Dom Robinson reviews

Distributed by
Electronic Arts

Price: £49.99 Players: 1; Online: 2-24 Widescreen: Yes 60Hz: Yes (optional) HDTV: 720p/1080i/1080p Dolby Digital 5.1 sound: Yes Xbox Live-enabled: Yes Yes, Battlefield: Bad Company is another army-based shooter but a lot more whammy to the average game and which has a nice balance of the arcadey-feel of blasting away, while giving you the 'get stuck in' feel of the old Medal of Honour games, so you can put paid to the bad guys with satisfaction. The idea is that, set in the near future, you and three other guys, Haggard, Redford and Sweetwater, are plunged deep into a dramatic Eurasian conflict. However, you just don't think you'll get the respect you deserve on your return to the fold, so it's tempting to go out on your own personal mission and blast seven shades of shit out of everything for the gain of some sweet gold. In fact, perhaps you're really controlling Gordon Brown since he sold all of Britain's gold reserves when it was at its lowest price and now they've nothing to fall back on in these harsh economic times...

Battlefield: Bad Company Clip 1: We have explosive! It has the kind of 'sandbox' element to proceedings that normally allow to you "go anywhere/do anything", a la GTA4, but while you can't venture outside of the target environment, almost everything is destructible. Note, however, that in the same way Red Faction promised the same thing back in 2001, here everything is similarly only blow-up-able to a point as they're built a certain way. Then again, if you could really reduce every last brick to a pile a rubble it'd be a bit too ridiculous so this has the fairly realistic touch of, say, leaving the more sturdy elements of a house standing that, under such treatment, would eventually collapse, as that allows you a chance to hide behind things while the baddies blast you. This can be seen towards the end of my 'rocket launcher fun' video as everything is seen to blow up around Redford outside. Quite honestly, it's one long exercise in crash/bang/wallop as everything booms about around you, as you can see from the clips uploaded, and you'll be hard-pushed to find a bigger bang for your buck in the run-up to Xmas.

Battlefield: Bad Company Clip 3: Blast the enemy tank! However, while it's great to have plenty of destructive environments one problem is that you can heal yourself way too often, and when you do die you just respawn in the same area with no need to repeat anything apart from sometimes covering a bit of distance since the last save - since anything already shot to pieces will remain dead. The fact you don't have to repeat sections means there isn't anything to be lost by being killed, which can end up being disatisfying as a result and this can be seen by the clip where I sort out the enemy tank with a rocket launcher. In any other game, where I get killed just as I kill him, I'd be back to the start of that segment as a result, but here? It's business as usual - I'm alive again and I've got to get to the meeting point. Madness. On balance, there are better shooters out there, such as John Woo's Stranglehold. It's a good blaster for a bit of fun, but it does become far too repetitive and overall it comes across like a knockabout Call of Duty rather than a serious game.

Battlefield: Bad Company Clip 4: Rocker launcher fun! On other aspects of the game, it looks fantastic, it has great weapons - although those can be a bit tricky to get used to - and outstanding Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, and driving vehicles is a lot of fun. On the downside, there are occasional glitches such as the clip shown here where Redford just won't fire at the bad guy, even though he's standing right in front of him and, in general, why can baddies see you when you're hidden behind trees? Anyway, as I said, there's a brilliant bang for your buck in this title, but it also has to be said that it's a great inbetweener but at this point it's not a classic because there's too many explosive things and other elements mentioned that make it too easy (and so, the high scores are more in-keeping with the short term and not the long term). That said, we can see that it has a fantastic new game engine (Frostbite, by DICE) and also that it's clearly got amazing potential for the future, and for those who are into multiplayer gaming (which I don't have), I can see how this title will be outstanding in that capacity. It's just that the single player offering needs a bit more substance to it. I'll also add that it has one major plus in that, after you die, the loading times to get you back to where you were are very quick indeed, so there's no hanging around waiting for it to restart.

Battlefield: Bad Company Clip 6: Glitch as Redford won't fire at the enemy In this review, I've uploaded a number of clips including the ones above, which are as follows: Battlefield: Bad Company Clip 1: We have explosive! Battlefield: Bad Company Clip 2: Using the enemy artillery guns Battlefield: Bad Company Clip 3: Blast the enemy tank! Battlefield: Bad Company Clip 4: Rocker launcher fun! Battlefield: Bad Company Clip 5: Walking through Kablammoland! Battlefield: Bad Company Clip 6: Glitch as Redford won't fire at the enemy Battlefield: Bad Company Clip 7: Grenade finally hits the boat! Visit my DVDfeverGames Youtube channel.

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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2008.