Battlefield: Bad Company is the new console installment of the popular PC Battlefield series of games developed by the EA owned DICE studio. So, with the resources and publishing knowledge of one of the most powerful companies in the gaming world, it would seem to reason that Bad Company faired a pretty good chance of being a hit. Add in fully destructible environments, a familiar multiplayer structure, and a story based single player game, and you got a winner. Or do you?

Gameplay

The game starts off introducing your character, Preston Marlow, a soldier who has been placed with “B” Company. “B” Company is a group of three other expendable soldiers all serving time for committing some egregious military act. At the start, the entire US military is fighting Russia, and “B” Company is the spear point of the attacks. A little bit later, you think you are fighting Russians, but soon find out, you are now fighting mercenary soldiers from the group called The Legionnaires. The game tauntingly pronounces them as being the deadliest army in the world. They are run by a man called the Legionnaire who pays them with gold bars. After finding a dead Legionnaire and searching his pockets, Haggard, “B” Company’s version of your typical redneck numbskull who wants to blow everything up, finds a gold bar. The gold bug has bit and the chase is on!

Now the story shifts from being expendable soldiers paying their dues to rouge soldiers chasing gold. “B” Company, in pursuit of trucks carrying the Legionnaires loot, enters the neutral country Serdaristan. Once here, the US Military considers them AWOL and they are on their own. After a few plot twists, all easily foreseeable and clichéd, you find out Serdaristan originally hired the Legionnaires for protection, but the leader of Serdaristan, your typical loud mouthed obnoxious dictator, couldn’t pay the fee and was taken hostage. “B” Company ends up freeing him, only for him to get caught again, taking you deeper into enemy territory, and finally, to the Legionnaires mobile headquarters.

For the most part, the story is pretty bland, predictable, and filled with major flaws. The game assumes you will accept everything at face value rather than giving motivation behind what is happening. It’s a very “go with the flow”, lemming type of story. This would have worked, and worked very well, if it was done way over the top. Yet, as the story transpired, more questions were left open than answered, which bogged the whole process. Rather than being a riot filled run ‘n gun romp for loot, it becomes a tired and tried, tedious debacle.

Bad Company’s single player mode is a mixed bag. The story is loosely thrown together and the fighting can get stale. But the linear game play keeps the left brain satisfied as each objective is sequentially doled out. Bonus features, like finding gold crates and collectable guns serve to appease those gamers that need extra facets to find. But for me, looking around the expansive environments got to be a repetitive, mind numbing experience where I would drive to a house, shoot everyone, look in a house, find nothing, drive to a house, shoot everyone, look in a house, find nothing… Mostly, I just passed them by and continued with the overall quest. A nice feature was how the single player game’s difficulty got considerably more and more difficult with each stage. Just when you thought you had things figured out, the enemy or environmental design would force you to try a new strategy. For the most part, the difficulty was fair and balanced, however, there were a few instances when the gun class, or lack of certain gun classes available in the stage, dramatically shifted the difficulty into a frustratingly one sided affair. Like when I was forced to deal with a helicopter with only a sub-machine gun and hand grenades.

One of Bad Company’s main features is its fully destructible environments. Almost everything is able to be leveled. Trees, houses, vehicles, walls, etcetera. All of it can be blown to pieces. I have to say, this game play feature is very liberating. No more waiting for enemies to poke their head from around a corner. Just blow down the wall! And I had a good 10 minutes of fun while playing machine gun lumberjack. However, after a while, blowing things up becomes less fun and less useful. One major flaw is that the splash damage for grenades is minimal. You almost have to drop the grenade in a guys pocket to kill them. So, even if you place a grenade inside a doorway and end up blowing up some of the walls, the enemy directly inside will likely be alive to shoot you as you walk inside. That gets frustrating. And trying to destroy shielded machine gun turrets from a distance is an act of futility. I don’t even know how hard it would be using a standard controller. If you stood for even one second trying to set up a good grenade lob, you were a goner. And if you hit the sucker, there was no guarantee it would blow up.

Unfortunately, the enemy AI is a bit wishy-washy. Sometimes, enemies would craftily run out a building, hide, and double back where you least expected them. Or snipers would lay in wait and pop a shot when you were in the most open spot. But other times, enemies just stood around, oblivious to what was going on around them. The game has a neat feature where you can capture a screenshot, which automatically uploads it to your EA account for future use. Whenever I found a guy just standing around, I would walk right up to him and take a bunch of pictures, sort of like he was a diva admiring the limelight.

