Battlefield: Bad Company

Just blowin' things up!

BAAAAAAD COMPANY - till the day I die

No, this isn't the same Bad Company that put out such hits as "Feel Like Makin' Love," "Shooting Star," and...well, that's pretty much all worth mentioning. Just to put it out there.

Anyway. To say Battlefield: Bad Company isn't the greatest shooter of all time is a bit unfair. After all, if you come into this expecting it to be, you're not being very fair to any game entitled Halo or Call of Duty. So don't plan on this going down as the best there ever was. Instead, Bad Company is a fun enough game to pick up and blast away with. It's funnier than CoD: Modern Warfare and uses destructible environments as well as any game I've ever played to push the action up.

You play as Preston Marlowe, transferred into the so-called "Bad Company" for...well, doing things you shouldn't have done. This is the unit where all the bad eggs in the army get put, and they're always the ones who take point on everything, casualties be damned. As you'll see as you apparently fight a war by your lonesome. Well, not entirely - you have three wisecracking soldier buddies backing you up. Plotwise, there's also gold. I think that about sums it up.

It's an interesting shooter. As others have in the past, it involves a life meter, so you cannot take infinite hits - but there are no life packs, per se. The only way to get yourself back to full health is to inject yourself with a nifty little gadget which looks like an epi-pen. And since you always have one on your person, and it never runs out, you can bring yourself back to full health anytime. If that makes it sound like you'll be able to breeze through the game in no time, without dying, guess again. You will be shot, several times, and sometimes you won't have time to reach for the injector. Trust me - you'll die. Especially if you make the mistake of using cover too much.

Other shooters allow you to hide behind brick walls, behind doors, etc., and withstand a hail of gunfire. Not here. Here, it can all get blown up. Which means the wall you were standing behind a second ago has been demolished by a tank shell, and you really need to move somewhere else. Of course, you can use this to your advantage - to take out enemy cover, to create alternate entrances to buildings, or to just eliminate a pesky sniper position. Be wary, though, because other players will use it against you. This is why the combat in Bad Company is such a refreshing change - it truly requires you to think on your feet.

The controls, however, can feel sluggish now and then, and it never feels like this game is a fantastic one - just a great one, if great is a step down. Which doesn't mean you shouldn't try it, because if you like a game which doesn't take itself too seriously, you'll like this.

Battlefield Bad Company

From here on I can finally write about the multiplayer in games. I finally got Xbox live. That should help with my reviews. Now here it is but I will never give a game a 5/5 star rating unless it could truly wow me. Now I should get along with the review.

Now I would like to speak on the weapons here. They are incredibly well designed.I would love to meet the artist who drew them. Anyhow, There is a great amount of guns in the game. But you have to find some of them. It's an achievement to find them all as well. So the little menu that shows the stats of the weapons and which ones you have found really helps. So their overall a great set of guns and their are always more to be found so your never at a lose.

The graphics in game are well done. The trees and large open areas are very green. Cities are never really there for me. I usually actually leave nothing left of any building. But when I get into town I usually think "These are some nice looking buildings, can't wait to blow them up". The characters are well made but enemies all look alike so it's not much difference in that part.

Physics are so fun. Enemies go down, hard. Or they go up. The physics allow some flying so to speak but it's not whacked out. So any player would easily accept it. Then there comes down to deconstruction. I love it. Buildings are blown up. There never really is any cover left. Almost everything is able to be destroyed. You can't how ever, Bring down an entire building. But whats usually left is a skeletal house. So I love the physics. Any player will get a kick out of it.

Multiplayer. For the most part it's pretty forward. One mode. Unless you download the conquest mode. I just deleted it. Didn't care much for it. So in the long run a decided to stick with gold rush. Rules are simple. Destroy the enemy base or destroy the two gold crates held by the enemy. Simple yet very fun. Plus there is the add on of having to unlock the better guns. You can only do this with credits you get from ranking up.

So now for the how-down. ( I know lame just felt like adding that.) I have to give this game a 4/5 star rating. It's fun and most shooter fans will love this game. So I recommend this to 9/10 of every shooter fan. You must enjoy this game. And for those that want to blow up some buildings get this game it will let you get rid of some steam. Enjoy those explosives.

Whoa!!

The use of destructable enviorments in bad Company is plain insane but awesome. The controls take little time getting use to and the audio can blow you off your feet. Multiplayer is great but offline 4 player multiplayer should of been added. Overall it's a fun game and leaves you begging for more its another good show from EA Dice.

Boring Company

As reviewed by GP member 77:

Bad Company tells the story of a rag tag squad of soldiers comprised of men who have less than reputable pasts. They're thrown together as the "expendable" squad that are sent into dangerous (and extremely unbelievable) situations before the rest of the army. As they go about their misssions they realize that the group of mercenaries they are fighting are getting paid in gold bars and, being the anti-heroes that they are, decide to start keeping the gold they find for their retirement fund. That in a nutshell is the story of Bad Company. They try to throw in some international intrigue and conspiracy, but most of it falls flat.

The game plays a lot like previous games in the series where you have one massive map with various locations on it. You're sent from point A to point B to fight enemies. While this sounds okay, the problem is that along the way you'll encounter tanks and other enemy vehicles that, in all honesty, can usually blow your vehicle to kingdom come without a hassle. Now I welcome a challange, but this is just annoying as dying sends you all the way back to point A on the map. Even if you are two feet from your destination, if you die, you get sent back to where you started to try again. And again. And again. This wouldn't be so bad if you only had to do this once or twice throughout the campaign, but you have to make map long treks between every mission so it does get tedious rather quickly.

The missions themselves are pretty generic (a word I'll use a lot to describe this game) usually consisting of blowing up this bridge or saving that convoy. It's all stuff we've seen before and that would be okay if it was done in an interesting or compelling way. But it isn't, which makes the missions bland and too similar to things we've seen many times before. But this blandness isn't helped by a questionable enemey AI that has the uncanny ability to spot you from a mile away through bushes and even solid fences and rock walls. By the time you get into firing range of the enemy, they've already killed you. I thought I was fighting mercenaries, not X-Men with x-ray vision.

The controls will be familiar to many as they are exactly like every other first person shooter on the market today. Which isn't a bad thing as the formula has been pretty much perfected by now. Driving the vehicles in the game is hit or miss, however as some of them feel overly light and wonky. I dont' know about you, but I've never seen a tank thrown off course by a flag pole on a golf course.

One odd aspect of the gameplay that differs from most other FPS on the market is it's healing system and not in a good way. Instead of the, now standard, hide behind cover to heal system, they use a booster shot system. Now I'll admit that the "hide behind cover" system is unrealistic, but it is a videogame and it is a system that works very well. Bad Company foregoes this proven ssytem in order to use a "booster shot" system. Any time you are low on health you must cycle through your inventory and select the booster shot, then pull the right trigger to inject yourself. This is a PAIN IN THE @SS. Considering the fact that you are often low on health in the heat of battle, it is extremely hard to cycle from your current weapon to the shot, inject yourself, then switch back to your weapon. Many of my deaths in the game were caused while trying to switch between my weapon and the shot. But the thing is, you can use the booster shot as ofen as you need it, so why not just use the tried and true wait and heal mechanic? I don't know. All I do know is it makes the combat both annoying and frustrating.

With as many shooters as there are today, developers need to distinguish themselves from the rest. Bad Company failed to do that and what we have instead is a generic shooter that at times can be fun, but most of the time ends up being boring and run of the mill.