Preview: Battlefield Bad Company Demo Impressions

If you can't beat them, blow them up.

So, as you know a little while back I put up my impressions of the Bad Company Multiplayer Beta. My thoughts on the game were mostly positive and felt they only needed to fix a few things. Notably, the balance in the Goldrush mode and a few bugs they needed to clean up.

So, since I already wrote about the Multiplayer I will focus on the single player part of the demo. The mission in the demo is called "Welcome to Bad Company" and it is pretty obvious that it is the first mission in the game. The cutscenes in the game easily have some of the best character models and lighting I have seen in a game. Once you get into the action there isn't a whole lot of hand holding. There are control tips that pop up, but there is no real tutorial and the game realizes that you are probably a at least decently intelligent person.

Now, there is a story here, but in all honesty I just skipped most of the cutscenes to get to the action. The basic gist if the story is that your character would've been sent to prison, but instead was sent to work with the Army's "B-Company" who is a ragtag group of tough guys blah, blah, blah. All you need to know is that a lot of stuff explodes. The game plays very well, although I did have to turn down the sensitivity a bit because at the default I couldn't control my aim very much at all.

Now, the major problem I saw in the demo is that, at times, there is WAY too much going on at one time. The final sequence of the demo is especially chaotic, often leading to times where I had no idea where I was going or where I was being shot from. Thankfully, at no time did the framerate drop during times where I would be taking out buildings with an RPG while bullets flew by me. There is some screen tearing so if that bothers you, just know that it is there.

A quick aside about multiplayer. I only played two games of it but did notice a few new things. It definitely feels more polished than the beta which was expected. They tweaked some of the UI to make it a little easier to use, and it seems like they did go back and balance Goldrush so that the better team was always winning. Now, like I said, this is from only two 30 minute games so impressions may change in the future, but all in all it seems like Bad Company it going to be a solid FPS with really fun multiplayer and plenty of destruction.

by Nicolas Perez

Preview: Battlefield Bad Company

Battlefield is becoming destructive.

I have been wanting to write this preview up for a while now, but I wasn't sure what exactly I should say. The game is in beta so there are still a few problems that need to be sorted out, and I was thinking about how I should handle them in the context of a preview. So I will first talk about the game itself then at the end I will go into what needs to be fixed.

The first thing I noticed about BF:BC was how clean the in-game interface was. It allows you to see much more of the screen than a game such as Halo 3 where your HUD components take up much of the screen. Your HUD shows health and ammo in the bottom right and your gold crate damage (I will get into this later) and number of reinforcements at the top. It is simple to see important info at a glance.


I mentioned the gold crates earlier, these come into play on the one game mode in the beta "Gold Rush". The point of Gold Rush is to get into the enemies base and destroy two gold crates, which you do by planting explosives on the crate and defending it till it explodes. The attackers have to repeat this a few times and each time the gold crates get blown up the defenders base moves back and the attackers base moves up. There are a few issues with the mode that I will go into later.

The beta has two maps, Oasis and Ascension. Oasis is a very large outdoor desert map which starts out in a wide open area and ends up in a small town. Ascension is a smaller map focused on infantry, and the map has a ton of cover. Ascension really shows off the big feature of BF:BC, destructible environments. See a few people inside a house but can't get to them? Blow out the side of the house. The destruction works well and adds another layer of intensity to the game because you can't really hide anywhere without being in danger.


There is also a rank and unlock system in the game. It doesn't have the depth of something like COD 4 or Vegas 2 but it works. Every time you rank up you get an unlock point which you can use to get upgrades like a health recharger or tank mines. One issue that has been brought up since the beta is the fact that EA plans to charge for weapons in the game. They say they offer no competitive advantage, but I am doubting it till I see it.

Now is the part where I complain about all the problems I have had so far. The first one, and the one that bothers me the the most, is how hard it is for the Attackers to win a round of Gold Rush. The last gold crate is usually in such an easily defended area that it is impossible to blow it up. In about 20 rounds the attackers won once. Second, there is no party system implemented yet. I know that this is probably just an issue with the devs not wanting to put it in the beta, but if I don't see a party system in the full game then I don't think I will be buying it. Third, there are just a lot of weird bugs and glitches. They are all things that should be cleaned up by the time the game comes out, but I have had the game freeze on me about 3 times so far.

So, the game shows a lot of promise and looks like they really will be using this feedback in the real game. If the DICE can get the game polished up by release this could be one to look for.

by Nicolas Perez