Battlefield Bad Company may look like any other FPS, but it tends to play a bit slower and more realistic
Took a while, but I finally got around to getting through a playthrough of Battlefield: Bad Company on solo and racked up 15 hours so far with multiplayer. This should be enough for me to give my thoughts on the game, even if I do need to go back through the single player to tie up some loose ends (remaining Achievements). Of course, I’ll be playing the multiplayer for the next several weeks or even months to come. Read on for my thoughts on this game that I original had trouble with but now I enjoy. While the multiplayer mechanics aren’t as smooth as Call of Duty 4 or Halo 3, the stat tracking and trophy/badge system makes multiplayer a lot of fun.
The Good:
- great presentation of graphics and sound
- very satisfying stat tracking and medal system for online play
- functional party system for online group play (for up to 4 friends)
The Bad:
- control takes a while to get used to (sluggish and not as intuitive as other FPS games)
- single player campaign ends too abruptly without any real resolution in storyline
- online squad system is poorly implemented
Intro
Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment (DICE), the developer behind the Battlefield games, was a small Swedish company that put worked with Electronic Arts to publish their first Battlefield game, Battlefield 1942, in 2002. After the popularity of BF 1942, which took place in WWII, EA bought DICE and the Battlefield games. Since then, EA DICE has produced Battlefield 2, several expansions and ports to Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142, and now Battlefield: Bad Company.
Battlefield 2 was perhaps the most popular Battlefield game that DICE had created, as it was modern combat and most easily understood by gamers. It was a very unique shooter because each side would have a commander who could set waypoints for squads to attempt to capture, etc. After Battlefield 2, DICE moved on to creating and releasing Battlefield 2142 for the PC (all of their most popular Battlefield games were PC based). Instead of modern combat like its previous iteration, Battlefield 2142 took place in the future with more sci-fi like weapons and tech. It was successful, but nowhere near as successful as Battlefield 2.
Many fans were anticipating Battlefield: Bad Company’s release on the 360, because it was the most recent Battlefield game and it was returning to modern combat. The game had quite a rocky time before its release, however. First of all, EA announced that they would sell certain gun unlocks for real money. This had the gaming community in an uproar, and it was not soon long afterward that EA decided to include the guns for all buyers of the special edition of the game or if you hit the max level in multiplayer. Longtime fans also complained with how many familiar Battlefield aspects were removed for Bad Company, such as parachutes, the ability to go prone, a commander, freedom to create your own squads, and the lack of Battlefield’s most popular gametype, Conquest. While DICE wouldn’t address many of these issues, they agreed to release a free download to enable Conquest mode shortly after the game was released (it has since been released, at the time of this writing).
Your squad will be yammering beside you throughout the entire campaign.
Storyline and Premise
Unlike the previous Battlefield games, Battlefield: Bad Company is the first game that actually has a storyline and campaign mode instead of the general multiplayer maps with bots. The storyline is actually pretty entertaining and a little different from other modern warfare FPS campaigns. In BFBC, you play the role of Private Preston Marlowe, and are assigned to B Company, or Bad Company. In this company you work with three other soldiers throughout the course of the game taking orders and going after various installations, etc. Your squadmates’ AI is scripted such that none of them really ever kill any enemies, but rather, just provide amusing commentary and jokes throughout the course of the game.
One interesting note about this game is that your squad isn’t exactly the most noble. When it happens on its first stash of mercenary gold bars, the squad hesitantly decides to begin its pursuit of more of the gold, throwing allegiance to the United States aside as each squad member dreams of what to with his new-found wealth. These gold bars are hidden across the various levels, but unlike GTA4′s pigeons or Lost Planet’s letters, these gold bars make sense with the storyline.
There are some drawbacks to the game’s storyline/campaign mode though. First of all, it’s a shame though that with 3 other AI opponents that don’t really ever do anything except chatter and comment, there was no option for co-op play of any sort. It’s also not a horribly short length (probably around Call of Duty 4′s campaign length) but it ends very abruptly. Not only do you not know who your main enemy is the entire game (is it the Russians?), but it has a very unsatisfying ending. You don’t see the face of the main “enemy” throughout the game until finally you kill a guy and find out, “Oh that was him? The game is over now?”
There used to be walls on that house before grenades blew them apart!
Gameplay Mechanics
Combat
The combat in BFBC is very similar to traditional FPS games, but for some reason everything feels more sluggish. Combined with the fact that almost every gun you find except sniper rifles doesn’t have a scope or sight of any sort, and it can get a little frustrating. Your accuracy is dependent on aiming down the sight and it also shakes a lot, making it far more difficult to be accurate in this game than any other FPS game I’ve recently played. But perhaps it’s also the most realistic – I doubt all soldiers in the Middle East now are fighting with sights on their M16′s.
