6/25/2008
Most of these objectives involve taking out between five to ten soldiers with a mix of weapons and possibly some tougher gun emplacements or vehicles to back them up, and you may have to destroy some kind of equipment as well. This rather un-original mission structure will start to get dull quickly, but DICE does mix up the experience with surprise tank attacks and other bits and pieces that change the pacing and give you a somewhat refreshing objective now and then.
Another element to Bad Company would be the many attempts at humor throughout the game, mostly inside of cutscenes and mostly between Sweetwater and Haggard. These will wear thin on you quickly, but I do have to say that I at least enjoy seeing some real character with the squadmates, something that the Call of Duty games (but not the parts as an SAS soldier in COD4 - those were great) and many other military FPS games have lacked. Still, the laughs come rarely and are pretty much just recycled jokes from elsewhere. It's really difficult to be funny in a game, so I can't fault EA and DICE too much for failing on this one.
The multiplayer action is definitely an important part of Bad Company. The 24-player online game carries over the environmental destruction from the campaign and gives you new strategies to use online, especially when you're using something powerful like a tank. Now, some guy with a rocket launcher is going to have a much tougher time popping out from cover to hit you with multiple RPGs in a row, as you'll just destoy the wall he's hiding behind and take him out from there. The full complement of vehicles, classes, weapons, and aircraft you expect from a good Battlefield game are all here, and the multiplayer action so far has been smooth and worry-free. Sure, the learning curve is steep; kills will seem cheap early on and you'll be tempted to throw your controller at the TV or out of a window at times, but if you can get a handle on how to take people out quickly, I think you'll find Bad Company's online play to be some of the best out there on the 360.
Unfortunately, the only online mode is Gold Rush, and the venerable Conquest mode from classic Battlefield games isn't here (it's slated to come as a free download later, but having it at launch would have been a much better idea). But at least Gold Rush does funnel players into a small general area and cause massive firefights with tons of explosions going off everywhere, while Conquest mode on the PC seemed to do all it could to spread people out on a map and create only small skirmishes instead of one gratifyingly large battle.
I want to specifically point out the sound in Bad Company. It's excellent. The voice acting is good and while the comedy will evoke a groan more often than a laugh, that's the fault of the writers rather than the damn fine voice actors. But moreimportantly, the sounds of battle are superb here. The deep bass of explosions will challenge a subwoofer in ways that no 360 game has yet, and the rattle of your rifle giving it all it's got is very satisfying. This is one of the few games that create a war zone just with sound, something that even the most epic of war games don't always succeed at and rarely do as well as this one does. If you've just bought a sound system and really want to stretch out its capabilities with a new game, make it this one.
Battlefield: Bad Company doesn't do everything, but what it does, it does right. The campaign is a lot of fun and the mixed-bag of comedy at least livens things up a bit, while the multiplayer is a full-fledged Battlefield experience with all of the depth you'd expect out of a serious PC shooter. There's no cooperative play, online or off, and the unlockables won't take you far, so you'll likely need to get into the competitive online play to really get your money's worth out of it. But in this summer, with mediocre Hollywood games that are boring after 45 minutes (yet still have the same $60 price tag as everything else), Bad Company should definitely be a breath of fresh air for you. It's got some kinks and quirks, but I think any console FPS fan will have a great time with this one.
