Battlefield: Bad Company brings something new to console shooter fans, but the game trips itself in a weird way in multiplayer.

This time there actually is a story in a Battlefield game, though it’s still pretty much just a long tutorial to the real meat of this game: multiplayer. You play as Preston Marlowe, a guy who is forced to enlist in army for his crimes against the society and is placed among others of his kind. B Coy is also called Bad Company and it is used as a cannon fodder to do all kinds of dirty work. For this reason these guys find another motivation to war: gold… lots of it. Story reminds a movie Three Kings, but who cares. It’s nice to see something new in a war game like this aside from the usual honor, glory and patriotism.

Graphics are very good quality and Battlefield has nothing to be ashamed of in terms of how it looks. Unfortunately graphics in multiplayer doesn’t look as good as they do in single player campaign. It’s not a huge leap backwards, but you will notice it.

Sound design is the best in any game yet. Guns have a real punch in them, people scream in a real manner and a distant mortar fire sounds very different from a grenade exploding right next to you. This really sounds like a battlefield and a nice home theatre doesn’t hurt the experience either. Musical score is something new in a shooter: it creates a light mood showing that this game is not supposed to be taken too seriously.

Game uses a new Frostbite engine, which greatest advantage is the destructibility of buildings and environment in general. Pretty much everything can blow to pieces, but still for some unknown reason you can’t shoot through walls like in Call of Duty 4. In order to shoot an enemy behind a wall you will need to use a grenade launcher under your rifle and then shoot him, for example. Blowing stuff up is generally fun and Bad Company gives lots of opportunities to do so. Unfortunately in time you’ll notice that there is a pattern on how the buildings collapse just like you might remember in another EA’s game: Black.

Gameplay is a typical first person shooter and the ability to look through iron sights is becoming a standard in this kind of games. Controls are generally good, but you can’t go prone and the use of a knife is a lot slower than you might remember in Call of Duty 4. Save system uses checkpoints and 3 different difficulty levels are nicely balanced giving just right amount of challenge, but still don’t create unnecessary frustration to player.

Enemy AI is behind its time. Usually they just stay where they are and shoot you on site. They don’t try to flank you or do anything else for that matter to create a worthy fight. But it’s not the enemies that make this game worth playing: it’s the environment.

Environments are huge and the draw distance is amazing. On top of that it all looks life-like and the frame rate stays solid all the time. Missions are always objective-based which means that you don’t need always kill everybody: just to do your job at hand. Big maps give an important chance to think your strategy: should I do a frontal assault or should I move quietly from the back? Unfortunately sneaking is not a real option here, because your AI controlled team mates shoot immediately when they see an enemy and you can’t give any orders to them. Here lies another drawback: why there’s no 4 player co-op like in Halo 3? Story includes 4 guys so the setting would have been ideal for blasting stuff up with 3 friends.

Shooter is only as good as its guns and Battlefield: Bad Company has lots of them. Some of them can only be unlocked in a specific way like being a pre-order of the game, sign up to email newsletter or to play the free demo up to specific rank. Different weapons could have used more variety, but they all look different and sound unique, at least to a certain degree. Aside from guns there are other interesting gadgets to use like tanks, jeeps, trucks, helicopters, artillery, C4 to blow stuff up, the ability to call for air support and the ability to regenerate your health. All of this brings more strategy to gameplay and in time you’ll learn to master everything at your disposal.

Single player mode is linked to multiplayer: when you equip a unique gun in a single player game, you’ll also unlock it in multiplayer. This gives more reason for multiplayer oriented gamers to play through the story mode as well.

Multiplayer has one and only one mode to choose from: Gold Rush. Objective is to either attack or defend a series of gold crates and in the process kill a bunch of enemies and blow stuff up. Conquest mode is also coming as a free download sometime in the future. Gameplay happens in one of 8 maps, which are varied and large, but still there are only 8 of them. While playing you’ll receive points just like in Call of Duty 4, but you still need to choose from a few classes like assault, recon and support.

Bad Company’s multiplayer is clearly designed for clans and groups of friends playing together in general. Still different party functions are a joke: why there are only 4 players in a squad, when there are 12 people playing on the same side? Why sometimes a squad is divided to different sides of the confrontation? Why a squad doesn’t stay together after leaving a game? All these problems make it hard to create any strategy on how to attack or defend. In the end multiplayer just boils down into hunting points and that’s it. I would also recommend not to create your own squad, but to go to war as a lone wolf.

One of the biggest problem is that different sides are way too similar in their appearance. It’s very common to run beside an enemy only to get a burst of rounds in the back. This is made all the worse by the fact that you receive penalty points by shooting someone on your own side.

Servers seem to have problems regularly. Sometimes you get to a game and no problem, but other time you just can’t do it. This reminds me of troubles I had with NHL08, so it must be an issue in EA’s servers. This does not help to give an edge to Bad Company, because usually Call of Duty 4’s and Halo 3’s servers work seamlessly.

Battlefield: Bad Company is no Halo killer or Call of Duty slayer, but it gives a nice change of pace and blowing stuff up in an open environment is always fun.

Nometet.com says: 80%

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