With its stellar design and hilarious story, Bad Company is a rip-roaring adventure you can't afford to miss.
Bad Company puts you into the boots of Preston Marlowe, who is the latest in a long line of military dropouts to join the ranks of Bad Company, where the army dumps those who it doesn't want to look in the eye anymore but can't afford to lose. Preston links up with his squad and, quite literally, hilarity ensues. Your four-man squad consists of yourself, the sarcastic and intelligent Sweetwater and the trigger-happy Haggard, all under the command of Sergeant Redford.
Sweetwater and Haggard will constantly banter as you progress through the game while Redford struggles to keep control of them both - and their interactions are genuinely laugh-out-loud hilarious, particularly one scene where Haggard and Sweetwater play golf with their assault rifles while Redford radios in. You will begin to genuinely care for the characters to the point that when, in one level, you are all on your own, you will genuinely miss their company despite the fact they don't do a whole lot on the combat side of things while they're there. Often, they will just stand there and shoot at the occasional enemy, though you won't notice that because you'll be having far too much fun.
Bad Company introduces destructible environments to the...well, battlefield, and it is truly surprising how this can shape the way you play. You may be quietly hiding in a small house aiming your RPG at an enemy tank...only for the wall between it and you suddenly to fragment into a million indiscriminate pieces and your hasty subsequent exit. If and when you die, you are simply deposited a few hundred feet behind the frontline with none of the enemies or objectives reset. In short, the game's "challenge" comes predominantly from how many times you have to throw yourself at the enemy before they all fall down.
However, the game does do a fantastic job of making you feel immersed in the firefight, and boasts some of the best sound design in the business. The scraping metal of the missile being slid into the RPG, the booming echo of a bullet fired indoors, and (a standout) the disorientating high-pitched shockwave that rips through you when an explosion occurs nearby. Engines rumble realistically on the vehicles and all the weapons sound just as you might expect them to.
Speaking of vehicles, Bad Company lets you pilot a borderline insane number of contraptions, from tanks and helicopters to jeeps and APCs, and even a golf cart! The four radio stations help to heighten the humorous feel of the game, and the unique way each vehicle controls and behaves will encourage you to try each one out.
The destructible environments also help you to find new strategies to combat your foes. Enemy tank pinning you down? Go into the line of terraced houses and use your grenade launcher to systematically cut a path through them all to the empty tank behind it, then use that to eliminate the threat. Annoying enemy machine gunner on top of a tower? Use your RPG to blow the entire tower apart...or call down an air strike on the bugger!
If your health gets a bit low, you can pull out an "auto-injector" (essentially a syringe the size of a grown man's head) and stab yourself with it, instantly restoring all of your health. The sharp intake of breath and eye-watering hissing noise the needle makes enhance the immersion even further - but the realism takes one for the team when you're stabbing yourself with the thing 4 times a minute near the end of the game and you wonder why DICE didn't just use an arguably more convenient regenerating health mechanic.
This minor quibble aside, Battlefield: Bad Company is a stellar, heart-pounding adrenaline rush of a game that never stops giving you the fun and lets you know that, if you have a strategic mind and a fully loaded grenade launcher, you can go about solving a problem any way you fancy.