Battlefield: Bad Company (single player campaign mode)

Review

We’ve all met one. Maybe you were one. The guy with ‘potential’. If only he’d slow down for a minute and focus, then maybe he’d get somewhere. Maybe somewhere great. EA DICE’S Battlefield: Bad Company is that guy. And like with most guys who squander potential, onlookers are compelled to ponder…what if?

You play as Preston Marlowe, the newest recruit to “Bad Company”, a ‘mismatched bunch of rejects selected to serve their country as cannon fodder’. Accompanying you as fellow cannon fodder throughout your missions are Sweetwater, Haggart, and Sarge - respectively a computer nerd cliché with oversized glasses, a Southern redneck hick cliché with a handlebar moustache and an arguably plagiaristic clone of Halo 3’s Sgt. Johnson.

During the course of the game, it becomes apparent that the sole purpose and capability of your squad is to crack the occasional joke, take part in the many admittedly well voice-acted and sometimes genuinely chuckle-some cut scenes and literally ask you to do anything and everything of any importance or difficulty. These facts along with some other fairly large problems are Bad Company’s undoing and thus contribute hugely to the disappointingly low score at the end of this review.

First though, the good stuff.

The brunt of Battlefield: Bad Company takes place on impressively large and sprawling maps which you’ll progress through either on foot, or via vehicles such as gunboats, jeeps, and tanks that are peppered around each level. When on foot, movement feels comfortable and has weighty and realistic quality to it. The vehicles, although occasionally slightly cumbersome are by and large enjoyable to use.

Although at first things seems completely open-ended, it’s soon very obvious that any perceived non-linearity is actually an illusion. Missions take place on the aforementioned large, sprawling maps, but during these missions you’ll be expected to accomplish numerous objectives each set within a smaller designated area. If you attempt to leave the smaller area before your objectives are complete you’ll be asked to retreat or else become vulnerable to “mortar fire”. Ah, that old videogame staple, the invisible, impenetrable wall - But on this occasion, their inclusion isn’t necessarily an all together bad thing.

After one areas objectives are completed, invisible walls will magically dissolve, the next smaller fighting arena will unlock and your squad will move on. Eventually you’ll methodically work your way through each level like this, in what amounts to bite sized chunks.

Even so, these bite sized chunks are sometimes still quite sizable in their own right, so much so that multiple approaches to combat can usually be explored within them. It often appears that levels are designed so as to encourage players into tackling objectives in different ways. Do you approach the enemy strong-hold quietly on foot, trying to keep hidden till the last possible moment, or do you steam in with the tank, cannons blazing, right through the front doors? The game seems to leave that choice to the player, and on the face of it, promises to create a balance between linearity on non-linearity that works very well. There are some occasions where you’ll be forced down a narrow corridor towards an objective - the threat of mortar fire apparently everywhere besides the tiny area in which you’re fighting - but these moments are quite rare and when they do happen, they don’t really detract from the experience as a whole.

As a incentive for players to explore mission areas even more thoroughly, within each level there are collectables, in the shape of guns, clearly marked on your map and cases of gold to discover that are more hidden away. It’s left up to the player to decide whether to go off the beaten track in search of these items, or plough from objective to objective.

Graphically, everything is rather nice. From time to time, it is possible to stumble up on a dodgy texture and some slight pop-in here and there. It's also not uncommon for glitchy character animations to crop up every now and then, but that said, it's nothing major and the game does feature some nice little touches such as pleasingly detailed character models and satisfyingly large explosions. For the most part, the towns and villages, rivers and bridges within each level are all well realised, if a little on the green and brown side and sometimes feeling slightly clone stamped.

Ultimately Bad Company won’t set your eyeballs alight, but what it does offer in terms of looks is a solid and functional experience, which is further complemented by a brilliant environmental damage model.

A grin-inducing amount destruction can be dealt with the assorted weaponry you’ll find scattered around the level, which is all easily traceable via the in-game map. Mortars, RPG’s, Tank Shells, and Laser Guided bombs all compliment the usual selection of Machine Guns, Sniper Rifles and Shotguns. Explosions wrought from said weapons blow huge holes in the sides of buildings, exposing enemies hiding inside to gunfire. Trees and foliage can be cleared away offering a better view of your chosen target. It’s even possible to raze entire towns if you subject them to enough of an onslaught. It goes without saying that destroying things within Bad Company is a lot of fun, and one thing this game gets spot on.

Sound-wise Bad Company is great. The score contains some pleasingly atmospheric and well composed pieces of music and if at some point you should decided to stand still and take a break from the action, you’ll hear that a surprising amount of effort has gone into the ambient side of things. As previously mentioned, the voice acting is top-draw and for the most part makes an otherwise quite mundane story about "Bad Company's" AWOL persuit of a group of faceless mercenaries with lots of gold, generally bearable and occasionally even quite compelling at points.

So far then, we appear to be all set for a good score. So, what then makes Bad Company the kid with potential, but no focus?

