Battlefield: Bad Company Review

War is Hell…

With it, EA/DICE have rolled out in Battlefield: Bad Company – a game that embodies the fury of battle, mixed into a slightly forgettable cocktail of modern war-time humour.

As Private Preston Marlowe, you are placed into a small squad of trouble makers within the US army – known as B-Company or Bad Company within its expendable ranks.

The setting is a fictional one that places the US at war in the near-future against a Russian Federation. Along the way, Bad Company will also battle a mercenary group know as the Legionnaires, that have a wealth of gold bars ready to loot.

To some extent Battlefield: Bad Company seems a title developed in the midst of its own civil war. One that tried to balance the singleplayer & multiplayer experience of the game where, realistically, the dominance of multiplayer would always win over the whole BC experience.

EA/DICE had difficult decisions to make, I am sure, with the development of the single & multiplay elements of Bad Company. While it would have been a foolish step to have taken in creating a war-faring title with a weak multiplayer experience, thankfully, this is not the case with Battlefield: Bad Company.

I will say that those players looking for a full, original & open world singleplayer game, should look elsewhere as Bad Company’s singleplayer trail will lead you down the well trod linear mission path, from start to finish.

Hell is other people…

Some of the core attractiveness of the title lies in the near total destructible environments, the large maps & the variety of vehicles & weaponry on the battlefield. The destructive battlefield isn’t physics-based & may cause a few raised eyebrows when parts of structures remain, even after heavy bombardment. While this never distracts too much, if it had been tuned a little more the overall tactical perspective of the game would have increased.

Buildings, bridges & the environment can all be targeted & laid to waste…with some odd exceptions

As for the squad, Bad Company are found wanting as an effective fighting unit. The three NPCs that support the player in Bad Company – Private Terrence Sweetwater, Private George Gordon Haggard & Sergeant Samuel D Redford, act more like wayward bodyguards than a fighting unit. They stray into combat(none of the three can be killed, incidentally) aiding very little to the overall effort. This leaves the player to pick the path & tactics for each of the seven singleplayer missions with very little in the way of support from the rest of Bad Company.

It’s a shame that Bad Company are not a controllable entity via something akin to a player squad command interface. Even an option or two for the player to choose from while watching the numerous cutscenes, that lead into the next mission, would have been a benefit to game immersion. Instead the player is left feeling that combat, in singleplayer, is something of an unfinished affair. I fear this is a restriction deliberately placed into the singleplayer game – once the decision had been made that the missions would be linear & the world would not be an open one.

The missions themselves are entertaining to a degree, allowing for the player to discover the mercenary gold & collectable weapons on route. With the mission campaign being relatively short, variation from one mission to the next is barely noticeable & it made completing missions more a repetitive exercise of eliminating the enemy, than being exposed to any new innovative gameplay features.

Finding mercenary gold but is it the US army who’ll get rich?

The re-spawn after death, in singleplayer mode, I found to be a poor game mechanic that again did nothing for player immersion. Once you fall in combat, the player re-spawns in a position behind the action with those killed remaining so. This can mean a fairly frustrating trek to get back to your squad, sometimes without a means of transport or very little ammo.

Where the game truly comes into its own is the multiplayer mode. Gold Rush, the only multiplayer mode at the games release, pits two teams against each other. One as the attacking team, one the defending with each having clear objectives that allow a map to be won.

Multiplayer in Battlefield: Bad Company is a big selling point for the game

8 maps are playable in Gold Rush, each with their own tactical situation. Where the attacking team aim to destroy all the gold crates on each map & the defenders need to protect the gold by bring their attackers down.

Players get to select from a choice of 5 classes; Assault, Demolition, Recon, Specialist & Support, at the beginning of each map or after death but can also switch between classes on the field of combat via the dropped kit bags of other players(remember to pick up their dogtags too).Kitbags are a great way for keeping the game moving allowing players to switch their role, as needed, in the heat of the battlefield.

With 25 ranks for the player to achieve plus a huge number of awards & patches to obtain, multiplayer is  overall a hugely satisfying experience in Battlefield: Bad Company. A beta tested mode, Conquest is also due for free download from the PSN sometime after release but in the meantime, the Gold Rush mode will give most players enough battling to be getting on with.

Overall Battlefield: Bad Company does the Battlefield franchise proud. It may have a weakened singleplayer experience but EA/DICE know that players drawn to this title are more concerned with the game’s multiplayer mode than any innovative singleplayer moments of gameplay & to that end it will be a success.

Battlefield: Bad Company is a good looking, playable experience with a bright multiplayer future but could ultimately be overshadowed by a future EA release, Mercenairies 2: World in Flames.

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Tags: DICE, EA

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