Battlefield: Bad Company (XBOX 360) Game Review

Battlefield: Bad Company
Played on XBOX 360
Published by EA

In the first Battlefield game for the Xbox 360 you play as Preston Marlowe, a new member of "Bad Company", a unit of the army that is composed of all the misfits, troublemakers, and idiots that nobody else want in their squad. Think "The Dirty Dozen" but with a sense of humor. The US is currently in the middle of a war with Russia and most of the game happens in a Russian satellite country known as Serdaristan. Your initial missions are focused on fighting the war, but when Bad Company gets a whiff of a huge gold shipment being used to pay mercenaries, the campaign quickly devolves into a rogue mission of getting rich instead of winning a war.

This is the first Battlefield game I have played outside of a few demos of its more recent installments. I've always been a Call of Duty guy. It took quite a bit of getting used to this game. For one thing, it's a lot slower moving. Even when you're running, it feels like walking to me, and it takes forever to get anywhere unless you bag a vehicle. The environments on the missions are a lot bigger than those in Call of Duty, but you always have a map marking points of interest.

The combat to me wasn't as satisfying as COD, simply because most of the weapons you pick up early on have no scopes. So most of the time you are using iron sights. I guess in some ways the AI of the enemies was more realistic. Most combatants at least try to duck and cover and don't just run out into the open for you to mow down.

 But it's also UNrealistic in some ways. For instance, you can be 300 yards away from a soldier but somehow as soon as you AIM at them, before you even shoot, they become aware of you and start shooting. Once they lock on to you, they basically have aimbots. They are going to see you through walls, through trees etc and their shots are going to be accurate. While they see you pretty easily, with almost x-ray vision, enemies are very hard to see. They blend in pretty well with the environment. To me, make it realistic for BOTH sides in all ways. So the realism here is a VERY mixed bag.

I did like that the environments were all at least partially destructible. You can blow up buildings. You mow down trees.

The game is a little clunky being 11 years old and all, but the thing that kept me playing was the characters and the story ironically. COD can be very pretentious and serious. Battlefield, on the other hand, at least with this first game,  had a sense of humor. The characters and their interactions with each other kept me entertained and gave me a lot of chuckles. The voice acting was great.

I only played the single player campaign. I did access the online multiplayer and was surprised to find that I got into a game pretty fast! Yes, 11 years later, there are a lot of people still playing this game online!

My Grade: C