Battlefield Bad Company

Before you start sending me unsavoury messages regarding the punctuality of this review, might I remind you that first and foremost, I don’t get paid to do this. I get paid to stand around a shop all day selling expensive things to people who don’t earn a penny they spend – and with a lack of windows, I’ve actually forgot what the sun looks like. I should also inform you at this point that I wrote a charming piece regarding nightclubs about a month ago, because I couldn’t be arsed writing this review earlier. Incidentally, fuck me, I’ve been really lazy…

Over the course of the last twelve months, I’ve played some decent (note: “decent” as in “nothing special but not actually bad”) FPS’s, some really good FPS’s, and some FPS’s that disappointed me to say the least. Actually, that’s a lie; Halo 3 and Frontlines: Fuel of War were decent, COD 4 was brilliant but I don’t dare play it online from the sheer volume of dickheads I encounter who play it, and pretty much everything else constitutes a big steaming dump on the latrine that is the current games industry.

I’ve also seen some good ideas in FPS’s this year, and more importantly, I’ve watched them fall apart on screen, jump out of the screen and slap me in the bollocks with a great big battered haddock; see Turning Point that FAILED to combine FPS action with some limited 3rd person exploration, and was pretty determined to look like a burnt arse, overshadowing the “what if” scenario which became my favourite after watching that episode of Enterprise. There was also Haze that decided it wanted me to be the whiny hero, when I’d personally rather be the biggest drug-fuelled badass known to man.

My theory of games is that they are supposed to let you do things you’re too much of a wuss to do in real life, for example using GTA 4 to climb to the top of the not-empire-state building with full health, firing a rocket the wall and watching Niko plummet to his fiery and infinitely painful fate, all in the knowledge that even if you don’t crush someone with your charred corpse, you’ll at least give someone a hell of a show. Another would be repeatedly shooting your team mate in the face whenever he (because you don’t know any girls) does anything stupid. As a gamer, in reality, when someone throws a brick at you head you’re more likely to run off home rather than start hurling insults.

Now then, the interesting thing about Battlefield that made me bother to actually remember it’s name can be outlined in the tried and tested phrase “blow shit up”. If you show me any FPS that will let me level the world around me with grenades and tanks, then I probably wont even notice if it looks like a burnt arse; I’ll be too busy landscaping. If you then prove to me that it looks very good while doing so and that I can eventually go to war in a golf cart, there’s little you can do to fuck the whole thing up.

As such, Battlefield: Bad Company has landed me in an awkward spot, chiefly because it’s bloody hard to be funny when talking about a game I’ve genuinely enjoyed. Sure, at first the aiming sensitivity feels far too high, but after a few minutes it’s perfect. I remember playing Battlefield on the original Xbox, and being wooed by the interesting and diverse environments (I’ve still not had a good fire fight in the snow since), and there was also of course the awesome flying camera whenever you switched character.

Upon reflection, my critical eye has come into play… for some reason, in Bad Company, you are one soldier in a group of four, and there’s no switching classes or awesome flying cameras. There’s also no denying that you’re in a battlefield, as the name suggests. Hang on, no you’re fucking not, you’re in a massive (but very pretty) field, with a few enemies dotted around in buildings which make up about 1% of the whole map and you spend an entirely unnecessary charging up and down said field finding these few berks dumb enough to hang around in pairs. But at least when you get there you can just blow the living shit out of anything you see, and watch rubble rain down all over your triumphant erection.

There’s also one confusing little factor I still can’t get my head around… in Bad Company, America is fighting Russia, which is fair enough, America usually fights Russia in games and movies. BUT! What the hell are they fighting over in Bad Company? It seems to be set in the present day, so no one’s trying to say it’s the Cold War, but there’s absolutely no indication as to why the FUCK you’ve been caught up in this quibble that I assure you will cost you your life on multiple occasions. Which brings me to another issue. There is absolutely no punishment for dying. Someone turns you into a lead sculpture of your former self, then you and your team immediately respawn about 20 feet away with everything exactly as it was when you died a few seconds ago. Even if you drop a grenade while surrounded, you’ll immediately respawn, but every enemy caught in the blast will be suspiciously absent.

Maybe someone’s just trying to say US health care kicks ass?

There are also collectables… which seem to do nothing other than exacerbate any OCD tendencies you already have, although I could be wrong, maybe you unlock them in multiplayer. Unfortunately as you may be aware already, I only get hold of most of these games for about a week, so I was busy ploughing (hehe) through the single player campaign. I have one final line of praise to sing of Bad Company, and that is that the vehicles are actually fun to drive – which is a bit sad, seeing as having fun driving sections seems to be about as easy as pissing out boulders.

Now that’s out of the way I’ve got one more bone to pick. The story of Bad Company quickly deviates from Russia vs. USA, which is just as well seeing as it wasn’t explained anyway; then you and your squad accidentally piss off the US army, go rogue and start stealing gold off mercenaries. There’s nothing wrong with this story, but there is that fact that you can quite easily finish the game without collecting a single bar of gold yourself, seeing as one is stolen in a cutscene which triggers the plot. Considering this is quite an important part of the story, I have to ask why the bloody Moses isn’t there something in place to encourage you to collect it yourself, other than the twang of an electric guitar?