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PLATFORM: Xbox 360, PS3
ESRB RATING: T
DEVELOPER: DICE
PUBLISHER: EA
Since 2002 the Battlefield series has led the way for first person shooters, at least in the realm of online multiplayer. A huge number of players could fight each other at one time, jumping in and out of vehicles and classes of all sorts. The developer DICE knows what it’s doing in that regard, but once they announced the plans for a console-only shooter people were worried. Would the focus on the single player game ruin it? Would the insane multiplayer be abadonded?
No and no. This is Battlefield done right, faster and more advanced and a helluva lot more exciting. Welcome to Bad Company.
THE PITCH
“Battlefield, dumbed down for console gamers!”
Alright,
it’s better than that. In a huge twist for the series, they put a ton of emphasis on the story and single player game here. The team you’re with really
are characters (as seen here)-
they’re fun and have good personalities and comraderie. It’s the way it should be, as
the guys in B-Company, aka Bad Company, aren’t typical game heroes.
It’s known as Bad Company for a reason.. They’ve all fucked up at some
point in their military careers and they want out. They’re the expendable unit
that’s sent ahead of the rest of the soldiers to take out targets, partly because they don’t fit with the clean-cut image of the rest of the army, and partly because they get stuff done with
no questions asked. They’re following orders and going through the
motions until they realize that the people they’re fighting (that they
thought to be Russians) aren’t the army after all, but a group of mercenaries. More specifically, a group of mercenaries that are paid in
gold bars. Our heroes (?) decide to abandon fighting for the U.S. army… it’s time to get themselves some loot. It’s a nice twist from most military shooters.
Things are going fine until one of your teammates happens to invade a
neutral county (yes, all by himself) while following a truck full of
gold, and then things get even worse for our guys. Now struggling to stay one
step ahead of the Americans while trying to find the boat full of
mercenary gold, you’ve got to steer this ragtag team through all kinds
of battles.
Oh, and you’ll blow up a ton of shit. Let me repeat that- a TON of
shit. There’s no weak, out of place stealth missions here. There’s
nothing but brute force, blown out buildings and dozens of dead enemy corpses. Action, action, and more action.
THE PLAY
Battlefield 2
for the Xbox 360 wasn’t that great. The guys at DICE must have realized
that if they wanted to compete in the console race they had to emulate
the best, and they sure did with this installment. Anyone who’s
familiar with Call of Duty 4‘s
perfect control system will be right at home here. You’ll hit the left
trigger to aim down the sights, shoot with the right, click in the left
thumbstick to run, and knife the hell out of anyone who’s dumb enough
to get close to you. The left and right bumpers make switching weapons
and equipment obscenely easy, and you’ll soon get used to using your
rifle’s grenade attachment to blow a hole in a wall and then quickly
switching to your bullets to finish off any enemies in the room. You’re not able to lie prone, which may turn some gamers off for the
multiplayer game (more on that in a bit) but it’s really so frantic
that you won’t miss it.
The destruction is really where it’s at.
The engine promises destructable environments (even the ground!) and it delivers in spades. No longer is anywhere in the game safe… that wall you’re hiding
behind can quickly become rubble, and you with it. It changes the
dynamics and makes it so much more exciting and action packed. The vehicles add a lot to the game as well, as you’ll control everything from tanks to boats to helicopters. They
will all take some getting used to, as you accelerate with the left
trigger and drive in reverse with the left bumper. It’s strange for
people used to hitting the gas with the right trigger but once you
realize that this way frees up your shooting finger you’ll see how
great it works. Nothing like driving circles around an enemy tank while
laying fire into him.
Basically the game controls
perfectly, although if there’s one gripe I have with the controls, it’s
that holding down the left analog stick to run can get tiresome when
you’re running across literally miles of forests and open fields. Would
have been nice to have an option to toggle that.
So if the game controls beautifully, how’s the single player game?
Well,
that’s a little more of mixed bag. The story is fun and there’s a ton of stuff to do in the massive world. And there’s a lot of freedom afforded you in taking any path towards the next objective, even it does all end up in explosions. But the problem is that it does get repetitive and stale by the end. The locations aren’t different enough, and there’s only so many barren houses you can explore before yawning.
But the single
player is a lot better than most would expect. You can play it charging
through, destroying everything in your path, or you can take it a
little slower. Still, the enemies will all immediately know where you are
as soon as you’ve taken out one of them, and the war will be on. This
is not a game for lovers of stealth combat.
Also, your teammates basically do whatever they want. You can’t order them to do anything or do anything tactical, althouh they definitely will help you out. In fact there’s a mission where it’s mostly just you by yourself, and you’ll
really miss the teammates. There’s a really lonely feel to the game
there, which isn’t helped by the sparse music (that only appears once
in a while in a firefight, or when you jump into a jeep)
This is the kind of game that would have worked beautifully in co-op,
and I hope that Call of Duty guys realize this for their next game.
It’s one thing to be led down a linear path objective after objective,
and another to walk around a massive world and plan as you make your
way towards the enemy. To be able to coordinate attacks (even with your
computer allies) would have made a big difference in this game, and I
hope the next installment takes note.
(Continued on Page 2!)