Battlefield: Bad Company

Battlefield: Bad Company
Battlefield: Bad Company cover (Xbox 360)
Developer(s)	EA Digital Illusions CE
Publisher(s)	Electronic Arts
Series	Battlefield
Engine	Frostbite Engine
Platform(s)	PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Genre(s)	First Person Shooter, Action
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

Battlefield: Bad Company (also known as BF:BC, or just Bad Company) is a first-person shooter developed at EA DICE, released in the U.S. on June 23 Template:Vgy for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game was hinted at just before the release of Battlefield 2, and then announced sixteen months later.

Bad Company puts the player in a fictional war against Russia, where gamers will lead a squad of AWOL soldiers fighting both Russians and Mercenaries.

Bad Company applies some new features to the franchise, including an environment that can be almost entirely destroyed, and a single-player storyline. The single player campaign and some multiplayer maps take place in the fictional Eastern European country of Serdaristan.

Story

The player takes on the role of Preston Marlowe a man who is a rookie to 222nd Army battalion, who was nearly thrown in jail for taking a helicopter for a joy ride(details remain unknown). Instead he is sent to B-Company, a squad of insubordinate soldiers and misfits who are risking everything by going AWOL on a personal quest for gold deep behind enemy lines. Preston is led by Sergeant Redford who will retire in a few days, and is accompanied by Private Sweetwater, the "nerdy" guy of the squad, and Haggard, a pyromaniac who has a craving for blowing things up. It has been stated that the movies Kelly's Heroes and Three Kings have been strong influences for the story. In the demo, it appears that the United States is engaged in a war with Russia, who is hiring a mercenary army to reinforce their ranks. Throughout the story the squad pursues "The Legionnaire", a mysterious Mercenary Leader who, according to rumors, pays his soldiers in Gold Bars.

Features

The player will be able to use their weapons to damage the environment enabling the player to create ambush sites or take out a sniper's cover.

Destructible Environments

The Frostbite game engine allows 90% of the environment to be destroyed, including buildings, vegetation, vehicles, and even the ground itself, and more. Still, for gameplay purposes, the frames of buildings and other objects will remain indestructible, to prevent the environment from becoming completely flat. Additionally, the game will feature dynamic lighting to correlate with the changing environment.

Classes

In a move similar to Battlefield 2142, the number of soldier classes will be lowered, resulting in a combination of the classic soldier classes. The classes in this game are: Assault, Demolitions, Recon, Specialist, and Support.

Weapons

The Battlefield Bad Company Beta has an arsenal of available infantry firearms, including three handguns. The M9 pistol for the U.S., a .45 caliber handgun for the Russians and a high-powered revolver for the Mid Eastern force. These three handguns are only available for the Recon (Sniper) class.

Several pieces of equipment are available to the infantry, including anti-tank mines, remote charges, mortar attack designators, laser guided missile, anti-vehicle missile launchers (RPG-7 or AT4) and grenade launchers such as the M203 and the GP-25.

The Battlefield Bad Company Beta contains 20 locked guns, 10 can be unlocked through playing the game, while 5 of the other 10 will be unlocked in free promotions before and after release. The remaining 5 unlockable weapons will only be made available through purchase of the Gold Edition of the game or by achieving the final rank (level 25). A full list of weapons is available at the website PlanetBattlefield.com.

Vehicles

Battlefield: Bad Company has an assortment of Land, Air, and Sea vehicles, including AH-64 Apache, UH-60 Black Hawk, Mil Mi-24 Hind MK III, Ka-52 Hokum, Mi-28 Havoc, T-90, GAZ-3937, M1A2 Abrams, M3A3 Bradley, BMD-3, HMMWV, Golf cart, and Desert Patrol Vehicles.

Single Player

According to Bad Company's achievement list, there are seven missions including Welcome to Bad Company, Acta Non Verba, Crossing Over, Par for the Course, Air Force One, Crash and Grab, and Ghost Town. The mission in the demo was The end of Welcome to Bad Company.

Each mission in the game is said to last between 1-2 hours. Throughout each mission are hidden gold bars that can be discovered, but this is not a required task, much like Halo 3's skulls or Call of Duty 4's intel items..

Upon the player's death, they are able to respawn without penalty.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer supports up to 24 players, and runs on PC-dedicated servers. Gold Rush is the only multiplayer mode included in the initial release of Battlefield: Bad Company but another mode, conquest will be released for free in a future update. The setup of the game is an Attackers vs. Defenders scenario, in which one team must defend two crates filled with gold while the other team attempts to destroy the crates. Once the crates are destroyed, more of the map is available to fight on with new crates appearing, along with added reinforcement numbers. The attacking team has a limited amount of respawns to achieve their goal of capturing the 2-4 gold stashes either by setting charges or simply destroying the 2 crates of gold at each stash. The defending team has an unlimited amount of respawns available, but their goal is to exhaust the attacking teams tickets (respawns).

The Conquest game mode will be returning in Bad Company. This mode will be available as a free download post-launch, however there has been no date announced for it's release.

Find All Five

Find All Five is a way for players to unlock specific weapons. They are codes that enable free downloadable weapons via 5 promotional programs. The website will act as the hub for information on obtaining these unlocks and how to redeem unlock codes. These "Find All Five" weapons include the F2000 assault rifle, USAS-12 semi-automatic shotgun, M60 LMG, QBU-88 sniper rifle and silenced UZI SMG.
To unlock these five EA's website instructs users to participate in the BF Veteran's program, check the player's stats online after playing the game, register for the BF newsletter, pre-order the game through participating stores, and get to rank 4 in the demo.

Reception

Reception

Review scores

Publication	Score
1Up.com	B
Edge	7 out of 10
Eurogamer	8/10
Game Informer	9.25/10
GamePro	90
GameSpot	8.5/10
IGN	8.6/10
TeamXbox	9.1/10
X-Play	4/5

Early reviews for Battlefield Bad Company are positive, with the deformable environments, large maps, diverse array of vehicles and multiplayer mode earning it praise from critics.

Trailers

In a trailer released June 16th, 2008, codenamed "Snake Eyes", the team makes a reference to the Metal Gear series. Sweetwater, a member of Bad Company thinks he's seen someone wearing an eye-patch (a reference to Solid Snake), hiding inside a barrel, to which Haggard responds, "A barrel? Why would someone want to hide in there? That's as stupid as hiding in a cardboard box!" After the barrel jitters with Metal Gear's ubiquitous red exclamation mark over it, Sweetwater replies, "...Like some kind of real solid... Metal! Like some kind of Japanese thing!" Haggard fires a grenade at it, and finds, amongst the wreckage of the barrel, a black eye-patch. He puts it on and proceeds to bump into Sweetwater.

In another subsequently released trailer codenamed "Bad World", Haggard is seen running down a destroyed street while Gary Jules' Mad World is sung in the background by Sweetwater (a reference to the Gears of War trailer). Haggard then tells Sweetwater to knock it off and proposes Shortnin' Bread instead, after which they both pause awkwardly.

The trailer codenamed "Rainbow Sprinkles" (a reference to Rainbow Six) features the squad trying to lead a stealth mission, a fact to which both Haggard and Sweetwater seem oblivious and indifferent to as they continue to argue over Redford's hand signals ("stay low and stack up"), assuming it's a game of charades. Redford quickly explains them "Sign Language 101", although they both disagree, at which point Redford gives up and tells them to breach a door in front of them. Haggard shrugs, throws in a grenade, and proceeds to walk out opening fire with Sweetwater, while Marlowe asks if he still should be "stacking" now.

External links

• Battlefield: Bad Company Official Website
• Battlefield: Bad Company Beta