Well, it’s this. Take a deep breath.

The moment you actually fire a weapon at an enemy is when the problems start and the problems in Battlefield: Bad Company out themselves like some sort of tragic domino effect. One problem leads to another, leads to another, leads to another…

Any pretensions the game may have had to encourage a more tactical approach to play immediately fly out the window, as the minute you start firing your weapon, enemies instantaneously and robotically follow suite. With apparently cat-like reflexes and razor sharp, owl-like vision, troops will only ever concentrate on shooting at you despite the fact there are also usually three of your team-mates standing nearby, in plain view.

Even though the level design seems to actively push the player to approach each fight in their own way, the mechanics of the gameplay itself just don’t allow for it. Trying to implement your own battle-plan is essentially pointless when every enemy knows exactly where you are and exactly what you‘re doing, from the moment you fire the first round.

Needless to say, the nature of this sort of haphazard combat means that you’ll be spending a lot of time swiftly diving for cover and it’s in turn because of this, that it’s difficult to get a handle of what the best course of action might be in any given battle.

When you’ve finally peeked out of cover long enough to work out who exactly it is that’s shooting, you’ll usually also find your health to be so dangerously low that the only option you’re left with is to leap straight back into cover to heal yourself fast.

For a game so reliant on the physical act of healing yourself, you’d be forgiven for expecting a system a little easier to use than the one in Bad Company.

Every time your health drops low enough, you’ll hit LB to bring up your health syringe, then hit RT to dramatically plunge it into your chest and actually use the thing. I must have used the syringe hundreds of times during the course of my 8-10 hours with the game. I even got an achievement for it. Regardless, no amount of achievement points rewarded could change the fact that it’s a clumsy system and one the game could have done without. There’s too much effort involved for something that you’ll use more often than any one weapon.

It’s easy to feel that some of the irritation caused by the below par combat and the poorly implemented miracle syringe would have been salved somewhat by a halfway decent set of guys watching your back. So then, it's a good job that the team-mate AI in this game is 100% perf...oh.

As it stands Battlefield: Bad Company, in an almost poetic way, lives up to it’s name and in terms of AI team-mates, manages to have some of the worst company I've ever come across.

The problem is, Sweetwater, Haggart and Sarge don’t actually do anything. They’ll very occasionally fire their weapons, but almost never take anyone down. Haggart is apparently an “explosives expert” but all this appears to mean is that he carries a rocket launcher on his back that he never fires. Whenever any tank or armoured car looms into view - and they do quite often - it’ll be you eventually destroying it, not Haggart. During the course of my time with the game, I witnessed three whole kills by my squad, and even then I think they may have been accidents.

There was one absurd moment, quite early on, where me and the gang set about attacking a fortified enemy bunker. As usual, I was pinned down behind cover waiting for an opportunity to kill whichever expert marksmen AI had me in his sights. And then I saw it. Sweetwater, out in the open, completely visible and vulnerable to my nuisance target. Now usually in this situation you’d expect either or both of them to notice each other and take appropriate action but what actually happened was rather bizarre.

The enemy continued shooting exclusively at me, and Sweetwater didn’t shoot at all. At all.

Instances like this occur throughout the game, and so it feels that besides during expository cut scenes, your team-mates are mere phantoms. They amount to nothing more than joke-telling ghosts trying to create a jocular atmosphere during frustrating and in the end plain tedious core gameplay. They neither notice enemies nor do enemies notice them. Anything important that needs doing, they’ll get you to do. Even “Sarge” the supposed long suffering, grizzled leader of your squad, gleefully sits back and lets you take the lead on most occasions. Essentially, your squad-mates are the second of Bad Company’s illusions but, unlike the first, they’re an illusion that doesn’t work quite as well.

All in all, Bad Company is a game that squanders any potential created by it’s genuinely good level design. There is no depth to the combat in a game with arenas that shout out for it.

When you’ve finally dispatched with any foes, you’ll feel it’s not because you’ve outsmarted equal opposition or because a master plan you’ve hatched has come to fruition - it’ll be because you’ll have had the patience to peak out from behind cover, shoot a little, get shot in return, duck back into cover, heal, rinse and repeat all whilst your team-mates passively look on.

The game might well offer you a choice of approaching quietly or roaring in with a tank, but sadly, it doesn’t make the blindest bit of difference. You’ll always find yourself in the same position, no matter what - crouched behind a rock, stabbing yourself in the chest while your squad mates crack jokes.

What Bad Company does well, it does very well. The level design is great and the destruction dealt out by weapons is immensely satisfying. But what it does worst is arguably the only thing that a first person shooter absolutely has to get right. The shooting.

It’s a pity that with a little more time spent on ironing out the flaws in the combat and AI, Battlefield: Bad Company could have been a much, much better game. But the fact is, Bad Company is the kid with potential, and like I said at the outset, onlookers are compelled to ponder…what if?