Battlefield: Bad Company

With each iteration adding its own flavor to the mix, the Battlefield franchise has evolved over time and managed to secure a firm grip on the online shooter market. The latest offering in the series – Battlefield: Bad Company – brings extensive structural deformation to the series, along with an entire single player campaign. However, to incorporate these new additions, the game’s had to sacrifice quite a few things we loved about the old Battlefield games.

First off, the game’s unlock system isn’t half as extensive as Battlefield 2142. All you’re treated to here is a bunch of unlockable guns and just one unlockable item per class, which leaves a lot to be desired. While the option to choose from a plethora of weapons is appealing, it certainly doesn’t match up to the diversity allowed by Battlefield 2142’s unlocks, where each class would have two distinct unlock trees that let you play each of them in two completely unique ways.

If you go by the advertising campaigns EA DICE has been running, you may think the game focuses on destruction and a single player campaign. I’m not going into too much detail about the single player campaign, since I’ve already covered it in my single player impressions . All I can say is that the campaign is a bland experience of moving mindlessly from one objective to another, with the antics of your less-than-perfect squad offering little consolation to the less-than-pleasing missions. If you’re planning to buy the game just for its single player campaign, I’d suggest you reconsider.

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The game’s other area of focus – destruction – is halfway between a well-implemented feature and a gimmick. While it ties well into the areas of the multiplayer maps that are saturated with buildings, it does almost nothing for the open expanse of such maps or the single player campaign. Also, when you try to level a structure completely and figure out that you can’t, it makes the destruction feel more like a gimmick rather than an integral feature of the game. What we get is a feature that’s not purely cosmetic, but isn’t as great as we hoped it’d be. For what it’s worth, it does manage to add an additional layer of tact to the multiplayer; you can manipulate structures around you to make them more suitable to defend – or easier to attack, depending on which side you’re on.

Even where variety is concerned, the game doesn’t score too high. The game’s multiplayer has only one mode, which isn’t adequate enough to justify the title of an online shooter. In this mode (Gold Rush) the defending team is supposed to defend crates of gold, while the attackers have to destroy them. The attackers win by destroying all crates on the map, while the defending team needs to kill the attackers until they run out of reinforcements in order to win. While it might not sound too impressive, it’s a lot of fun and the sheer number and variety of maps add a lot of value to the multiplayer component.

From a visual standpoint, the game doesn’t do much for anyone who’s played BioShock or Call of Duty 4. There are a ton of jaggies, and the game lacks the defined visual style or the kind of finesse other AAA titles boast these days. That said, Battlefield has always been about gameplay, and in that aspect (at least where multiplayer is concerned) the game delivers.

To sum up, Battlefield: Bad Company falls glaringly short of being a great singleplayer and doesn’t have the variety of a CoD 4 or other shooters, but its multiplayer mode (Gold Rush) is a lot of fun. I only wish DICE hadn’t bothered with the single player campaign, and instead gone all out and built on the multiplayer element, which certainly has far more potential in this case. Even if you’re not planning on buying a copy of the game, if you’re a fan of multiplayer shooters, at least rent out the game or borrow it from one of your friends, since it’s worth a shot.