Battlefield Bad Company Review - Xbox 360

8

Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 8
Audio: 8
Multiplayer: 8
Innovation: 8

Today we bring you the finale in our Battlefield Bad Company Feature Week - our review of the game itself.

Introduction

Welcome to Bad Company, the B-grade army of misfits and rejects, sent into the front line to die first. You are Preston Marlowe, new recruit, and fresh cannon fodder.

Battlefield: Bad Company is EA's first attempt at really expanding the Battlefield experience, in what has been up until now a pretty much multiplayer franchise. Battlefield 2 on the 360 suffered a somewhat lukewarm reception when it first appeared, after its positive PC reception. This time, EA has sidestepped the PC altogether for a Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 exclusive, developed by their Swedish studios, DICE. Revamping what has been mainly a multiplayer series into a single-player experience seems a difficult task. Do they succeed?

Gameplay

You start the game in the modern day, thrown into an imaginary former Soviet republic. Your enemy are Russian mercenaries, in a throw-back to the cold war era. While your mission as soldiers starts off legitimately, you soon fracture off. Your squad realises that gold bars pays a lot more than Uncle Sam, who doesn't really give a shit anyway! During the game you follow a fairly basic storyline as you travel across the countryside in seven missions in your search for gold bars, enemy dictators, and of course, rampant fun and destruction.

'Oh no, not another shooter!' many may be lamenting already. Indeed, EA themselves gave us another with Army of Two (which Sliced Gaming reviewed earlier this year). We know to expect, don't we? Enemies stacked as high as the ceiling, shadowy enemy fortresses, blowing things up, shooting, shooting, and more shooting, and err...yes. So, can anything separate Battlefield: Bad Company from the more recent offerings?

While the game is objective driven, with storyline segments thrown in, it manages to avoid the "on rails" feeling, by letting you approach most of these from different angles. Whether that's snipe from afar, call in an air-strike, roll in with a tank and start smashing, or simply go it on foot from building to building, the choice is up to you.

No longer are you just running around around on foot most of the time, with an occasional "oh wow, lets make it so different and throw in a vehicle level now" (sniff the sarcasm folks). In Bad Company you are your own four man army, able to utilise whatever means necessary to do the job. To help you in this task, many different vehicles are scattered throughout the levels. All are accurately represented, and there are many you'll find - large tanks, helicopters, trucks, gun boats, and even a golf cart. Pretty much anything that looks like a vehicle can be driven, to get you around the expansive levels that much quicker.

Of course, a destructible game environment is one of the main features touted by EA in the lead-up to the game. For its share though, it does add to the gameplay, rather than come across as simply a gimmick. (continued next page)