Battlefield: Bad Company
I have a problem with war games, i think they try to make themselves to serious. Yes war isnt something to joke about. But i always wanted to see some humor in them, to add a little comic relief. Its something that has always turned me away from war games, ive only played one war game, and never finished it. When i picked up Battlefield: Bad Company, i was hoping it would be what i wanted in a war game, or just a game in general. These are what i like in any game, and Bad Company had it:
- humor....check
- explosions....check
- meaningful story....check
- great characters....check
I played through it pretty fast, im not the quickest at playing games. It usually takes me a couple of weeks to beat a game. It took me a week or so to beat it. For someone who can beat a game faster then me, and im sure theres a lot of you, it probably take you 8 to 10hrs. The story consist of seven missions. The first couple are basic "go get the bridge secure", "defeat these ememies". Then the story really takes a very good twist i think. After that the story becomes more of a revenge kind of story.
So the story. You play as Preston Marlowe, the rookie. They mainly refer to him a Marlowe, or new guy. You get assigned to
Sergeant Samuel D. Redford. In his group here are Terrence Sweetwater and George Haggard. Each guy is in the Bad Company, or B Company for something they have done. Marlowe took a helicopter for a joy ride. Sweetwater uploaded a virus on a military secured network. Haggard for blowing up an ammo dump. Redford is just there to get to retire earlier. So as you can tell, this is not a group of finely tuned citizens. The game starts off with a ambush, which leads to a tutorial. In the tutorial, you learn how to shoot, blow stuff up and heal yourself. The game starts off pretty fast, within ten mins of starting you have to take down some russians who are interfering with the US advance. This is pretty much where you get to see DICE's Frostbite Engine. You blow shit up basicly. After that, its pretty much just missions like that. Until, about a couple of missions in, you fine a mercenary who you have killed. It turnes out to be the "Legionnaires", who work for The Legionnaire. He is the head of a mercenary group, and you find some gold on him. So basicly from that point your finding his gold all over the place. The gold kinda plays a important role in the story later on.
The characters in B-Company are great. Maybe my favorite in any game i have played. Haggard might be the funniest character since GLaDOS in Portal. He has great one liners. In the first cut scene of the game, the first words he says to you is "you smell very clean". Sweetwater and Haggard are in love with the dispatch girl. And even the dispatch girl plays a huge part in the story. I was shocked about that, she helps the crew get most of the gold. Haggard single-handedly invades a neutral country. After they the crew is considered AWOL, and the real fun begins.
Now DICE made the Frostbite Engine, which i said before. Its very very impressive. It has a 90% destructible rate. So you can blow the shit out of buildings, cars, tanks, even the ground. Here is what the Frostbite Engine is capible of:
- Long view distance with true horizon
- 32x32 km visible, 2x2 – 4x4 playable
- Ground destruction
- High detail up close
- Very high detail in a distance
- Low memory usage
- Multiple high-res heightfield textures
- Easy destruction of buildings
- Fixed grid LOD with vertex texture fetch
- Normals are calculated in the shader
- Semi-procedural surface shaders
- Allows dynamic compositing
B-Company offers a good amount of collectibles, 29 total guns. I personally like the shotguns in this game, they kill ememies pretty fast, but they take way to long to reload. Theres 30 pieces of gold in the game. Its five pieces in each level, except in the first level. DICE released a regular version of the game and a Gold Edition. I bought the Gold Edition. It offers a couple more guns, and documentary, and a poster. i think it was worth the extra $10.
All in all, its one of the best games i have played. Thats saying a lot, but i do not play a lot of games twice, but i have played this three times. Its a great experience, and this game came out almost a year ago, and its still impressive. Its one of my favorite games of 2008.
