Bad Company Update

On the battlefield site they have given a lot of new details as to what is going to be happening in the future. The full update can be found here, I have summarised it for the xbox 360.

There will be a new map pack coming soon including a couple of the maps voted for by the public that came from the campaign. These are Acta Non Verba and Par for the course.

The servers for the game have been upgraded last week, which explains why I haven't noticed any lag recently. This is a great improvement - and their number one priority.

The next update will bring in some gameplay enhancing changes:

Game Tweaks –
Removed one hit kills for knife against Friendlies
Bullets and knives go through bushes
After sprinting, you will be able to fire your weapon quicker
Helicopter can take damage from multiple trees
Additional minor tweaks to improve gameplay

Not only this but 3 of the 5 unlockable weapons will soon be made available to all players for free. These are the weapons you get for pre-ordering the game, signing up to the newsletter and reaching rank 4 on the demo. Things most people won't bother doing anymore.

Sounds good. I await the changes with much anticipation.

Battlefield: Bad Company

I have played much more multiplayer now. About 8 hours worth according to my stats on Battlefield.com. The Gold Rush mode is really quite fun - espescially when you get to defend as a sniper, picking off attackers as they run up the road towards your base. My kill death ratio is about 2.5 as recon class. My favourite move was on a map yesterday when I swam out to an island which gave me a complete view of the defender's spawn point. They had no idea where the shots were coming from, and tried to take cover on the side which was most visible to me.

One problem that has arisen with the multiplayer is the lag. In certain games it is absolutely intolerable, and you'll get incredibly frustrated. However this can easily be solved by exiting the game and finding another. It is only in certain games where the lag is awful. I think the majority are good, and you can easily enough find a new one.

The lag affects you by not letting you change weapon, zoom in, or it makes you get dragged backwards when you try to walk forwards. But if you have a friend with you and try going in a tank it can be quite funny.

But provided you find another game with no lag, its no problem. I think the lag is caused because there are no dedicated servers, and it is done by pier to pier methods. Although I don't know if that is right.

Battlefield: Bad Company (online multiplayer)

Having reached rank five on the online multiplayer for BF: Bad Company, I think I'm ready to give some details. The multiplayer is pretty addictive if I'm honest. Which means its good.

You work in teams to carry out certain objectives, and at the moment there are 2 game modes. Although more modes will probably be released in the future. These game modes are 'Gold Rush' and 'Conquest'. The objective of 'Gold Rush' is to successfully attack or defend a certain number of gold crates on a map, whereas in 'Conquest' the teams have to try and make each other's reinforcements deplete fastest. This is done either by killing the enemy, or controlling more command posts than the enemy.



The 'Conquest' mode was released on 07/08/08, and is available to download for free off xbox live.

I mainly played the 'Conquest' mode, because I was familiar with it. It was a very popular game mode in previous Battlefield games, but I knew it from Star Wars: Battlefront.

You get to choose from 5 different soldier classes; Assault, Recon, Specialist, Demolition and Support. Each class has its own benefits, and different roles in the game. Support for instance can heal squadmates or repair vehicles, whilst Recon will provide sniper fire, and deploy motion sensors telling the squad where the enemy is.

Each soldier class starts off with a basic weapon, and a couple of other items. They can however unlock extra items to give them the advantage, such as health injectors (assault) and laser designators (Recon). There are also 2 extra guns that can be unlocked for each class, which are generally better than the starting weapon. The player can unlock these items by using credits which are acquired from ranking up. This means that you are likely to focus on optimizing one class before moving on to the others.

Once class, weapon and spawn point have been decided, the player may enter the battle. The players then earn points which go towards ranking up based on what they do. A kill for instance will get 10 points, and then another few points for how the kill was achieved, e.g. Headshot + 5 points. You can also get points for destroying vehicles, assisting squadmates and capturing command posts etc. I was managing to get about 150 points a match on 'Conquest', although other players were getting 300+. You then rank up when you reach a certain points total.

There are many unlockable awards which you can get for doing certain things in the game, and dog tags which are claimed when you knife a player.

