Another great review from Kansascity.com
I’d like to know if anyone has actually found, seen, or even heard of Battlefield Bad Company getting a negative review? From what I can tell, they’re getting nothing but awesome reviews with every one of the reviewers being completely blown away by this video game.
Please, if you happen to find a bad review post it in the comments here, I’m interested to know if a bad review on BFBC even exists.
GAME REVIEW: Bad company, good times
“Battlefield: Bad Company”
PLATFORM: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
STYLE: 1-player action (up to 24-player online)
PUBLISHER: Electronic Arts
DEVELOPER: Digital Illusions CE
RELEASE: June 25
ESRB: T
CONCEPT: Single-player Battlefield finally comes into its own.
GRAPHICS: Destruction, wide open vistas, character models – all awesome. Interiors are a little sparse.
SOUND: It’s truly a crime to play this game without surround sound.
PLAYABILITY: Sometimes vehicles get stuck on pesky objects, but the FPS is top-notch.
ENTERTAINMENT: After making your own doorways through pretty much any wall you want, it’ll be tough to ever go back.
REPLAY VALUE: Moderately high.
THE BOTTOM LINE: 9.25/10
It’s been a long wait since “Battlefield: Bad Company” was first announced back in mid-2006, but the extreme polish evident in the final product makes it all worthwhile. Both single- and multiplayer shine - at long last redeeming DICE for the crappy bot-fests offline players had to endure in previous games in the series.
As “new guy” Preston Marlowe you’ve been stuck in the fatality-prone B-Company instead of going to prison for some offense that is strangely never explained. Entertaining banter from screw-off squadmates Haggard and Sweetwater> plays well off of the hard-nosed sergeant Redford, and is a nice change of pace from the ridiculous one-liners you hear in most first-person shooter games. These guys primarily function as storytelling devices in your rogue quest for mercenary gold, so you never have to futz with commands or worry about keeping them alive - every once in a while they may even kill an enemy.
The primary gameplay draw is the destructible environments. Mowing down trees with a turret, creating your own side entrance to a heavily fortified base, or ripping open a building to get at the enemies inside are all endlessly fun. Then you gradually add in vehicles like tanks, boats and choppers, and deadly weapons like the mortar and air strike, and it takes things even higher. Instead of having to save your super-powered mortar strike for just the right moment, you can bomb buildings as much as you want (after a modest recharge time). Vehicles can be endlessly repaired as long as they’re not totally destroyed. Most of the time, leaving behind a tank feels more like a strategic decision than a limitation, and uber-weapons are eventually taken away at the end of a level to prevent overuse.
With enemy AI, there’s a thin line between very stupid and very smart. Sometimes soldiers stand out in the open and slowly reload their gun while you blast them to bits, but the majority of the time they tear open every building you hide in and attack from all sides. It takes the “no cover is safe” dynamic of the Auger in “Resistance: Fall of Man” to an entirely new level.
Unfortunately, the campaign loses a little steam in the final hour or two. The game runs out of new gadgets and rides to introduce and you just drive from town to town grinding through hordes of enemies ad nauseum. The last battle has an “oh, I guess that’s it” feeling to it, and I didn’t really feel a sense of ill will toward the antagonist. Also, it’s disappointing to discover that collecting gold and rare weapons doesn’t amount to anything worthwhile.
Multiplayer kicks things back up, however, by incorporating all of the great destruction and vehicle elements into satisfying attack and defend battles over gold crates scattered throughout the eight huge maps. The five character classes all offer unique weapon combos, and the constantly shifting battlefield dynamics offer plenty of incentive to regularly change your kits. Experience earned in multiplayer (+10 per kill a la “Call of Duty 4″) increases your rank and allows you to buy new weapons and items. Piling four guys into a jeep and rushing into a firefight is just as fun as Battlefield fans have come to expect, but it serves as a bittersweet reminder that all of the building blocks were there for a co-op campaign that will never be.
SOUND OFF
“Bad Company” features quite possibly the best sound work in any video game to date. You’ve never heard anything like the sound of gunfire echoing off the inside of a building. Even standards like the roar of a tank engine, the clinking of turret shells on the ground, and the general battlefield cacophony sound incredible.
