Battlefield: Bad Company - The Review

[insinuwait]

I will start this review off by stating that the review I had for the demo is VERY different from the full game, and that WILL surprise most readers. No, I have not been black mailed or paid by EA or DICE to play this up better than I really thought it was. So here we go!

Battlefield: Bad Company is simply an awesome game. This new found appreciation for the game only came after truely getting used to the game play and the controls. After years of playing the Battlefield series on the PC with a keyboard and mouse, it took me time to get used to this new medium. Even after playing Call of Duty 4 and going through prestige mode twice, it doesn't really compare to the Battefield series simply because of the size of the battlefields. (Call of Duty having small ones, Battlefield having HUGE ones)

The single player campaign is pretty much the same as most FPSs, nothing too terribly original here. The story is somewhat interesting, following B-Company, a squad of insubordinate soldiers and misfits who are risking everything by going AWOL on a personal quest for gold deep behind enemy lines. The script is amusing, you will find yourself laughing at the little jokes and personality of all other 3 members of your squad.

The single player campaign is a little tough upon first playing, when you come upon a town inhabited by enemies, you usually don't see any of the enemies until they are firing upon you. After they fire at you, they appear as a red dot on your mini map, and lining up your sight with that red dot via the mini map is a tad hard, especially if they are inside buildings or in tree lines. This is completely opposite from the multiplayer, which will be covered later. Instead of your health automatically regenerating after you've been shot, like we see in most FPSs lately, you have to use an injector to inject yourself with some unknown chemical that brings you back to 100% health. After using it it takes about 45 seconds to regenerate to use again. Remembering to use it instead of just getting behind cover and waiting brings something new to stay alive in the fight.

This brings me to my next point, cover is something that we take for granted in FPSs, and this game shows this. Think of it like this - You're taking fire so you hide behind a wall of a house, think you're safe now, but then a hole is blown through the wall with a grenade launcher, and you continue to get fired upon. EVERYTHING is destructible! Concrete Walls, gates, fences, sandbags, trees, you name it. You take an explosive to it such as a grenade or a rocket, its going to blow the hell up! DICE is REALLY proud of this (As they should be!) as it shows in the single player campaign, since there are explosive barrels, boxes and gas tanks EVERY WHERE next to almost every single building. The only real cover you can take is hills or mountainsides.

Multiplayer feels a lot like past Battlefield games. You have five different classes including Assault, Demolitions, Recon, Specialist, and Support. There is also still the online ranking system with the support of stat tracking online like BF2 and BF2142. Gold Rush is the only multiplayer mode available at launch but another mode, conquest will be released for free in a future update. The setup of the game is an Attackers vs. Defenders scenario, in which one team must defend two crates filled with gold while the other team attempts to destroy the crates. Once the crates are destroyed, more of the map is available to fight on with new crates appearing, along with added reinforcement numbers. The attacking team has a limited amount of respawns to achieve their goal of capturing the 2-4 gold stashes either by setting charges or simply destroying the 2 crates of gold at each stash. The defending team has an unlimited amount of respawns available, but their goal is to exhaust the attacking teams tickets.

A few things to say about both single player and multiplayer though, you can only hold one primary weapon at a time, and only the Recon kit has a sidearm. If you run out of ammo in front of someone firing at you and they aren't close enough for you to knife, you're dead. Also, there is NO going prone in this game, only crouching, and I would REALLY like to see this changed in a future update. Those are my main two complaints for the game play.

Multiplayer is once again built upon the premise of teamwork. You get so many more points when you heal a team mate, shoot an enemy who is shooting a teammate, or repair a teammate's vehicle than you do if you just killing enemies. Also, as I mentioned before, the multiplayer has a much better system for finding enemies. When you shoot at an enemy, you automatically call out to your teammates you see an enemy soldier, sniper, or vehicle and it not only puts the red dot on your mini map, it ALSO puts the dot above the enemy soldiers head on the battlefield, so you can easily find them and start putting ammo into them.

Another thing this game does that the other BF games didn't too well is the fact that all the soldiers have the ability (with some unlocks from playing online enough) to use some large explosives. The support kit has an unlock for a radio that calls in a mortar strike, lasting for about 5 seconds, raining hell on a small area from above. The Recon (Sniper) kit has a laser designator unlock that allows you to call a strategic airstrike on enemy vehicles. After locking on, the camera pans to the missile coming from the jet and you have to guide the bomb to the vehicle you locked onto. There is also at some bases there is a howitzer cannon anyone can jump into that enables you to strike any area on the map with artillery (just like the Commander artillery strike on BF2 and BF2142) This is very different from the past where you had to be the commander to have any kind of real fire power like that.

I absolutely love this game, I've been playing all weekend on xbox live with a friend, ranking up as much as I can. This is a must have for FPS lovers on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

Over all I would give this game a 9/10.

[NavalLord]

I'll setup a reviews page and put this on there.
I'm using a 5 point scale though.






And of course this rating will be used for games that really suck.