Bad Company review (360/PS3)

You don't play first person shooters for the storyline and you don't play them for the emotional attachment. You play them to shoot people in the face and blow stuff up.

The humble FPS is by far the most primeval of genres, tapping into the caveman [or woman] instinct to inflict suffering on those opposed to you.

Battlefield: Bad Company is the latest game from DICE that does just that. The renowned PC FPS series has always been lacking one component and that's a single player campaign.

DICE have listened to the fans and come up with Bad Company, a game that attempts to bring the scale of most Battlefield games down a notch.

You take control of US scallywag Preston Marlowe, a GI misfit who has avoided jail (after joyriding a helicopter) by signing up to 'Bad' company, a gang of similar miscreants and ne'er-do-wells.

Led by the stereotypical Sergeant Redford, you join the weedy Stillwater and pyrotechnic-hungry redneck Haggard (they prefer to be called 'sons of the soil - PC Ed) in the most ludicrous portrayal of the US army you've ever seen.

Thrown into a fictional war between the US and Russia, your squad quickly gets sidetracked by a mercenary captain called The Legionnaire who has a stockpile of gold. Cue going AWOL and blowing up everything in sight.

Its plot is hardly original, yet it's thrilling watching it unfold through cinematic cut-scenes with film-like direction. The voice acting is authentic and the dialogue extremely sharp. It makes a change from the typical FPS dross and keeps you involved throughout the game. The game lasts about 8 hours on normal difficulty, so expect plenty of action during your tour of duty.

And what a tour it is. Bad Company's biggest gimmick is its destruction model. Using a variety of high explosive weapons, you can rain annihilation down on everything in sight.

If you know there's an enemy hiding in a building (which you will thanks to a handy mini-map that displays your surroundings) then instead of walking through the doorway, you can fire a grenade and create your own. It works.

Brick, wood, metal or mortar will not stand in your way. There are some load-bearing walls which stand firm (and anything objective-related, of course), but apart from that, you'll be sending fences, walls, trees and vehicles flying in a myriad of dust. Several set pieces will have you bombarding whole towns, which is visually impressive. The feature keeps you on your toes (in both the single and the multiplayer) as cover is no longer impregnable.

The feature is, however, a bit sensitive to impact, with benches and boxes exploding by simply brushing against them.

Demolition aside, the game does have some other worthy traits. When you die (unless it's an on-the-rails vehicle section in a helicopter or tank) you'll respawn just outside of the kill-zone. It's the same treatment that you usually get when playing online, but converted to offline.

It's not exactly realistic, but it saves killing the same enemies over and over again if you get stuck. Bad Company is made even easier with the inclusion of an adrenaline shot. When you're low on health, you just administer a charge and recover your health. There's a slight cool-down on the feature, but it makes you pretty much invincible (that doesn't sound fun at all! - hardcore Ed).

You will need all the help you can get, incidentally, as the enemy AI is capable of shooting your from a mile away. You'll come up against snipers, tanks, jeeps, fixed emplacements and packs of gun-toting goons.

They'll inflict nasty amounts of damage if you're caught out of cover. You've got a sprint button and the ability to duck available, but when your comfy house could be blown to smithereens at any point, it ups the ante.

The range of weapons is impressive and collecting them all will provide Xbox 360 owners with achievement points. On your quest for gold, you can find crates, which again will grant you rewards.

Bad Company backs its gameplay up with an impressive engine - everything is crisp and sharp. Characters look pretty lifelike, textures are well defined and explosion effects are tremendous.

Particle effects, post processing and anti-aliasing all feature heavily. It's by far the best Battlefield seen, with its only blemish is that PC fans won't get to experience it.

The levels have an impressive scale for a console-based shooter, with plenty of detail on display. It's nice to see large environments, with something to actually look at.

The game keeps you on track with a red borderline (which causes you to explode if you cross it) so it's not truly 'open,' but it's a larger scale than other console shooters.

Multiplayer continues the large-scale combat, but only has one mode at present - Gold Rush. 'Attackers' and 'Defenders' is the name of the game here and it works extremely well.

There's a respectable selection of maps to play, so there is plenty to do. The game will be getting a free content update in the form of Conquest, but no date has yet been placed. Connecting to games has been a bit dodgy so far, but EA are aware of the problem and are apparently attempting to rectify the issues.

Bad Company is both generic and inventive at the same time. It's a breath of fresh air to see a storyline and relatable characters in this type of game, yet it is the traditional macho pro-US brainwash we've seen before.

The destruction is a nice touch and we'd love to see it implemented in other games, but it doesn't really change the genre, just improve it. It's well worth a look-in and is likely to keep you busy over a weekend.

7.5/10

Marco Fiori