Battlefield: Bad Company - An AWOL epic for the ages, or just plain " Bad" ? Xbox 360
Single/Multiplayer Demo Reviewed as of 5/5/08
Some time ago now, I downloaded the Multiplayer demo for Frontlines: Fuel of War. While the lackluster title left me wanting for more, I felt the game had an as-of-then indeterminate appeal to it. The character models were terrible. The graphics were subpar. The plot was abyssmal, and the codehouse behind it was incredibly unaccomplished. I had absolutely no legitimate reason to enjoy the game, and Only today did I figure out what exactly I liked about it...
It was a flawed version of Battlefield.
So, before I begin my impressions proper, two things must first be clarified about the demo itself .
A) if you plan on downloading the demo after reading this, throw your Xbox or PS3 somewhere cool,. Go make a sandwich. Watch the latest episode of House. Have a quickie. Find some way to occupy the download time. It' s not one you' ll be sitting through, as it is unusually large for a console demo at a whopping 1.5 gigs, I believe the largest on the 360 to date.
B) the time spent downloading was one-hundred percent worth it.
Battlefield: Bad Company is, as almost all of you are aware, centered around a renegade company of US soldiers, on a literal treasure-hunt for loot. The demo places you in the footsteps of the new recruit to Bad Company, before their decision to go AWOL for gold. Because of this, I will forgo any real deliberation on the plot until (with luck, and a bit of leprechaun gold) I can afford the full game.
I will however, touch on the voice acting, the audio and the scripting. It' s fantastic. Your company is suitably over the top, and the characters manage to be charming and funny, without falling into the usual camp stereotypes so often present in less-than-serious war titles. The stereotypical black man is present, but he isn' t the machine gunner. The good ' ol boy storyteller manages to escape the farming and fishing rhetoric, though a few well-delivered lines about dating his cousin are present. The in-combat voice acting is also top-notch. Panicked orders barked are muffled by the sound of artillery. The screams of your wounded comrades are visceral. Each bullet' s spent cartridge strikes the ground with a hollow " tink" . When played at the correct volume, all the firearms have a sharp (and auditorily correct) report that carries throughout the level.
I was most impressed though by the differences in audio inside buildings, and outside. The rounds echo, as do the magazines, belts and boxes as you reload, and while it doesn' t seem like much, it' s small details like this that truly impress me now, in a generation where graphics and physics dominate arguments over a " good" game. Joe would be a far better candidate for commentary on the actual technical aspect of the game, as I don' t have the trained ear, nor the equipment to appreciate it on that level, however in layman' s perspective, it' s brilliant.
Bad Company, from a visual standpoint is stellar. DICE have taken a genre so stagnant in color, and infused it with a vibrant and colorful palette, while still maintaining a hardcore feel. The best comparison I have is to that of some of Brothers in Arms more colorful levels. It' s slightly off-putting, and thereby all the more engaging to see an environment so rich and beautiful torn to shreds by the various bullets, rockets and grenades surrounding you. From a technical level, I have no complaints. The textures are crisp. The pop-in is slim, and was next to unnoticed. The character models are gorgeous, with NPCs, hands, guns and facial expressions all looking as they should.
The animations in cutscenes are particularly impressive, due to DICE' s implementation of subtle nuances in the character' s movement, eliminating many of the puppet, or " canned" emotional expressions present in many other shooters. Instead of wildly gesticulating with their hands, your comrades communicate their emotions succinctly and in an understated fashion with their facial features. I really can' t express enough how much this raises the overall immersive quality of the title. From two playthroughs, one specifically attempting to bug out the game, the framerate remained at a rock-solid 30, with exception of one small hiccup whilst entering a cutscene.
Bridging the gap between my graphics and gameplay sections, I would like to take a minute to comment on my original interest in the title, the destructable environments. When first announced and shortly thereafter, as screenshots and scans of the game began to spring up, hopes were set high for the game' s " revolutionary" (I hate using that word) system of destructable environments. Now while I haven' t followed the industry actively for more than two or three years now, if there' s one thing that I have yet to experience, it' s a game which' s destructable environments live up to the promises made by the developer. " Last-minute design changes" , a lack of proper implementation, or a simple case of an overactive PR department are often to blame for these fallbacks.
I can safely say that Bad Company provides everything promised, and the funny thing is... it works like a charm. Instead of providing you with the much-sought-after option of leveling your environment to the ground, DICE have managed to find a happy medium between using destructability to open new doors in gameplay, and still maintaining a coherent and ordered pace to the title. Their view on the environment is that once you level a map of all buildings, landmarks and cover, the " fun factor" disappears, and I believe they are absolutely correct. I never felt inhibited by the parts of the environment that were not destructable. It added interest to the environment, and simply made the game more fun when you could pop out from behind the rubble of a building, and hit a Russian hidden behind cover. This is the best implementation of destructable environments I' ve ever seen... Ever.
The single-player gameplay itself is simple, objective-based, fast-paced and fun. It' s everything Call of Duty 4 should have been, everything Battlefield: 2 wasn' t, and everything I expect to see in an entertaining first-person shooter. In the level provided, you follow directions from your center of command, moving in to secure a village and other strategic locations. Nearing the end of the demo, Battlefield unleashes it' s true scope in a frantic firefight up an embanked hill with the enemy dug deep into the trenches. Smoke from an artillery strike fills the air as you force your way up the hill, dodging mounted machine gun fire, and engaging the enemy from every front. The game' s raw energy is remeniscent of the epic battles found in many World-War II games, though thankfully distanced in every other manner. It' s the first thing I' ll be playing when I return home today.
The controls are simple, though I have to admit, took some getting used to, after playing CoD non-stop for the past four months. I won' t go over the details here, you can find them all in the demo. Rest assured, they work as they should, and I never once noticed them, which is a good sign.
I' ll be providing full impressions on the multiplayer component soon, and more on the gameplay tomorrow, but decided to put a few consecutive days in with the title before drawing my final conclusion in the multiplayer department. To note very briefly however, what I have experienced is incredibly fun, and may just find itself a contender to my Modern Warfare addiction.
Hope you all enjoyed.