Prior Battlefield games were primarily focused on the multiplayer aspect of strategic, large scale battles using a wide variety of weapons, classes, and vehicles. And Bad Company fits right in. Don’t expect to dive right into a firefight and try your hand at using a run and shoot approach. It’s not that type of game, nor has any Battlefield been that type of game. Death can come from anywhere: tanks a ways off, helicopters overhead, snipers in the bushes, grenades launched over a wall. So being aware of what is going on around you and managing to use the environment along with teamwork is crucial. If you want a close quartered, loud, and intense multiplayer experience, Bad Company won’t deliver. But for those who like the slower, wide open strategy feel, this is your game. (Some of you may have read my ***blog*** which addresses my issues connecting to the multiplayer. This review did not take that into account.)

Multiplayer also incorporates a ranking system and level up progression. Achieving certain objectives will get you credits to spend on new guns, upgrades, or secondary accessories. It’s nice, but doesn’t offer enough to make me care. The five different classes of guns all have different feels, but within each class, the gun’s effectiveness is about the same. So striving to earn a new gun only to have it act like my old gun was a disappointment. Another interesting feature, though one needing a little tweaking, was the squad based deployment. If you died, you could choose to spawn at your base, where you were far from action but could grab a vehicle. Or you could choose to spawn near a squad member. Each team is divided into 4 man squads which when combined were to act as a large unit. Spawning with your squad meant you would potentially be placed right in to the fray of battle. However, there were times when I was sniping and my squad members would spawn right next to me, giving away my position. Or how about the time when I spawned with some jerk offs cruising around in a boat far from the action. As you can see, it needs some work. And lastly, at the time of review, the multiplayer only had one game mode, an attacker vs. defender type game. A banner would run on the title screen saying a new mode would be available shortly, but I never got a chance to try it out. That said, I know Battlefield games offer a different type of multiplayer feel, but most gamers today want a wide variety of modes to keep them interested. The lack of multiplayer options was a big disappointment.

Graphics

Graphically, the game is solid. The designers used a sort of “grainy” texture overlaying the screen. Think of old movie news reels where the image was good, but you could see small dots float over the screen as the film rolled. Obviously, it was intended for this to happen. The game’s tone is a blend of WWII “epicness” with a little Vietnam “in your face rawness” and the decision to tweak the graphics with an “old style” look to highlight this mixture was refreshing and unique. Textures were amazing and sucked you into the environments.

Sound

The sound scheme fit the game’s graphical tone and mood. Sure, you got the overall sound of guns and war, which were finely done. But the original music was amazing. The designers symbiotically merged 50’s California Surf with Rockabilly with Upbeat Jazz as well as some Classical elements. The mixing of musical genres to complement the graphical tone of the game was well thought out and brilliantly executed.

Controls

I have to confess, I cheated a bit with the controls. I refuse to play a FPS with an analog controller. FPS games were made for the mouse and keyboard. There should be a law against designing a FPS without mouse/keyboard compatibility. It’s a first person game, so to fully engross the gamer the controls need to be flawlessly precise and smooth. Controllers can’t offer this, no matter how well they are done. Using the analog sticks feels like writing your name with your opposite hand. So to combat this, I used Split Fish’s fragFX Controller. You can read the description and my review ***here***.

The game incorporates both foot travel and vehicles. Both modes are done very well. The controls while free walking are pretty basic, nothing really unique or groundbreaking. They were fluid and the default configuration was pretty standard for FPS games. However, one thing I found odd was that you couldn’t lie prone, which would have helped avoid sniper fire in open spaces. And I wish they would have had you run a bit faster since it seemed more of a jog, rather than sprint. But that’s why Bad Company has vehicles, so you don’t have to run everywhere! The controls for driving were basic and uncomplicated. So getting accustomed to driving took only a quick moment of practice. The only issue I really ever had was with vehicles using gun turrets. If you drove, one of your compatriots fired the guns. But they really never hit anything. So then I would switch to the turret seat, but no one ever took over at the wheel and your team was a sitting duck. If going against a tank or something a bit more substantial, you were toast. If only DICE would have incorporated a co-op mode. The vehicle aspects would have been much better utilized.

Conclusion

In the end, Battlefield: Bad Company is a game that tries hard, but misses. It offers a single player story mode, yet the story is bland and flawed. The graphics and music are impeccably done, unique, and refreshing. However, some AI issues and repetitiveness can create apathy. The multiplayer has the typical Battlefield feel the series has come to define, but lack of game modes and issues with spawning can be frustrating. I’d say Bad Company offers moderate replay value for those who like the Battlefield multiplayer style. But for people needing a more developed single player game, it fails to deliver and deserves only a quick rental.