Lets get this out of the way, its a beautiful game, the graphics are probably the best i have seen in a long time.
My only complaint is there is a bit to much dust sometimes, and its hard to see when sniping, but it feels real. On the topic of graphics, the environment is completely destructible, and most things will get destroyed if you hit it with a grenade launcher or rockets.
Just say you hit a house with a grenade launcher, that wall is coming down. as warcry said, its awesome to be sniping out of a window, and the whole wall coming down in front of you. This means you have to think about where you're taking cover, and make sure they don't see you. If you keep hitting a house or building over and over again, the house or building will come down, and anyone inside is instantly killed.
Onto the sound, and the sound in this game is brilliant, you can literally hear bullets whizzing past your head as your running. I was watching a youtube video (The "Ken burton show") and he said "I have actually heard one of those grenade launchers go off, and they do make that popping sound".
The downside is the knifing. I haven't had any trouble with it, but people have been saying that its horrible, and its slow etc.

The single player story is fun, which gives you lots of things to do, from a standard infantry, to riding in tanks, shooting out of helicopters and controlling UAV's.
You start off as a soldier last name "Whyatt" in world war 2, you quickly find yourself mowing down jap soldiers and you rampage through the trenches.
After that mission, you're reunited with people from Bad Company 1 like Marlowe (you), Sarge, Sweetwater and haggard, fighting in Russian territory.

Single player is great, but multi-player is where it shines.
There are 4 modes, they are:

Rush: There are 3-5 pairs of M-Coms and the attackers job is to take the pairs out. When you take the first pair of M-coms out you advance through the map to another pair. After about 3-5 pairs, you should be near the end. Also, every pair of M-coms you take out, you get more soldiers

The defenders job is to try and kill the people on the attacking team before they destroy all the M-com stations. The attacking team normally has 100 for each M-com.

Conquest:Conquest is basically capture the flag. There are 4-3 flags spread out over the map, and your team has to try and capture them, and kill the other team. the more flags, the better your chances.

Conquest and rush are both 32 vs 32 at max.

Squad Rush:Like rush, but with 2 teams of 4 players.

Squad Death match:Squad death match has 4 teams of 4 players, the objective is to be the first squad to reach 50 kills. If you do, you win. Its pretty fun to play with friends.

Now you're probably thinking "Squads? whats the point of that!?" well you can spawn off them, and get straight back into the action, its great if you have a good balanced squad, to rush into an enemy base. a squad can have up to 4 people in them.

Now, to add some more fun, there are rolls like medic, engineer, recon and assault.

Assault:An assaults main job is basically to kill. They are equipped with deadly semi-automatic guns, and frag grenade launchers. They also have ammo packs, so whenever a team mate is running low on ammo, you can supply them with more.

Engineer:An engineer's main job is to look after vehicles, and destroy enemy vehicles. They have deadly silent guns that make a clicking noise when fired, and rocket launchers like the Carl gustav, AT-RPG and others.
They also have a drill to heal friendly vehicles.

Medic:A medic's main job is to look after the soldiers, and revive them if they die. They are equipped with LMG's like the M60 and the PKM. They also have health packs, and defibrillator's. Health packs heal injured soldiers quickly and defibrillator's revive them from the dead, refunding soldier tickets.

Recon: The sniper class, basic job is to spot enemy's using the spot button, and use they're motion mines, which puts an orange reddish arrow above the enemies head. A good sniper will get close to the action and help out as much as possible.

If you have any questions, or actually have the game, and want to have a few matches, find me, and other BFBC2 players at #BFBC2 on IRC
Battlefield bad company 2 is available for PS3, X-box 360 and PC.