GB Review: Battlefield: Bad Company (PS3)

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GB Review: Battlefield: Bad Company (PS3)Posted 2:07pm Sun Aug 10, 2008 by Brian Mohr Tags: Review, Battlefield Bad Company, PlayStation 3, EA, 4 stars

Battlefield: Bad Company may not completely revamp the war game experience, but it does modify it enough to keep you interested throughout both on and offline. The biggest new feature clearly is the ability to blow buildings apart -- and visuals are spectacular, but the game features more than just that. For once, it features an entertaining single-player experience with a meaningful storyline. Of course, it brings a quality online experience as well to keep you playing for some time.

score:

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War games are so common today that in order to stand out from the crowd, the game really has to do something different. Battlefield: Bad Company may not revolutionize the genre by any means, but it does add some nice improvements to the next-generation experience to make it fun and interesting.

Easily the biggest new improvement to the series is the impressive visuals. Worth noting is that it is in first-person. Running through the levels, your player shakes and vibrates. The visuals of guns and various weapons on screen are very realistic.

Those are all well and good, but what really catches your eye the most is the incredible detail of the environments with fires, special effects and more. Even more notable than that are the destructible environments, explosions look incredibly real with chunks of rubble exploding around you. Hiding in a building is far from safe anymore, and can be a bit nerve-racking, as a tank can blow the roof off, literally.

The game features more than just visuals though. The sound is very good with impressive war sounds, the guns are very realistic and explosions are incredible too. The musical score works with the various environments and moods and the single-player experience actually has some good dialogue with character.

Did I do that?

Speaking of the single-player experience, it puts you in the role of the new player in Bad Company. A group of problem soldiers who take on the worst of assignments in order to score money in the form of gold bars. Although you’re not able to command your teammates, the action is exciting and the missions are interesting. The game features a number of weapons to play with as well as explosives and health injectors to gain life. There are side goals as well as numerous vehicles including helicopters, boats, trucks and more in the seven-level offline campaign.

As for the control scheme, it’s very user friendly with the use of the triggers and sticks. If you’ve played a first-person shooter before it will take little time to adjust. The only difficulty was flying helicopters, which takes some getting used to.

Not to be forgotten from any Battlefield experience is the online component which is once again solid. It features up to 24 players per map, all vehicles in the single-player mode including tanks, jeeps, boats, helicopters and hummers, a variety of weapons including turrets, cannons and rockets on the field as well as five arm sets to choose from, each group features unlockable bonuses too. While the conquest mode that Battlefield is known for isn’t featured yet, the online option is solid nonetheless.