Battlefield: Bad Company

"Capitalist pigs, very nice"

Battlefield: Bad Company, released in 2008 by EA DICE, is a first-person shooter (FPS) that places you as a soldier, Private Preston Marlowe, as the fresh meant to a squad called Bad Company.  First off, let me say, thank you for finally making a war FPS with lovable characters, a solid story line, and a main character that you actually feel connected to.  Now, don't get me wrong, in the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare franchise, there's a solid story.  However, the story gets complicated and a little muddy, especially in the second one.  Not to mention that you could give two shits about whether or not your character dies.  In BF: BC, you genuinely care about the character you play as.  Not only that, but you probably care more about your three squad mates: Sweetwater, Haggard, and Sarge.  Because of this unique cast of characters, each has a distinct personality, which makes the dialogue great as well.  One of the first examples of this is a cut scene early on in the game that causes you to pass out.  While looking at a black screen, you hear this: Haggard: Oh look. New guy's dead. Sweetwater: Already? I was just about to learn his name. Haggard: I think it was probably Joe. Usually is. Sarge: His name's Preston. Preston Marlowe. And he's not dead. Right, soldier?  Later on in the game, you get separated from your squad and have to figure out what their location is.  Without them, the entire mission feels incredibly lonely, especially without Haggard yammering on about who would win in a fight: Truckasaurus or a tank.  One of my favorite conversations goes as follows: Sweetwater: Sarge, Haggard's running away again! Sarge: Hold on, something ain't right. Sweetwater: I know, look at him, he runs like a girl. Sarge: No, not that.  I'm talking about something else.

The story places you in Bad Company in Eastern Europe to do some final missions before Sarge retires.  After your first mission, you stumble upon a solid gold bar the was smuggled by the mercenaries you have been fighting.  Haggard, being the maniac he is, instantly gets gold fever and starts firing his gun in the air in a neutral zone looking for the gold.  After you manage to get him back, the army informs you that they've dropped you and you will not be able to be extracted.  With this news, Sarge decides that Bad Company may as well go AWOL and search for the gold.  The rest of the story bats you back and forth between working for the army and trying to find the gold.  Outside of the single player campaign, although I have yet to play it in the first one, the multi-player is incredibly fun with large scale maps and several enemies, as is common to the Battlefield name.

The controls for the game are a little different from what a lot of people are used to, such as melee attacks with the knife being switched to the Y button and switching weapons being changed to the right bumper.  However, basic controls such as firing and aiming being placed to the right and left triggers respectively remain the same.  There's a vast assortment of weapons that can be found throughout the game and are considered "Collectibles;" finding  five, 50%, and 100% of them will each earn you an achievement.  One downside to the weapon system is that you are forced to swap out both your primary and secondary weapon upon switching weapons.  Most assault rifles will come with a secondary of a grenade launcher and snipers will come with a pistol.  I typically like to keep a sniper on me and an assault rifle if I can, however, in BF: BC, this isn't an option.  They manage to make up for it a bit with giving you special items, or gadgets, such as the MRTR-5, a GPS transmitter which can lock onto any area, enemy or otherwise, within a certain range and send a barrage of missiles to that location.  This is incredibly useful, but makes certain parts of the game a little too easy, even on hard.  

However, while playing through the game, I was incredibly grateful to have it because of the artificial intelligence (AI).  The AI seems to be either incredibly stupid or the best soldier that has ever lived.  Some enemy soldiers will be standing right on top of you and do nothing, whereas others, especially tanks, will be able to spot you among trees from a mile away and pick you off no problem (making a stealth approach to the game nearly impossible).  This is especially infurating if you have a long ways to go until your next save point.  If you die, you re-spawn at your last save area, which is useful if you're put right outside of the action, however, other times it will put you miles away from the enemies without a vehicle. Other times, the save points will literally spawn you side-by-side with an enemy, which can be easily frustrating seeing as how half the time enemies are much quicker with their instant kill knife attacks than you are.

The graphics of BF: BC aren't incredible with today's standards, but are still pretty impressive.  The whole game seems to be in sort of a grainy film, giving everything a very rough texture, which is distracting at first, but eventually you get used to it.  Human models look relatively accurate, although the facial features, especially the eyes, seem a bit odd.  However, with your character from the FPS perspective, everything seems spot on.  Grenade throws are heavy, it takes an effort to reload, and when swimming, you can see your hands stroking the water in front of you.  One innovation that helped BF: BC tremendously graphically is their destructive environments.  Nearly everything in the game can be knocked down, save for basic structures of buildings, rocks, etc.  Entire houses can be blown through, forests can be demolished, and even the ground you walk or drive on can have giant craters blown into by a tank that is trying to hit you.  This aspect, while incredibly realistic, is also incredibly fun.  Several times I would know an enemy was in a building, but instead of risking going through the front door and him having the upper hand, I just took my grenade launcher and blew a hole in the wall (Click on the image on the left for a better look at what I'm talking about).  

With all the destruction around you, the sound is also incredibly well done, further emphasizing the war time feel.  Everything sounds incredibly realistic from the shuffling of your boots to trees falling over; from enemies shouting out to their comrades to a nearby gas tank exploding behind you.  This game truly benefits from a surround sound system and really makes me happy that I shelled out to get a good one.  Not to mention that the soundtrack of the game is a lot of fun and manages to keep a light hearted feel to the game, even though you may be at the brink of possible destruction.

Here's the theme song to the game.  Swanky, huh?

Battlefield: Bad Company, although a couple of years old, is an incredibly satisfying game.  In fact, I bought the second, released this past March, before I bought the first.  After playing it a bit, I realized that the story was good and I should buy the first one.  Luckily, I found it for only $10 at a Blockbuster that was closing.  I have to say it was one of the better game purchases I have ever made.  Going through on hard right now I have already spent about ten hours playing and just got to the final mission of the game.  While there were a few visual glitches, such as things flying high into the sky and my squad mates essentially flying to a vehicle from yards away, most of them were minor.  The real problem in BF: BC is the AI.  However, this problem is overshadowed by the incredible sound, the great cast and storyline, as well as the superbly executed destructive environments.