SECOND OPINION: 9.25
Story has never been a real component of the “Battlefield” games, which makes “Bad Company’s” hilarious narrative all the more surprising. While it’s a shame that the main villain doesn’t appear until the last few acts, this game is mostly about the ride, not the destination. It feels like you’re on a road trip with your buddies, only with bullets, bad guys and gorgeous explosions. Much has been made of the destructible environments, and they are very cool - even if they’re a bit canned. Seeing an enemy duck into a house and knocking out a wall to expose him is as effective as it is fun. It works both ways, though, which is a great incentive to keep moving. And even with only one mode available at launch, multiplayer> is a must-play part of the experience. - Jeff Cork
For more video game news and reviews, check out the latest issue of Game Informer or visit the magazine’s Web site at www.gameinformer.com.
Battlefield Bad Company scores a 9 from GameDaily
Battlefield Bad Company scored yet another 9, this time the review score came from GameDaily:
“Most military-themed first-person shooters have the same kind of ultra-serious attitude, where soldiers charge into a war zone with a “win or die trying” mantra and shoot
anything that moves. There’s nothing wrong with that (as the superb Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare proves), but seeing something with a change of pace wouldn’t be a bad thing for the worn-out genre. In this regard, Battlefield: Bad Company stands out from the pack, bringing lots of gun-toting excitement and cleverly fusing it with a dark, humorous attitude. As a result, it’s one of the best shooters you’ll play this summer.
In Bad Company’s main story mode, you play as Preston Marlowe, a newbie in the 222nd Army battalion placed in the B-Company team. Leading the team is Sergeant Redford, a gruff, worn-out soldier who accepted this assignment with the promise of a smooth retirement. Also in the pack is Sweetwater, a nerd who has the hots for the radio dispatch girl. Then there’s Haggard, a bazooka-carrying grunt with a tendency to blow things up, even when it’s not necessary.
B-Company handles most of the Army’s dirty work, sneaking in undetected and taking out Russian forces. Somewhere along the way, however, gold bars appear, inspiring the team to work for their own personal gain. What begins as a mission for freedom and liberty soon becomes a quest for revenge and profit, with each member of the team cashing in. There really isn’t much to do with the gold by the game’s conclusion, but its involvement in the storyline, along with the constant bickering of your squad mates, keeps the story fresh all the way to the end.
DICE put a lot of effort into the game’s development, building it from the ground up rather than porting over an earlier effort from the PC. Bad Company features outstanding visuals, from its wide-open environments to its nifty-looking explosions. The fact that you can destroy almost anything in the game is welcome addition. Fire a grenade launcher at a house and watch the explosion leave a gaping hole in the side of it, which you can jump through. (This turns out to be a helpful alternative to the front door.) Watching piles of sandbags and armored vehicles crumble is great, too, even if you don’t necessarily have to destroy them to proceed to your next mission.
What’s cool about the level design is that there’s more than one way to your objective. If you feel gutsy, you can go with the front-door approach, driving up in a tank and firing at anything that moves. You can also sneak around, taking enemy forces by surprise and apprehending ammunition and gold. The vehicular driving stages look great, although occasional camera problems do get in the way depending on which position you take. The map system is easy to read, clearly highlighting where your next objective is, as well as the red “kill areas” that mean instant death if you cross the lines.
Audio plays a huge part in the game as well. The actors filling the roles of your squad-mates do excellent work, yelling at each other as Sergeant Redford tries to get a handle on each situation. It’s also funny to hear some of their side comments, such as Sweetwater’s crush on the dispatch girl (”Tell her I said hi!”) and Haggard’s observations on the team’s current transport (”It’s no Truckasaurus Rex!”). The in-game music, which plays intermittently, is also good, and the sound effects deliver as expected.
As for gameplay, it’s pure Battlefield action. Although you can’t switch to different soldiers on the fly like you can in Modern Combat, it’s still very deep and satisfying. The controls are tight and responsive, letting you shoot with the right trigger and aim with precision with the left. You can also change weapons and firing mechanisms with the press of a button, so you can set up a grenade launcher with no problem (unless you’re out of ammo, in which you’ll need to refill at one of the many ammunition crates). Vehicular controls are smooth, too, although we can’t figure out why acceleration is on the left trigger instead of the right. That said, it’s not as big a deal as the slightly inept artificial intelligence. On occasion, your fellow soldiers will shoot like mad and leave themselves wide open to damage, especially in vehicles.
