It’s not like Battlefield: Bad Company is everything to everyone. It’s not the best first person shooter you’ll ever play; there’s basically only one mode to multiplayer, its got some really corny writing, the color palette is sort of bland, etc., etc. But I’ll be damned if it isn’t one of the best games I’ve played this year. Focused, concise and pure in its delivery of big explosions and exciting action, Bad Company is a gem of good game design and the best Battlefield game I’ve played since the original.
eveloper DICE should be commended for hitting the nail on the head. Like the best games, I want to overlook its flaws for the sheer awesomeness of the rest of it. Battlefield games are historically purely multiplayer affairs, setting teams of gamers playing specific roles in objective-based team-oriented games. That’s not really a new concept, but one that the series overall has been honing and perfecting for years. Bad Company is the culmination of that, with a pretty compelling single player game thrown in for good measure.
On the single player side, the game offers up a decent enough storyline about a rag tag bunch of misfits tearing across the countryside fighting bad guys and capturing lost gold. Nothing you haven’t seen before, especially in movies like Kelly’s Heroes or Three Kings, but it compels you to have a good time, something too many games have forgotten how to do. More importantly, the action of the single player sets up the multiplayer very nicely without feeling like a string of loosely hooked together arenas interspersed with cut scenes. It also saves you the high drama. I was fully expecting one of the characters to die during the storyline in a cheap attempt to make me feel some emotion. But DICE never took that cheap shot. I don’t think they want you to necessarily develop some deep emotional connection to the characters. I think they want you to have a good time. If so, mission accomplished.
The characters, especially Haggard and Sweetwater, the two “comic relief†characters were really chafing me early on. I really wanted them to shut up and cut the shtick. It’s just a little too much in the early going. But looking back now after playing the entire game, I think the chatter heavy early levels of the game are that way to set up the story. And the game’s designers smartly get it out of the way. After you get down to what your real business is – stealing gold – the game starts telling the story through the action. The army cuts you off, forcing you to go rogue. Not a problem, considering you were already a bunch of loser soldiers they didn’t know what to do with in the first place, that’s why they put you in Bad Company.
By keeping the story simple and light, DICE doesn’t bog you down with trying to figure out what’s going on. It’s simple: you’re gonna get rich or die trying. This is the kind of story I was hoping for out of Army of Two, a game that I think tried to take a similar tack, but got bogged down in weird conspiracy B.S. and lame, uninteresting characters. Good job on getting it right this time, EA.
More importantly about single player, it let’s you try everything out. It’s a good set up for the multiplayer matches where you’ll be driving vehicles and using cool equipment like laser guided bombs and mortar strikes. Honestly, playing through the single player is a great warm up for the multiplayer, and finishing the game will actually make you better when you go online. I promise you.
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