Battlefield: Bad Company (Xbox 360) Review
Posted by Rod Oracheski on 07.24.2008
The newest game in the Battlefield series blows the hell out of the trendy new 'cover' system that other games are falling in love with.
With adding in a cover mechanic being all the rage these days, gamers could be excused for thinking Battlefield: Bad Company - the first console-centric game in the Battlefield franchise - would also go down that road. Instead, the games went in an entirely different direction - destroying all that cover.
But does the ability to blow up the environment make for a good time?
Gameplay:
Remember the "good ol' days" when you could take cover behind a rickety old fence and be completely safe from enemy fire? Hell, you used to be able to hide behind a shrub and be safe from .50 caliber machine gun fire! Games like Call of Duty 4, with the ability to fire through thin cover, put an end to those happy times, but at least you could still hide behind walls - right?
In Bad Company, that's all behind us. Nothing is safe. Well, almost nothing. You still can't shoot through, or otherwise destroy, hills or rocks...so whatever or whoever hides behind those things will be safe from your destructive ways. In a similar fashion, bullets won't penetrate thick walls to kill those annoying guys hiding in a room.
You can, however, blast your way through those walls. Through just about everything, in fact, and using just about anything. Grenades, tank rounds, C4...whatever you've got that will explode can be used to blast through walls.
This wall-smashing ability comes in handy at times during the single-player campaign (that's right, a Battlefield game that has an honest-to-God single-player mode) but really comes into its own in multiplayer. No longer are you confined to following the path between buildings, or funneled into easily-defended chokepoints. Instead, you can simply blast your way through walls or fences to avoid traps - or set your own.
There's a variety of weapons to pick up and vehicles to climb into as you go through the campaign, which adds some tactical choice to the game. Snipe from a distance? Shotgun your way through at close range? Drive over everyone in a tank? Rain down missiles from a helicopter? In most missions there's a decent variety of ways to approach your mission objectives.
It's a bit disappointing that enemies all have X-ray vision. You can be in cover, pop out for a second and BAM - you're getting shot. Go back into cover and move to another window and they know where you are - instantly.
It's also a bit frustrating that the sniper rifle is nearly worthless in single player - though it's very handy in multiplayer. Enemies instantly know where you are, giving you only one shot to do any damage before they scatter and start firing back. It kind of sucks that, regardless of what weapon they're wielding, they seem to have the same effective range that your sniper rifle does. Take a sniper rifle and try to go toe-to-toe (albeit at hundreds of yards distance) with a pair of guys with assault rifles and you'll die nine times out of ten.
That's somewhat alleviated by the way sniper rifles are great weapons in multiplayer. There's no radar or killcam, so snipers can set up in brush (the long grass actually serves a purpose in this game!) and deny enemy infantry access to a field or other open area.
Sure, after you get a few kills in, they'll probably smarten up and just go get into a vehicle, but it's still nice to be able to effectively snipe in a game. It's not really that cheap, in any case. You can be found by following the tracer round back to the gun easily enough, but it provides those who like to snipe with an experience that few other games offer. With no killcam, you can actually get some kills in before having to move.
The lack of a killcam also helps those who like to set up ambushes. You can set out explosives and watch from a safe vantage point - knowing that your spot isn't going to be tipped off by the cam from your first kill.
Graphics
Games have done destruction in the past, most notably the Red Faction series, but there's always been a hit to the graphics so you can have that destruction. Dice has apparently solved that problem with the Frostbite engine that powers Bad Company, as the game is gorgeous. You'll see clearly defined, high-res textures everywhere, and the animations of destruction are top-notch, with flying debris and trees that splinter and fall when damaged by bullets or explosions.
There's a good variety of terrains to be found, and the design of buildings (before you blow the hell out of them) is pretty well done overall. I especially like the outhouses that absolutely vanish when you hit them with an RPG - or a tank.
Screen tearing crops up constantly, but at least there aren't many, if any, instances of framerate slowdown to be found. The only other real knock is that I wasn't really that impressed by the smoky aftermath of explosions, which is odd when the smoke from a tank's smokescreen is very well done.
Sound:
Not many games have weapon effects that are more powerful, that carry more impact, than Battlefield: Bad Company. They're actually a bit over the top, but it really works. It's nice to pull the trigger on a high-caliber rifle and really hear that BOOM echo out over the landscape. Gunfire and explosions are absolutely top-drawer stuff.
The vocal work is decent, and they've got a pretty good script to work with. It's cheesy in all the right ways, never going over the top into 'OK now it's just bad' territory.
Lasting Appeal:
In the single-player mode, you'll barrel through the game's levels in seemingly no time at all. Eight hours? Ten hours? It'll depend how good you are, how quickly you adapt to the game's 'destroy all cover' mechanics, and how much you just want to explore. The game wraps up the story in a satisfying enough way, even leaving room for a sequel, but there's not a whole lot here in terms of first-time play value for those who are strictly offline players.
The single-player mode is actually hurt by the game's respawn system, where dying simply puts you back in a nearby position with any enemies you've killed staying dead. This lets you simply plow through any challenging area - dropping one or two enemies before you die and eventually clearing the place out.
You'll want to do some backtracking in levels to get all the gold and collect every weapon, and it's fun to 'drop in' from time to time just to rampage through the levels destroying everything in sight - but the replay value offline is pretty limited.
There's some replay value for online gamers, though you'll only find one mode at the present time - Gold Rush. In this mode you'll be on one of two teams - attackers or defenders. The defenders have a stronghold and two gold crates, which the attackers want to destroy before they've had all their 'reinforcements' (fits the setting better than calling them respawns I suppose) depleted. When one set of crates is destroyed, the defenders relocate to a secondary base, then a tertiary one, etc... until they've had every set wiped out.
You'll get a lot of replay out of Gold Rush, but it's only one mode. I'd say that it's almost inexcusable for EA to ship the game with only one multiplayer mode, but it's not - it is inexcusable. Promises to patch in Conquest shortly after launch were made, but they still haven't followed through on that and there's only so much Gold Rush you can play...
Fun Factor:
Though it's short, I had a blast - no pun intended - with Battlefield's single-player campaign. The destruction is a lot of fun, and despite some weird design choices (the respawn system, the X-ray enemies, etc...) the single-player game has more positives than negatives.
The multiplayer was promising, but it's just not there yet. Maybe when they get around to finishing it off, I'd recommend the online mode more, but as it sits you can get into bad game after bad game and there's no other mode to go play...
The 411:
Battlefield has promise, but hasn't delivered on that yet. The lack of modes in multiplayer is ridiculous, and I'm not sure I'd really give the game a 'must buy' recommendation until there's some variety there. Adding in Conquest will help that out, whenever that arrives, but you'll have to be the judge as to whether or not only two online modes are enough for you.
Great textures and destruction, coupled with a solid framerate. Some weak smoke effects.
Gameplay
8.5
Solid controls and fun destruction - but some odd (and frustrating) choices with enemy AI drag things down a bit.
Sound
9.0
Great weapon sounds highlight the audio package. Seriously, those things are amazing - especially in surround sound.
Lasting Appeal
8.0
The single-player has some decent replay if you're into collecting weapons and gold, or just like blowing things up. Multiplayer needs that patch to stay fresh, but adding only one more mode won't last forever...
Fun Factor
8.0
The single player is made a little less challenging by the 'respawn with everyone dead' design, while multiplayer suffers from lack of variety.
