Battlefield: Bad Company

Battlefield: Bad Company

Once upon a time, videogame worlds were unflinchingly robust: fire a shoulder-mounted RPG into a building and it wouldn’t leave so much as a scratch. Nowadays, as game engines have become more complex, more powerful, more realistic, it’s seen as a positive if everything in your game can be broken with a well-aimed rocket.

In this regard Battlefield: Bad Company is king. This is a warzone that’s almost completely destructible, no nook or cranny safe from mortar fire, a design decision that significantly raises the sense of danger as you cower in the toilet of an abandoned house waiting for a tank to blow the walls away.

The Battlefield name has always been synonymous with sprawling, top-quality multiplayer wargames, especially on the PC platform. So that Bad Company comes with one of the most compelling and enjoyable single-player campaigns of recent times is as remarkable as it is brilliant. You’re cast as Private Preston Marlowe, recently reassigned to the 222nd Battalion, also known as B Company, a collection of misfit soldiers that the Army sends into battle before just about anyone else. You command this four man unit as they make headway into Russian territory with the mission of taking out a number of crucial instillations to the enemy.

This isn’t where the story ends as your company is soon abandoned by the army and decide to go off looking for mercenary gold. As you can imagine the tone is light-hearted and irreverent and each squad member’s humour and character will soon endear you to the story. In game you’ll be doing most of the work, your three team mates mostly offering moments of comic relief and pointing out the next target, but still, Bad Company provides, ironically, pretty good company for the journey. You plough trough the Russian terrain, taking down the large numbers of enemy soldiers (whose lack of intelligence is more than made up for by raw numbers) and, should you take damage, it’s a simply job of plunging a life-giving health injector into your heart, to restore health back to maximum.

Play flits between firefights and demolition, and is stuffed with neat set-pieces and compelling collectables. These set-up the other half to the experience: Battlefield’s, extensive and excellent multiplayer. As with the recent Enemy Territory: Quake Wars most of these multiplayer games involve picking a character from one of five different classes and using their abilities to infiltrate, eliminate or debilitate the enemy team. With up to 24 players per match it’s fast, and frantic and the huge maps and slick implementation ensure Bad Company’s the best of the genre currently available on Xbox 360.

With wargames growing increasingly po-faced and serious it’s great to have a boisterous, humorous shooter appear that can easily hold its own against the likes of Call of Duty 4 and Rainbow Six Vegas. The tight, enjoyable single-player campaign, a first for the series, is a triumph and Battlefield’s ever-robust multiplayer modes round off this must-have package for the summer.

4 out of 5