When things make boom, I make happy.
So here it is, Battlefield: Company. A modern first person shooter where you are a soldier in a rag tag, rouge if you will, squad of soldiers practically leaving a trail of destruction in search of mercenary gold. I’ll admit when I first saw the trailer for this thing probably a year ago or so, I was impressed. It showed off something many MANY games lack. What I’m talking about is the so called dynamic destruction made possible by their ‘Frostbite’ Engine, which basically allows the player to destroy parts of the environment. In simpler terms, if your enemy is hiding in a house, you just whip out your grenade launcher and blow a fucking hole in the side of it and leaving him in the open crapping his pants. Now that is good stuff. This makes sense in real life, you could actually do that given you’re crazy enough. Too many other shooters I’ve played in the past have frustrated me because everything in the world is static, like even in the old Battlefield games you could pretty much hide behind a wall and a tank could blast at you forever and nothing would happen. So it is good to see games like this making an attempt to add another dimension to not only the realism of the game, but also change the way a shooter is played.
Now let me backtrack a bit. Battlefield games have always been about the multiplayer. Arguably the best, 1942 was one of the staples of multiplayer shooters at its time. It’s mix of vehicular and class based combat, coupled with the base capture orientated gameplay gave Battlefield a, well, feel that you’re on a battlefield. This time around, EA has made a genuine attempt at creating a meaningful single player experience, rather than the old modes where it was basically the multiplayer filled with bots. In Bad Company there actually is a storyline, a thin one at best, but at least there is one. It is strung together by short in-engine cutscenes that have you and your buddies together basically radio in and find out where the next place you have to go. It’s the run of the mill go here kill this pick this up, rinse and repeat. It really is just the same thing over and over again. The dialogue and storytelling doesn’t save it from becoming tedious at times. Your team mates constantly dish out lame jokes and non sequitors that totally take you out of the intensity of the combat. This isn’t too big of the problem I guess, because this definitely is not a serious game. The health system makes this obvious, because the way it works is that every 10 seconds or so you can thrust a GIANT NEEDLE INTO YOUR CHEST and you’ll be at full health. So really this game doesn’t try to be serious. Most of the time I’m just enjoying myself blow the living daylight out of everything in sight. God I love destruction. As for the writing and dialogue, its pretty bland and uninspired. I get the feeling that its trying way too hard to be funny. There are a couple of lol moments though, more like a ‘wtf’ moment. In one cutscene the sergeant is busy chatting on the radio laying out objectives and stuff, while your other two teammates in the background are playing rocks and scissors. -___- much?
Now jumping into the actual gameplay itself. Perhaps saying that the destruction was an attempt of realism was a bit unsubstantiated. Like I said, the game isn’t serious, and has a somewhat ‘arcady’ feel, if you will, to it. The ability to wreck things now does change the way the game plays, just like the developers said it would. You can’t hide in a house when theres a tank around or you will pretty much end up in a pile of rubble. It changes the way you use your cover. But this destruction is not without its flaws. It is very very inconsistent. There are only certain walls you can blow out, and you can never totally demolish a house, even if only the foundations are left standing. In addition, the term ‘dynamic’ seems to be misused here, because really the effect of damage is done by switching the object on screen. Let me paint you a picture. You shoot at a tree, and you wait till enough bullets hit for it to go down . But instead of seeing the tree fall over, you see the standing tree vanish from sight and immediately get replaced by a snapped tree that then proceeds to fall over. Another case was when I was driving a damn tank over a bridge that had wooden crates spread out on it. Me thinking, well god damn its wood, Ima plow this friggin thing over it. But no! I smash into the crates only to find my tank grind to a halt. This made me so angry. But really, I shouldn’t be complaining, because when the destruction does work, it looks fantastic and it sure is hella fun wrecking stuff. Despite these few anomalies in graphics, it generally looks really good, especially the character models. Most evident in the cutscenes, the characters move realistically and smoothly, and have a lot of detail in their outfits. The environments have an impressive draw distance, and rubble/dust from explosions look like they should. There seems to be this hazy feel that surrounds the battlefield though.
Another concern I have with the single player is something that has been bothering me with the past battlefield games. The AI is horrible! Omfg. Most of the time they barely move as you shoot them. Your teammates as well! Once I looked over to my teammates to see them standing and staring aimlessly while the enemy was just a few meteres over to the side shooting at them. When I engaged, that’s when my teammates decided to jump in too, but they have terrible aim and a seemingly inability to dispatch the enemy without my interference. The lack of intelligence from both sides is so bad it actually negates the ‘dynamic’ combat as promised. I suppose this can be overlooked, since Battlefield was always a multiplayer game. But if you claim you are seriously doing a single player, AI should be a priority, because I find that I cannot be immersed in a game when the people on screen are fucktards.
This brings me to the real part of the game, the online multiplayer. It is every bit as good as it was before, putting together all the parts brought in from the old Battlefield games, such as the weapon progressions, and most importantly in corporation the destruction introduced in this game. In multiplayer, the problem of shit AI is irrelevant since you get to play with real people. That is unless they actually play so badly they are comparable to it (I have seem some people who are that bad..) This is where the features of Bad Company come alive in the multiplayer theater where Battlefield feels the most at home. The combat really is dynamic this time round (promise last time I use that word), and transforms all the strategies you have for playing shooters. Basically this portion of the game saves it from the single player that leaves much more to be desired.
One last thing to mention that is the best part about Bad Company. The sound design is nothing short of phenomenal, parts of it the best I’ve seen (or heard lol) in any game. Seriously it is amazing. You could blow a grenade while standing in a house and you can hear all the chunks of the wall coming apart, and all the dust and rubble settling into the ground. It makes you feel like you’ve actually blown something up. And the weapons themselves feel so powerful when you fire them, especially when it echoes off walls and stuff. You feel like you are actually causing all this wreckage in the world, and it is something worth mentioning in this game.
Overall it seems that I’ve pointed out many major issues in this game, but it is by all means not a bad game. It’s a great game. But with the market not only so over saturated by shooters, but fully packed with triple A games like Call of Duty, it is so difficult to place yourself among the ranks with the greats. One way to distinguish yourself is to do something ambitious, and this is exactly what Bad Company does with destructible environments. It offers a new style of gameplay that both looks great and is a lot of fun. It is immensely satisfying just to rip down a house then spray bullets all over the inside to clean up what is left. It is far from realistic because of the elements of gameplay like the health needle, but it gives its own flavor and new style of dispensing your enemies. I wouldn’t go as far as calling it the ‘gun-porn’ like Black was, but this game is certainly focused on explosions and demolition, which is very enjoyable.
Presentation: 7.5
Gameplay: 8.0
Graphics: 8.0
Sound: 9.5
Innovation: 8.5
Overall Experience: 8.0
