The overall design of Bad Company – and indeed, the entire Battlefield series – is based on flexibility. While hardly an open-world sandbox type of game, the levels are definitely not just corridors. Well, at some parts they are. But most of the time you have a lot of options on how to tackle an objective. You can tear through a town with a tank blasting every last building to rubble, finding all of the collectible guns (collectibles, another sign Bad Company knows it’s a video game and not some kind of complex interactive fiction) and blowing up every last exploding barrel you see. Or you can grab a boat and jam up river, grenade launchers popping heat along the banks as you go. Or you can sneak through the woods all stealthy and snipe as you go. There’s a ton of ways you can do things, and that only makes the experience more satisfying.
The hunt for lost gold sets up the multiplayer. Like I said, there’s only one multiplayer mode, which is a two-team objective based game where one team defends the gold and the other captures it by blowing it up. Maybe they’re just setting the gold free. In multiplayer is when you get into character classes, five in all, and they feel extremely well balanced. Every class has a special weapon or piece of equipment, but you’ll have to unlock those. The nice thing is, you unlock stuff in the order you want to. You earn credits which can be spent however you want. I highly recommend the support class’ mortar strike for one of your first purchases.
Like any team based multiplayer game though, your experience playing it is going to be highly dependent on who you play it with. All of the vehicles seat more than one person, and in most cases there are two stations that control a weapon. If you take off in a chopper or a tank without a compadre, you’re basically cutting your effectiveness in half. It’s also a really good idea if at least one person on board has a support kit too, since they can repair vehicles.
Another cardinal rule that must be followed in this game is talking. You have got to hook up your headset and talk to your team. Bad Company does not reward teams full of lone wolves. Get on there and talk, make a buddy and work together. No one’s saying you have to be BFF or hold hands; that’s up to you. But this game is zero fun with people that don’t want to play it the way they should.
At this point, I’ve probably played less than ten online matches, first with other media types and the devs, and one or two with the regular civilians. The only time I had a good time was when people worked together. But those times were really awesome. Bad Company’s single multiplayer mode actually offers a lot in the way of variety. Sure, you’re always attacking or defending the gold, but when you factor in all the weapons, vehicles and equipment, you’ll realize just how many ways there are to do the things you want to do. From a design point of view, DICE really nailed it. The classes and weapons seem perfectly balanced. Who’s to say what exploits people will discover as the game matures, but hey, welcome to online gaming. That’s what downloadable updates are for. If my mortar attack gets nerfed though, I’m gonna be mad pissed.
Battlefield: Bad Company knows what it wants to do and does it. The gameplay is simple and easy to wrap your mind around, but opens up to a lot of different strategies. The explosions are visceral and fun, and the game looks great too. Yeah, I bitched about the color palette, but there are moments when you realize they’re going for that smoky, hazy look that a battle-ravaged landscape would have and it’s O.K. It may not be a magnum opus like GTA IV, but Battlefield: Bad Company is a great piece of mindless fun to waste away some hours with this summer.