Unlike contemporary FPS games, BFBC does not sport a regenerating life bar when you take cover after getting hit. Fortunately, you always carry around an auto injector that fills up your life to 100 (which has a cooldown). There are various weapons to find in the game, but you’re only allowed to hold one weapon at a time (again, another realistic choice).
One of the big features that BFBC has that other FPS games don’t have is destructible environments. Using rockets, grenades, C4, etc. on walls will generally blow them up. If you see enemies taking cover behind walls, you can often shoot an explosive device towards that wall and it will not only blow up the wall, but take out the enemy as well. It’s a pretty interesting mechanic that adds another layer of complexity to the gameplay.
Vehicles
BFBC wouldn’t be a Battlefield game without vehicles. Unlike traditional FPS campaigns where you run through cities mowing down anything you can, in BFBC the villages and firefights are too far apart to get to on foot. Often times you’ll be driving a Humvee, a tank, a helicopter, or even a boat to get from one area to another or using artillery to rain down upon unsuspecting enemies. The vehicles add an interesting element into the gameplay, and are especially fun to use in combination with the fact that BFBC has destructible environments. Tanks can be used to blow open buildings by either firing upon walls or even just directly driving into them. Vehicles almost make infantry seem trivial, but the various tools that you come across in the game allow you to deal with them.
Tools
Throughout the course of the game, you also come across various “tools” you can pick up, but you can only hold one item in your inventory at a time. The list of tools are as follows: rocket launcher, LZ937, C4, MRTR-5, and repair tool.
The rocket launcher and C4 are pretty self explanatory and are useful for taking out stationary targets or tanks. The repair tool allows you to repair any vehicle you find if it hasn’t been completely totaled. It’s useful in between fights when you find yourself in a lot of tank-on-tank battles right after one another. The MRTR-5 is a perhaps my favorite tool and the one I held onto throughout the entire campaign. The MRTR-5 tool allows you to call a mortar strike down on a target of your choosing, destroying rooftops, vehicles, and infantry caught in the area. The only issue with it is that there’s no birds eye view to discern where on the map you want the mortar strike to hit, it’s just simply where you’re looking. The last tool, the LZ937, is a laser designated air bomb. if you can lock onto a vehicle with the laser designator, a jet will fly by overhead and drop a bomb that you can guide in the air to hit the target you’re going after. It doesn’t do much damage against infantry, but it destroys vehicles. Its main drawback is that it’s hard to guide, especially when trying to destroy a moving a vehicle.
Snipers in multiplayer also wear ghillie suits like in Call of Duty 4
Multiplayer
BFBC supports 24 players max per game and are hosted on EA’s dedicated servers with about 8 total maps. Each team of 12 players is broken up automatically into three 4-man squads. You are only allowed to talk to other people in your squad – there is no way to actually talk to someone else on your team that is not in your squad. There isn’t a matchmaking algorithm to balance teams, but there is a party mode that allows you to enter a match as your own squad of you and three friends. There are a couple problems with this party system, however. First of all, there’s no way to all play on the same team if you have more than three friends that want to play with you. If you have five or six total players that want to play, you’re out of luck since the squad only allows for four players. Second of all, even if you form a party and search for a match, the first game you enter may not put you and your party members in the same squad, or even the same team (for balance reasons). You have to wait until the second match on the server for you and your party members to finally become one squad.
There are currently two modes available for BFBC multiplayer: Gold Rush and Conquest (Conquest is a free download). I’ve spent some time playing both and I prefer Gold Rush. Gold Rush involves an attacking team and a defending team over a generally large map. The Attacking team’s task is to blow up the two gold crates that the other team is defending. Once the two gold crates are blown up, the attacking team’s spawnpoint becomes the area they just took over while the defending team gets pushed back to the next two gold crates. Most maps in general have 6-10 gold crates total, and if the attacking team can destroy all of them, they win the round. The defending team’s job is to simply kill as many of the attackers as possible, because unlike the defending team, the attacking team has a limited number of respawns. If the attacking team manages to destroy two gold crates to push the defending team back, they get a replenishment of respawns.
Conquest is the bread and butter of the Battlefield games, and when it wasn’t included in the original release, fans were in an uproar. EA DICE added it to BFBC as a free download, but it’s not impressive at all. The concept is simple – there are five flags on the map, and both teams try to take over the flags. If one team grabs all five flags, they win the match. At the same time, each team has a “total lifebar” which corresponds to the number of respawns the team has remaining. The more flags a team holds, the bigger the chunk of that lifebar the opposing team loses each time someone on their side dies. In older Battlefield games, Conquest was on huge maps that required vehicles to travel around. You could be fighting for one point or another, but you had to really make the decision which points you wanted to hold. In this version for BFBC, the developers simply grabbed four of the eight Gold Rush maps, took a small section of those maps, and converted it into a Conquest map. The maps are far too small to play on – you can generally shoot someone at a different flag point than the one you’re standing at – they’re that close. A lot of people don’t like Conquest on BFBC because everything is too small and maps end too quickly. I agree.