The maps are well designed and fun to play on, the graphics are again superb and lag is minimal. I managed to play many matches before realising that I had spent about 3 hours on it, which I think is a testament to how fun it is. Gameplay is much like the singleplayer experience - although maybe a little more hectic, but you are given the sandbox environment to play around with too which is great. Vehicles are aplenty, although grabbing a helicopter isn't so easy because everyone wants it. The first and only time I got one so far, I managed to fly into the sea whilst persuing an enemy boat - not a great tactical maneuver.

All in all, it is a great experience. Giving something different to my other online shooters. Multiplayer is very well rounded, although a few more game modes might help and it has no split screen option, so you won't be able to do 2 players on the same console.

Battlefield: Bad Company (singleplayer review)

I just finished playing the singleplayer game on normal, and I can say that it makes for great fun.

The game begins with your introduction into the squad, the scene shown in the demo. The player then goes on to fight enemies referred to by the AI squad as 'Russians!'. What war is being fought remains unclear to the player throughout. But that is irrelevant, because the player and his squad are interested in getting the gold off of the mercenaries that they encounter. This makes for an interesting story, that no war games/shooters have.

I found the first few levels of the game quite dull and monotonous. The destructible environment was a novelty at first but that soon wore off. However at a turning point, the game becomes far more enjoyable, and I'm not entirely sure why - the novelty factor of the destructible environment comes back too. I worked out that it was at the point that I picked up a sniper rifle for the first time. But I believe the gameplay and other aspects became more involving because it was slightly better paced. I soon got to drive tanks and other vehicles too which could only have helped. The latter 3 quarters of the story are thoroughly enjoyable, and I was constantly surprised by the huge sandbox environment, which was fully accessible to the player, and all the previously destroyed areas were exactly as I left them when I revisited.

The gameplay is very good once you get past the initial stages. The aiming of guns is exactly how it would be done in real life, so it gives a realistic feel. The game is very forgiving in the respect that whenever you die you merely respawn at the last save point. Everything that you killed before your death remains dead. This is pretty useful, and keeps the game flowing really well. But at times you feel it is a little unrealistic for the enemy to have the same squad of men that they just killed run back up the hill. The other thing is the unlimited use of the health injector. That meant that staying alive was a lot easier. But saying that, I must have died about 20 times due to enemy tank shells or RPGs. The members of your squad are indestructible, which does help - if they died it would get annoying.

The graphics are really quite amazing I thought. The fact that the entire environment is destructible makes it really fun to play through. I destroyed many trees because it was fun - at many points blowing a hole in a wall was easier than walking a few steps to the left through the door, again, just because it was fun. As I said above, the player can go pretty much anywhere on the map if they can get there. This means they can swim through rivers etc. Although if you go into the red area on the map then you get shot by artillery after a 5 second warning.

There are loads of different guns that the player can use, just picking them off the ground, or in collectable locations. Each gun has obviously been painstakingly detailed, each having it's own reload animation and sound. The player gets the main weapon, an attachment - normally a grenade launcher or pistol. Then they also get a secondary weapon such as a drill or an air strike designator.

The game has many vehicles. Boats, Jeeps, Tanks and Helicopters are the main types. Each of them are immaculately detailed and have their own benefits. They are also easy to drive. You can repair any broken vehicle using the drill, which is again quite handy - especially when you decide to use it for cover.

The sound in the game is unbelievable. I don't have surround sound, and I was blown away. Each time the wall you were taking cover behind gets destroyed by a shell or grenade, all your senses get dulled, your hearing goes in the way you'd expect after a loud explosion. Gunfire becomes muffled, as do explosions. It adds to the atmosphere a huge amount at those such points. The sound of walls or fences falling down is again very realistic. The mood is often lightened by your squad members banter, and you often get to hear what your enemies are saying. When they shout: 'Sniper! Get down!' because you sniped someone it is very satisfying.

It makes for a brilliant single player experience, with room for a sequel at the end. If you do get it, don't be put off with the slightly boring beginning. I was thinking about trading it in after completion at that point. But now I think I might play through it on hard if I have time.
Writing this review makes me want to go and play it some more!

As this is my first review, I suppose I should introduce a scoring system.

Story: 8.0
Graphics: 9.5
Sound:10.0
Gameplay:9.0
Attention to Detail: 9.5

Overall Score: 8.6

Let down by the few stages at the beginning which I felt were a little monotonous, but overall, a fun and immersive experience.