| Battlefield Bad Company is a summer blockbuster of a game. With over- the-top explosions, ridiculous characters, and a plot made for a movie, it’s hard not to enjoy this game. |  |
Story is a central focus for Battlefield: Bad Company, a first for the series. Usually Battlefield games focus exclusively on a deep multi-player section, with no campaign offering at all. In this game, however, you’re lacing up your boots as the newest addition to the infamous “B” Company, Preston Marlowe. “B” Company, or Bad Company, is where the military dumps its troublemakers. Filling out your squad is your hard-nosed leader Sergeant Redford, the lovably nerdy Sweetwater, and demolitions “expert” Haggard. All these characters have great voice work and good animation during the in-engine cutscenes. 
You really come to like all your squad mates by the end of the story. The obvious inspiration for the narrative here comes from classic war movies, most notably “Three Kings” and “Kelly’s Heroes”. On your first mission you find mercenaries employed by the mysterious Legionnaire, who pays his private army in gold. A little taste of gold leads your squad on a tear across the countryside, chasing a truck loaded with gold bullion. I won’t go to deep into details, but the twists and turns serve well to keep the story engaging and fresh the whole way thought.
Combat is intense and filled with outrageous action. The biggest feature of Bad Company’s combat is destructibility. With the power of the new Frostbite engine, walls provide little more then temporary shelter. Explosions and heavy weapon fire will tear apart structures forcing you to adapt your tactics constantly. You really feel like you have numerous of way to attack any given situation. Running along behind a fence as an enemy machine gun tears your flimsy wooden cover to shreds is truly exhilarating. Walls, trees and roofs are all yours to demolish. Sniper in a window bugging you? Switch to your grenade launcher and aim for the window; if it doesn’t go in the window, who cares? It’s gonna take out a sizable chunk of that wall and leave you with an unobstructed sniper 
shaped target to fill with bullets. The games guns feel powerful, and there are tons of them. No worrying about ammo conservation; every area you come too will have a few ammo dumps, encouraging you to go nuts blowing the place to bits.
Those fragmenting walls and toppling trees really look beautiful. While not the most beautiful FPS you’ve seen lately, it’s defiantly a cut above most. Explosions and lighting effects are intense and when combined with the incredible sound design lead to a very immersive experience. Helping you settle into this world are massive environments that will play host to your battles. Each mission consists of huge map, although at first you’ll have a small portion of this area encompassing your objective available. Completing that objective will open up more of the map for you to move on to future goals. The boundaries of these maps are very big and you will usually have to work to find the edges. Occasionally you might bump up against the edge of where the game wants you to be and it will warn you to get back on track, failing to do so will result in your death.
Death is, however, hardly permanent in Bad Company. Seemingly as a hold-over the the multiplayer space, when you die you are just respawned back at your 
last checkpoint, and when you get back to your point of demise all is just as it was. Enemies killed are still dead; buildings you wrecked are still in shambles. This sort of gives you the odd ability to just die your way through difficult parts of the game.
Battlefield multiplayer mainstay mode Conquest has been dumped in favor of new mode Gold Rush. This is a simple attack and defend game type. One team tries to assault a set of crates and plant explosives on them, and the other works to stop them. Sounds simple right? The real depth comes from the customizable class system. Similarly to other games, like Call of Duty 4, as you play you’ll unlock new weapons and abilities, such as calling in an artillery strike or health boost. This mode is a ton of fun with all the classes fun to play and the destruction still in effect. The fun and depth of the online experience mean this game won’t be getting old anytime soon.
+ Great story
+ Amazing destruction abilities
+ Good voice acting
+ Solid multi player
- Campaign respawns make missions too easy
Grade: A