Battlefield: Bad Company

Battlefield has always been a series known for it’s fantastic multiplayer game play. Bad Company expands on the series noted multiplayer while also adding in a marketable better single player campaign.  Battlefield: Bad Company also features great vehicles, a funny cast of characters, and larger than life destruction that make this game arguably the best in the series.

Bad Company is the first of the Battlefield series to have a meaningful campaign.  The single player campaign tells the story of a squad of misfit soldiers known as Bad Company that take missions deemed to dangerous for America’s finest. While on their mission against the Russians they find that an elite mercenary squad is getting paid in a not so common currency, gold. Soon Bad Company decides to take their future into their own hands and go after the gold against America’s orders. In the process they accidently invade a country and leave a trail of destruction in their path. The story is enough to make for a worth while campaign.

Majority of the missions in the single player campaign involve many seek and destroy missions that really take advantage of Bad Company’s appetite for destruction.  The campaign is able to keep that essence of a Battlefield game while charting a completely different course than previous entries in the series. The gameplay is wide open as you may expect in a Battlefield series and gives the players many options as to how to tackle an objective.  It is up to the player to decide rather to run right in to the middle of the fray or to sit on the outside and pick off the plentiful amount of soldiers that are ready to be killed. The only true weakness in the campaign is the very poor teammate A.I. At many times you will feel like a one man army rather than a squad of soldiers working together to achieve objectives. However, the squads comedic appeal will make you want to keep the boys of Bad Company around.

Everyone knows the real reason anyone buys a Battlefield game is for it’s legendary multiplayer. Bad Company follows the tradition and expands upon Battlefield’s proven formula. The multiplayer segment features five soldier classes that each have their unique advantages and disadvantages that balance the multiplayer segment.  Also as a player levels up they unlock credits which can be used to buy new guns and perks such as support class’s lethal mortar strike.  This gives players a reason to play for hours on end just to reach that gun they have been eyeing since the beginning. The only game mode at launch is a new mode called gold rush which pits players on either attack or defend squads in which attackers try to destroy the crates where defenders try to stop this from happening.  The game ships with several maps that have a wide variety of terrain and set ups. Some maps are tight urban settings that offer close combat and other maps are wide open where a snipers scope can be lethal from halfway across the map.  My only complaint with the maps is that some maps are extremely advantageous for defending squads. With promises of future updates with more game modes this problem may be resolved by new game modes.

Technically speaking, Battlefield: Bad Company is a very solid game. The game may not have the best graphics you have seen on your Xbox 360 it is easily passable as a next gen game. The games destructive features including the explosions look great and somewhat realistic. The guns react and sound great. The guns will echo in wide open plains and indoor fire fights can be deafening.  It is remarkable that game hardly lags online considering it can host up to 24 people.

Overall, Battlefield: Bad Company is one of the finest multiplayer experiences on Xbox 360 and also has a good single player campaign. This game is a must buy for Live members but for people without access to online play, a rent should suffice.  Even for people who are not followers of the Battlefield series, like myself, will find something they enjoy in this game.  One can only hope that Bad Company will come back for another round of explosive fun.