The Battlefield series is back! — well, kinda...
I just got the chance to take a look at Battlefield: Bad Company on the Xbox 360 and my first impression is a fairly good one. I played the previous installments of Battlefield so after the demo finished downloading (1.5 gigs) I was pretty surprised at what was waiting for me.
When you think Battlefield, you think huge multiplayer combat right? Yeah, me too... But Battlefield: Bad Company seems like it will come packaged with a fairly wild single-player experience as well. You take on the role of Preston Marlowe, a rookie to B-Company, known as "Bad Company" which is a squad of misfit soldiers who the army has deemed to be 'expendable.' The demo only has a few short missions, but you definitely get a teaser of what's to come. Amidst the flying bullets, earth-shaking artillery barrages, and smacktalk from your squadmates, you follow a short storyline where the soldiers realize they are fighting Mercenaries rather than Russians. These mercenaries are paid in solid gold bars and given the squad's reputation, it's no surprise that the game will have you going AWOL to claim the gold for yourself.
I hadn't heard much about the game when I started playing, but I've been around the FPS block a few times and the basics are usually the same. Imagine my surprise when the wall I was hiding behind was literally blown away by the bad guy on the 50-cal. I shared the wall's fate shortly thereafter. As I kept playing I quickly came to the realization that damn near EVERYTHING in this game can be blown up!! Seriously! You can destroy everything except building frames and the husks of cars and I'm sure that's just so the world isn't flat by the time you're done with it.
After the short single-player maps provided in the demo, I hopped onto Xbox Live. This is very similar to the Battlefield games you are probably used to currently. Lots of vehicles, both land and air, huge maps with progressive spawn points, and plenty of people to shoot. Plus: the world can still be destroyed. Using a tank's primary cannon to knock down a wall that's being used as cover for your enemies is an absolute blast, and watching your passenger then cut them up with the machine gun is just icing on the cake.
The visuals in the game are everything you could hope for. Scopes have a nice fish-eye/edge-blur effect, explosions will concuss you, blurring your vision, and will also blast so much dust into the air that it's almost impossible to see for a few seconds. The sounds pull you right in, and if you have a nice stereo system, you may even notice yourself keeping your head low when the metal's flying.
Overall, I'm pretty excited. After messing with the demo I can tell you this is one I'll be checking out. Looks like a great job by EA DICE.
