over from Battlefield 1943 when they play Battlefield: Bad Company 2 next month, EA DICE has announced.

For those players that purchase both games, you’ll be able to receive exclusive codes to unlock three World War II-era guns in Bad Company 2. The guns are the M1 Garand rifle, the Thompson machine gun and the M1911 pistol.

In order to do so, you’ll need to register both Battlefield 1943 and Bad Company 2 at veteran.battlefield.com — although you still can’t register Battlefield 1943 on the site, you can also register copies of any Battlefield game since the original Battlefield 1942. Hopefully that site will be fully-functional in time.

Meanwhile, EA product manager Will Graham has been building up hype for Bad Company 2, bragging that EA’s DICE studio is positioned to take over the FPS genre, which has recently been dominated by Activision’s Call of Duty franchise.

“We genuinely believe there isn’t a developer out there that competes with DICE in this space, and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is going cement that,” Graham says. “The use of vehicles in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 sets it apart from the competition and no one else in the industry does this better.”

Having played the demo for Bad Company 2, I’m inclined to agree, though I’ve long-since favoured Battlefield over the Call of Duty games. Bad Company 2 certainly seems to take the better parts of Call of Duty and put them into the masterful Battlefield gameplay style, so Activision does have a solid contender to worry about.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 comes out March 2 in North America, and March 3 in Europe.