Also, Bad Company takes a refreshing break from the “auto-heal” function that most other first-person shooters possess. If you’re running low on health, you have to hit the left shoulder button to pull out an adrenaline syringe and restore your energy. However, you only have access to so many of the syringes. Overuse it and you’ll find yourself in a fatal situation. Fortunately, you can respawn with very little penalty.
Bad Company’s single-player campaign takes several hours to complete, but it’s always fun to return to. Blowing up stuff is just as fun the 20th hour as it is the first, and there are always collectible items, weapons and gold to find. If you’re more interested in multiplayer, however, you’ll enjoy Gold Rush mode.
Here, up to 24 players compete on a battlefield, with half of the soldiers defending the gold and the others proceeding to blow it up. There are multiple class levels available, including Assault, Specialist, Recon, Demolitions and Support. Each one provides an advantage to their team, with their own specialized tools and weaponry. Sure, you can be a selfish lone gun, but you won’t survive very long. This game is all about working together. Find some friends and have a great time with it.
There should’ve been more to the multiplayer, though. DICE promised an additional mode, but still hasn’t confirmed when its release. It’s not like what’s here isn’t sufficient, because it is. It just would’ve been nice to have something extra, like a Conquest or co-op mode. After all, there are four members in the B-Company team, and your friends should be able to control them.
Those minor issues aside, Battlefield: Bad Company is awesome and there’s plenty to do, both by yourself and with friends online. This is definitely Company worth keeping, even if it’s a dumb ass like Haggard.”
Battlefield Bad Company gets a 9.1 from IGN Team Xbox
Battlefield is knocking down 8’s and 9’s from every reviewer I’ve seen so far, they’re doing almost as good as the new GTA IV it seems.
It’s not like Battlefield: Bad Company is everything to everyone. It’s not the best first person shooter you’ll ever play; there’s basically only one mode to multiplayer, its got some really corny writing, the color palette is sort of bland, etc., etc. But I’ll be damned if it isn’t one of the best games I’ve played this year. Focused, concise and pure in its delivery of big explosions and exciting action, Bad Company is a gem of good game design and the best Battlefield game I’ve played since the original.
Developer DICE should be commended for hitting the nail on the head. Like the best games, I want to overlook its flaws for the sheer awesomeness of the rest of it. Battlefield games are historically purely multiplayer affairs, setting teams of gamers playing specific roles in objective-based team-oriented games. That’s not really a new concept, but one that the series overall has been honing and perfecting for years. Bad Company is the culmination of that, with a pretty compelling single player game thrown in for good measure.
On the single player side, the game offers up a decent enough storyline about a rag tag bunch of misfits tearing across the countryside fighting bad guys and capturing lost gold. Nothing you haven’t seen before, especially in movies like Kelly’s Heroes or Three Kings, but it compels you to have a good time, something too many games have forgotten how to do. More importantly, the action of the single player sets up the multiplayer very nicely without feeling like a string of loosely hooked together arenas interspersed with cut scenes. It also saves you the high drama. I was fully expecting one of the characters to die during the storyline in a cheap attempt to make me feel some emotion. But DICE never took that cheap shot. I don’t think they want you to necessarily develop some deep emotional connection to the characters. I think they want you to have a good time. If so, mission accomplished.
The characters, especially Haggard and Sweetwater, the two “comic relief†characters were really chafing me early on. I really wanted them to shut up and cut the shtick. It’s just a little too much in the early going. But looking back now after playing the entire game, I think the chatter heavy early levels of the game are that way to set up the story. And the game’s designers smartly get it out of the way. After you get down to what your real business is – stealing gold – the game starts telling the story through the action. The army cuts you off, forcing you to go rogue. Not a problem, considering you were already a bunch of loser soldiers they didn’t know what to do with in the first place, that’s why they put you in Bad Company.
