Battlefield: Bad Company from EA/Dice gives you the opportunity to blow up buildings, vehicles, and people in a variety of different ways. Experience huge open field battles either on foot or in a tank, whichever you prefer, but it’s up to you and your squad to bring victory.

Bad Company has a single player campaign that revolves around Private Preston Marlowe and his new band of misfits, the B Company. B Company are the unwanted soldiers that no one would remember if they died. As part of this crew, you are thrown into Russian enemy territory and realize after some time that the Army has left you behind. In doing so, you decide to go off on your own and collect some gold that is scattered around the different enemy camps.

Single player has you fight along side your three teammates, which at times are not the most helpful of crews but the good thing is that they never die. Your squad really provides the color commentary in the game and throws out the funny one-liners to keep the edge off of all the destruction. Even at the end of multiplayer matches there is usually a funny comment made, like after you lose “Now I have to stay in the Army forever!”

The environments in Bad Company are almost entirely destructible, from the crates and fences, to the buildings even to the trees in the fields. The destruction is actually a pivotal part of the game. You can blow a hole in the side of a building using a rocket launcher or grenade in order to gain easy access to an objective, or use a tank to clear the fields of trees so that your opponents can’t hide snipers there. The destruction in the game looks incredible and is highly functional, which is an added bonus.

Single player serves its purpose to get you acquainted with all of the weapons and controls of the game, but the fun does not begin until you fire up the multiplayer. In multiplayer you are thrown in to a giant battle called Gold Rush with up to 24 players. Gold Rush is a pretty simple Attack and Defend style game where one side tries to destroy the other’s gold while one team defends. The different maps will provide a large array of vehicles for you to choose from in order to either defend or attack. A great aspect of Bad Company is the balance between the different character classes and vehicles. Each character class serves its purpose on a map and is awarded a special ability with time. As you rank up from getting kills, healing teammates or completing objectives, you will unlock different guns for you characters as well. You don’t have to be Rambo to rank up but can instead play a support character and heal your teammates.

The balance in the game is nice in that tanks can be destroyed and people cannot camp in a building and wait for you to come in because you can mortar it first and blow the doors off the hinges. Parts of the map that may appear to be blocked off by fences can be shot down to give way to better positions as well. Multiplayer is all about teamwork and knowing what mix of characters is needed in order to beat the enemy.

My biggest gripe with the game is that there is currently only one multiplayer mode to accompany the single player mode. The ever-popular Conquest mode from previous titles is for some reason not in the final version of this game and will instead become available later via a free download instead.

The sounds in Bad Company are superb and the explosions really get you going. Bad Company is easiest summed up as a tactically explosive game that will get you hooked quick.

Overall: 8.5 out of 10

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