BF:BC- Enter the REAL Battlefield...
The Battlefield series has never been known for its singleplayer gameplay, historically featuring a clone of the multiplayer experience, but replacing bots for human players. All that has changed with Battlefield: Bad Company. DICE decided to add some flair to the Battlefield formula by including a worthwhile and solid narrative that manages to stand apart from the other cookie-cutter stories most FPS's suffer from. By putting an emphasis on light-hearted fun and straying away from a high-intensity, drama-charged experience, Bad Company becomes a game that is much more focused than its competition and, ultimately, easier to get into and enjoy. Essentially, Bad Company knows it's a video game.
The storyline follows the events of B-Company, a.k.a. "Bad Company", a squadron within the U.S. army solely designed for the misfits and ragtag soldiers that aren't cut out for the real deal, but are rather better suited to be cannon fodder as deemed by the military. You play the role of Preston Marlow, a soldier whose boredom led him to take a helicopter on a joyride, sequentially landing him a spot in Bad Company. Marlow joins three other members of B-Company: Sergeant Redford, a fairly authoritative figure who keeps the squad in line, Haggard, an explosives expert with a penchant for things that go boom, and Sweet_water, a well-read communications expert who feels he is misplaced in B-Company.
DICE did a wonderful job of creating intriguing personalities with genuinely humorous interactions that make the virtual actors believable and lifelike without requiring you to feel excessively attached to them. It's this balance that makes up the formula of Bad Company's singleplayer experience, creating a cohesive and tightly knit feel to the storyline. Speaking of story, while Bad Company isn't going to be hailed as one of the greatest story-driven games ever, it should at least be mentioned that the game makes an admirable effort of creating a fun and logical string of events work into the fabrics of a narrative.
While the beginning does tend to seem a little slow and feels as if it leads nowhere, once the action kicks up and the squad is left to its own devices, things start to crank up considerably. That being said, the pacing in Bad Company is excellent, comparable to the likes of Halo in terms of knowing when the player needs a break from running and gunning and would like a breather. The game employs an auto-checkpoint system that essentially spawns you back at a predetermined spot every time you die. At that point, all enemies that you killed before dying remain dead, and any progress you may have made in terms of objectives stays. While some may resent this due to its inherent exploitability, it works just fine within the contexts of the game, and keeps things from delving into frustrating repetition, especially on the harder difficulties.
But, let's be honest. The Battlefield franchise has never been known for its solo affairs, and the same holds true in Bad Company. Multiplayer is the star of the show here, and man, does it shine bright. Bad Company features incredibly balanced, smooth gameplay that simply feels right, and has an incredibly deep ranking and stats system to boot. There is also a dog tag collection system, which involves a "dog tag" being awarded to the player after a knife kill is executed against an opponent. It's more for bragging rights than anything else, but it's an ingenious little addition that fits well with the presentation of the game. In addition to the dog tag system, there is a deep unlock and awards system, which is composed of rewarding the player for accomplishing certain tasks such as leveling up or getting a specified amount of kills with a badge or weapon.
While the only incentive for completing the awards is personal satisfaction and achievements, it's still a robust and deep system that extends the lifespan of Bad Company's multiplayer experience considerably. Combine that with the detailed stat tracking and screenshot system that can be accessed online on the game's website, and you have an incredibly compelling multiplayer experience that will keep you playing for months after the game's release, even despite the game's single mode and fairly small amount of maps. It should also be mentioned that, thanks to EA's dedicated servers, Bad Company handles 24 players in one game with complete ease. That's right. Host advantage is negated, everyone has super speedy connections, and the experience is BS-free.
All of this would be fairly cool on its own, but it's the gameplay mechanics of Bad Company that tie everything together and fit a pretty little bow on the top. The tactical destruction capability of DICE's proprietary Frostbite engine is incredible, enabling players to destroy just about anything in the game world. While destructible environments have been done before, they have never been executed this well. The concept doesn't feel gimmicky, and snugly fits with the gameplay by allowing players to carve their own paths through the sandboxes that await them.
Sniper sitting in a building, but you're too far away to take him out? Why waste ammo? Call in a mortar strike and destroy the entire building, taking out the sniper with devastating artillery rounds. Once you realize how many avenues and opportunities this kind of concept opens up, you begin to see just how special and unique Bad Company really is. One big disappointment about the game however is the lack of the ability to go prone. Battlefield games on the PC have always had this feature, so why was it cut from Bad Company? It becomes extremely frustrating when you're taking a huge amount of fire and can't lay down behind a roadblock because your head pokes up in plain view, despite your attempts to hide while crouching. Besides this fairly obnoxious flaw, Bad Company shines with honed, focused gameplay and balanced experiences in both the singleplayer and multiplayer modes.
Of course, this is a next-gen game, and as such, it must look and sound the part. This is where Bad Company really shines. An impressive sense of scale is conveyed to the player, with sweeping vistas and sloping landscapes that make you feel like a small part of something much bigger. Explosions are beautiful, sending chunks of dirt and, in the case of a building, concrete slabs flying through the air. A nice, light grain filter is applied to the game, making it appear more cinematic. The lighting and texturing are impressive as well, and thanks to the Frostbite engine's power, the game runs at a relatively smooth clip of around 30 FPS, with very rare occasions of slowdown. Unfortunately for standard definition TV owners, the game will play in a widescreen mode that has the screen partially taken up by small black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. This proves to be a minor annoyance at first, but quickly becomes hardly noticeable. However, as nice as the graphics are, they pale in comparison to the incredible sound effects that Bad Company has to offer. HDR Audio (High Dynamic Range Audio) allows the battlefield to come to life with incredibly realistic gunfire, explosions, and best of all, bullet whizzes. Every sound is rendered in real time, so firing or reloading your weapon outside will have a much different sound effect than doing so inside a building. Gunshots crack satisfyingly in the distance, while tank rounds whistle eerily as they rocket past your head. There is simply too much to say about the incredible audio in this game.
All in all, Battlefield: Bad Company is an ambitious game that mostly achieves what it was going for. While it doesn't reinvent the FPS genre, it certainly shakes it up quite a bit. The graphics and sounds are a spectacle and look very much at home on the next-generation of consoles. Overall, Bad Company is a great success and DICE should be incredibly proud of themselves of the product they have put out on store shelves. Battlefield: Bad Company is easily worth your £40/$60 of hard-earned cash.