By keeping the story simple and light, DICE doesn’t bog you down with trying to figure out what’s going on. It’s simple: you’re gonna get rich or die trying. This is the kind of story I was hoping for out of Army of Two, a game that I think tried to take a similar tack, but got bogged down in weird conspiracy B.S. and lame, uninteresting characters. Good job on getting it right this time, EA.
More importantly about single player, it let’s you try everything out. It’s a good set up for the multiplayer matches where you’ll be driving vehicles and using cool equipment like laser guided bombs and mortar strikes. Honestly, playing through the single player is a great warm up for the multiplayer, and finishing the game will actually make you better when you go online. I promise you.
The overall design of Bad Company – and indeed, the entire Battlefield series – is based on flexibility. While hardly an open-world sandbox type of game, the levels are definitely not just corridors. Well, at some parts they are. But most of the time you have a lot of options on how to tackle an objective. You can tear through a town with a tank blasting every last building to rubble, finding all of the collectible guns (collectibles, another sign Bad Company knows it’s a video game and not some kind of complex interactive fiction) and blowing up every last exploding barrel you see. Or you can grab a boat and jam up river, grenade launchers popping heat along the banks as you go. Or you can sneak through the woods all stealthy and snipe as you go. There’s a ton of ways you can do things, and that only makes the experience more satisfying.
The hunt for lost gold sets up the multiplayer. Like I said, there’s only one multiplayer mode, which is a two-team objective based game where one team defends the gold and the other captures it by blowing it up. Maybe they’re just setting the gold free. In multiplayer is when you get into character classes, five in all, and they feel extremely well balanced. Every class has a special weapon or piece of equipment, but you’ll have to unlock those. The nice thing is, you unlock stuff in the order you want to. You earn credits which can be spent however you want. I highly recommend the support class’ mortar strike for one of your first purchases.
Like any team based multiplayer game though, your experience playing it is going to be highly dependent on who you play it with. All of the vehicles seat more than one person, and in most cases there are two stations that control a weapon. If you take off in a chopper or a tank without a compadre, you’re basically cutting your effectiveness in half. It’s also a really good idea if at least one person on board has a support kit too, since they can repair vehicles.
Another cardinal rule that must be followed in this game is talking. You have got to hook up your headset and talk to your team. Bad Company does not reward teams full of lone wolves. Get on there and talk, make a buddy and work together. No one’s saying you have to be BFF or hold hands; that’s up to you. But this game is zero fun with people that don’t want to play it the way they should.
At this point, I’ve probably played less than ten online matches, first with other media types and the devs, and one or two with the regular civilians. The only time I had a good time was when people worked together. But those times were really awesome. Bad Company’s single multiplayer mode actually offers a lot in the way of variety. Sure, you’re always attacking or defending the gold, but when you factor in all the weapons, vehicles and equipment, you’ll realize just how many ways there are to do the things you want to do. From a design point of view, DICE really nailed it. The classes and weapons seem perfectly balanced. Who’s to say what exploits people will discover as the game matures, but hey, welcome to online gaming. That’s what downloadable updates are for. If my mortar attack gets nerfed though, I’m gonna be mad pissed.
Battlefield: Bad Company knows what it wants to do and does it. The gameplay is simple and easy to wrap your mind around, but opens up to a lot of different strategies. The explosions are visceral and fun, and the game looks great too. Yeah, I bitched about the color palette, but there are moments when you realize they’re going for that smoky, hazy look that a battle-ravaged landscape would have and it’s O.K. It may not be a magnum opus like GTA IV, but Battlefield: Bad Company is a great piece of mindless fun to waste away some hours with this summer.
Another good review for BFBC from GamePlanet
Bad Company is an action-packed, vehicle-ridden, explosive-charged FPS which really packs a punch. Deformable environments and a vast array of vehicles to command, as well as exemplary single-player and multiplayer make for great bang for your buck. This is certainly no one trick pony and any downfalls are more than made up for.
9.0 / 10
“Battlefield: back on track.“
Ups:
Fantastic graphics and long draw distance. Great atmosphere. First truly deformable environment with near fully destructible buildings. Massive playing area and a diverse range of vehicles and classes to use. A good number of multiplayer maps.
Downs:
AI can be irritating in single-player. Only one game mode in multiplayer on release (more to come).
You can read the full review of Battlefield Bad Company by GamePlanet here.
