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.