BFBC makes use of a kit system. You are able to choose any of the five kits you wish whenever you respawn, and each has its own specialties. The Assault class is the general soldier class of the game. He uses an assault rifle with an attached grenade launcher (for blowing up walls) and has a self-healing needle. He excels in medium range combat but cannot take on vehicles. The Demolition class has a shotgun, rocket launcher, grenades, and antitank mines. The shotgun and grenades work well in up-close urban combat, while the rocket launcher and AT Mines make quick work of vehicles. The Recon class is the sniper class in the game, equipped with a sniper rifle, a motion sensor, a handgun, and a laser designator. The Specialist class is equipped with a silenced SMG and is the only class that will not give his position away when he fires his weapon. He also has C4 and a tracer gun, which when fired upon a vehicle, allows any Demolition class to fire a rocket and automatically home in on the tracer’s target. Finally, the last class in the game is the Support class. He is armed with a light machine gun, med kits, a repair kit, and a mortar strike tool. His light machine gun doesn’t do as much damage as other classes, but his med kits and repair kit allow him to heal teammates and vehicles, and his mortar strike tool is useful for raining down on tight defenses.
Finally, rounding out the multiplayer is some intensive stat tracking and a rank/medal system that is not unlike Call of Duty 4′s challenge system. Killing enemies generally awards 10 experience/score, but doing various other things also provides more bonus points. Headshots give an extra 5 points, saving a squadmate from an enemy awards another 5 points, blowing up a gold crate awards 30 points, etc. Everything is score based and your true measure of skill in BFBC is not your k/d ratio, but rather, your score/minute ratio. How effective are you in the match as every minute goes by? If you’re sitting there just camping for kills, your score/minute will most likely be lower than someone constantly patrolling and defending the gold crates, for example. It’s also very satisfying to be earning badges and emblems, such as Bronze/Silver/Gold Defender badges, Artillery badges, Demolition badges, etc. These are awarded when you perform certain feats in the game, such as destroying 5 targets with artillery in a match, killing three guys with grenades in a match, etc. It makes playing the game a lot more fun because as you excel or perform certain tasks, you are rewarded as well with recognition and score/experience. Each badge/trophy/wildcard that you unlock during the middle of the match gives you a score boost as well.
Tanks are great, until you come across an enemy chopper. Then you’re toast!
Achievement System
I’m happy with the Achievement System in the game. Most of the Achievements are awarded for going through the game’s campaign levels (although I am annoyed that the difficulty level Achievements are not stackable) and I believe that’s the way it should be. At the same time, there are a few multiplayer ones that are generally reasonable (reaching a certain rank in game, performing certain feats in multiplayer, etc.)
There are two Achievements though that will probably have completionists playing the multiplayer game for many months to come. One Achievement is awarded for getting every badge/trophy/medal in the game and another one is for getting 10,002 kills. These are obviously hardcore Achievements, and while they will be very time consuming, I don’t think they’re unreasonable. I like that there’s an Achievement for getting all of the awards in the game instead of focusing on specific ones. That way, it leaves the multiplayer awards on the multiplayer side yet it is still conveniently tied back to your Gamercard to show that you were able to accomplish everything in BFBC.
Finding the gold bars in the game may have taken a cue from the Pulp Fiction briefcase scene
Final Thoughts
Battlefield: Bad Company and I got off to an initially rocky start. Its level of realism (slower pace, less accuracy, etc.) took some getting used to after playing other FPS, but the single player game trained me very well for playing the multiplayer. Now I really enjoy the multiplayer (although I feel that the Defending team generally always has the advantage over the Attacking team in Gold Rush). I find myself wanting to play it whenever I can, which goes to show how well designed the multiplayer was.
I give the game a B+. I feel that the multiplayer is the main attraction to the game, but the single player itself isn’t too bad either. It’s not as good as Call of Duty 4′s campaign, and it falls flat at the end, but it’s still definitely worth playing. I’m very happy with the unlocks, awards, and stat tracking for the game – it ensures a lot of longevity for multiplayer. If the single-player was tightened up a bit more and some of my minor quibbles with certain multiplayer aspects (forced squads, no teamchat, etc.) were addressed, this game would score closer to an A. But as it stands, it’s still quite a great game, especially for multiplayer. I’ll most likely be playing it as my main multiplayer fix until hopefully something better comes out in the Fall.
