Fool’s Gold

Rounding out the Bad Company feature-set is the multiplayer mode, which admittedly does feel hugely undernourished as has a single gameplay mode available – Gold Rush.

True, when we spoke to DICE’s Jamie Keen at the luxurious EA showcase event[/i], he lets us know that DICE also plans to deliver the old favourite Conquest mode at a later date (and for free) – but we aren’t really in the habit of reviewing games based on promises. If we did that then Iron Man[/i] would be game of the year!

Gold Rush is a fun, but pretty simple game mode and is basically a two-team capture match with up to 24 players battling over crates of gold placed throughout a level. While the first team has unlimited respawns and is tasked with protecting the gold at all times, the other team has finite lives but a simpler aim – detonation!

There’s the usual array of weapons and abilities filling out the multiplayer arena and making things more interesting – everything from APCs and golf buggies to helicopters and…um, other APCs.


OK, so the collection of vehicles might not be as huge and widely varied as Battlefield veterans might be used to, but it does the job nicely enough and is more than up to the task of getting you from A to B, via Explosionsville.

All in all though, while the multiplayer modes in Battlefield: Bad Company it doesn’t feel especially groundbreaking or hugely replayable. It quickly becomes apparent that the real focus of the game is the singleplayer and, much the opposite of other multiplayer shooters, this seems very much a singleplayer game with the multiplayer tacked on, not vice versa.

There’s still a lot to like in the multiplayer mode and it definitely couldn’t be considered as a weak point at all, but it is comparably not as interesting as the singleplayer missions.

This is one of the main problems for Bad Company when you step back from the game and look at it as a whole – that there really isn’t that much to the game with the exception of the singleplayer campaign. The singleplayer is definitely a decent length and has plenty to do in it in terms of finding gold stores and new weapons, but once it’s done that’s it.


The multiplayer can satisfy you for a little while, but not a lot has changed since the beta it seems and nothing dramatic has been added content-wise since then.

Conclusions

Battlefield: Bad Company is a good game, but like all games it does have some definite flaws that can hold it back.

Focusing just on the good stuff, the singleplayer campaign is plenty long enough and has got a decent, good natured and funny story behind it which helps keep the plot ticking over nicely and holds the action together.

The characters of Sarge, Sweetwater and Haggard aren’t universally likeable, but they aren’t horribly offensive either and there are plenty of nice touches which help make them memorable and distinct in a world full of samey stereotypes.

The gameplay itself is arguably a little unbalanced, but that’s been well hidden beneath the near-instant respawns and semi-regular checkpoints. The multiplayer is a little bland and uninspired, but at least there’s the promise that the DLC will fix this at some point.

All in all, Battlefield: Bad Company is a fun and instantly accessible game, which entertains solidly despite a few minor niggles. It doesn’t offer the same comprehensive multiplayer experience as the previous games, but if you were really looking for that then you probably wouldn’t be buying a console game anyway.