Battlefield Bad Company released just over a year ago on June 23, 2008, Developed by Digital Illusions using the Frostbite Engine and published by Electronic Arts (EA). The story line revolves around “B” Company of the 222nd Army battalion, more commonly known as “Bad Company and the USA are fighting a war against the Russian Federation. Your squad consists of 4 misfits, Private Preston Marlowe the games protagonist, Private Terrence Sweetwater who talks too much, Private George Gordon Haggard who often provides some sort of comic relief for the team and the leader of the group Sergeant Samuel D. Redford, He volunteered for this gig, I know he’s nuts!. During the early course of the game the 4 misfits run into the Legionnaires who are a deadly mercenary army who gets paid in gold bars. Sweetwater searches a body and takes a little gold bar from a dead body. Curiosity gets the best of Bad Company and they go on the hunt for the gold bars. During the course of the chase for the gold, they find a ship loaded with gold and guess what? The US army finds our little band of misfits and orders them to surrender. Being a party of the 222nd Army Battalion the army makes a plea deal with the 4 soldiers to investigate Serdaristan. They are ordered to capture Zavomir Serdar the dictator of Serdaristan. They take Serdar’s helicopter and fly through Serdaristan and are eventually shot down. The squad and the dictator get captured but for private Preston who manages to survive but is stripped of all his weapons. Eventually he makes his way to a monastery where the rest of his squad is being kept. They escape and flee to Sadiz, dropping Serdar off on a little island in the middle of the ocean. The squad blows up 2 bridges to slow down the US army from launching an offensive attack. The squad reaches the gold bars but their attacked by the Legionnaire and his pimped out Ka-52 Helicopter. Private Preston shots down the helicopter. The squad returns to find the US army loading the gold into trucks, Preston convinces the commanding office they are army operatives and they are given a truck filled with gold and asked to join the convoy. The 4 misfits say yes but wait they veer off from the rest of the convoy and go their own way. The game ends with the Legionnaire rising from the burning wreckage.
As you can tell the story is pretty laughable and the voice acting really sold the story. It goes to show that outstanding voice acting can really make a game memorable for the right reasons instead of the wrong reasons. One of the things I really enjoyed was equipping a grenade to my gun and blowing a hole in the wall and walking in. Who needs a doorbell right? The environments are not fully destructible which would have been kick ass. Can’t kill the sniper behind the wall? Just blow it up instead. There are a ton of guns to collect as well. The overall shooting mechanics are very well done. One thing I liked was if you died that you would just respawn and have to run back to where you died. No cut scenes, no load screens and the enemies you killed? Still dead. Your squad mates are very chatty during the game however I felt at times they were completely useless and that I was the only person doing anything to advance on each mission.
I joined a game of online multiplayer however I got my ass handed to me and was completely confused on what I was supposed to do. Maybe that was because I was playing by myself or because the players who play it have been playing for a long time. I think the objective was to find boxes and detonate them and then you would advance and try and blow up the next one. Overall my team got our asses handed to us. I could see the multiplayer being a ton of fun with a group of your friends.
Overall I paid $14.99 Canadian for Battlefield Bad Company and I really enjoyed the game. The single player campaign seemed very short some compare it to the length of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare however I found it a lot shorter. I’m still on the fence on whether or not it was too short for a single player campaign. I enjoyed the voice acting, the laughable story, and the somewhat destructive buildings and most importantly the shooting mechanics were spot on. Highly recommended if you haven’t played it yet.
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