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| Source // EA |
How do you bring the Battlefield experience to consoles? Eventually, I'd find out what I was missing in the form of Battlefield 3, my introduction to the series, but this was a smaller, limited version of the real deal. Player counts were capped and some maps shrunk in size, but when you don't know what you're missing all is good, right?
Case in point, perhaps, is Battlefield: Bad Company, a sort of spin-off game designed for consoles to give players a taste of Battlefield. Squad-based gameplay across vast expanses of land traversed on foot, in vehicles, or through the air, where seemingly everything can be blown up and reduced to rubble.
I've heard a lot of praise for its sequel, but have checked out neither title. I'm not even sure why I wasn't interested in it in the first place but would be devouring everything I could find regarding Battlefield 3 a few years later.
Let's see whether my console FPS history should have taken a different course.
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| Source // MobyGames |
Fun Times
Bad Company follows the story of Preston Marlowe, newly transferred into B Company, where all the rejects and undesirables find themselves on the front lines of a war between the US and Russia. Sergeant Redford serves as the squad leader, a few days away from retirement, and the idiots at the back are Sweetwater and Haggard.
It's an appropriate description because the plot of Bad Company isn't your usual Battlefield story or even military story. It's not a Hollywood inspired tale of nuclear weapons or undercover agents, or certainly doesn't start like one. We don't know why we're here, don't quite know what we're doing, and are told to tag along with the Sarge. There's nothing much else to do.
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| Source // MobyGames |
Some Russians are nearby, and their artillery needs putting out of action. The first action you find is a small patrol in some houses, tucked into the landscape. Suspiciously, there are explosive barrels everywhere, and a press of the R2 button switches your weapon over the grenade launcher, the cue for the physics and lighting engines introduce you to the game properly.
You don't have to play as a chaotic soldier in a company of cannon-fodder. You can just as easily take the time to crouch, aim, fire away like a regular marine, but the comedic nature of half of your squad kind of prompts you to take the more explosive route in the interests of fun, I guess - and as they follow you around armed with rocket launchers and will engage in firefights whenever they see an enemy, you might as well play it their way.
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| Source // MobyGames |
I was playing this PlayStation 3 version on the easiest difficulty, partly because I'm so out of touch with controlling an FPS with a set of sticks that I'm going to be a bumbling idiot no matter what difficulty I pick, so I ought to at least give myself a chance of survival. To help me, the L2 button cycles through your equipment, where you'll find a shot of adrenaline or something, which acts as your regenerating health.
You can't spam it, because it has a cooldown timer on it, but it'll bring you back to full health in a second or two, and back into the action in no time. Artillery dealt with, we're ordered to use it on an incoming convoy of Russians, where I start to realise just how big these levels really are.
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| Source // MobyGames |
A "Toggle Entire Map" button is included on the pause screen, to give you an idea. To bring the Battlefield experience to consoles, linear, confined levels full of detail and setpieces are out, replaced with open countryside. Sure, there is often one clear route for you to take from point A to point B, and there are off-limits areas of the map, but this is still a level of freedom I like the look of.
They're also bloody huge in that they keep expanding as new objectives come over the radio. Deal with artillery, use the artillery, go to this checkpoint, clear the area of Russians, join up with the convoy, deal with more artillery, go to the farm, clear the farm, find and destroy radar dishes, clear more Russians from another area... all of this, if memory serves, before the end of the level.
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| Source // EA |
It is at this point where Bad Company's story is finally presented to you. The Russians aren't acting alone, but are reinforced with a legendary mercenary outfit whose soldiers are paid in gold, a bar of which you find to confirm the rumours. A bar followed by a case, which many more cases hidden throughout these levels.
This isn't a story of the desperate struggles of war. This is the story of fools stumbling into a jackpot and having to fight their way out.
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
I attempted to sneak through towns, I destroyed fuel and weapon dumps, I cleared bridges and swept through a town, house by house, blowing holes in walls wherever necessary, and there was a lot of necessary demolition, let me tell you that.
And then I protected a convoy of tanks and did some more of it, destroying another entire town and having to defend against another division of Russians and mercenaries, and after a while, I learned two things: My controller battery and my eyeballs can't keep up with these humongous levels.
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| Source // MobyGames |
Frustrations
It's not that Bad Company is repetitive, but it is a string of "move here, destroy that, move here, destroy that" so far. There are checkpoints and death doesn't mean restarting an entire level, thank God, but there was never really a place with which you could call a nice stopping point. Everything flowed from one thing to the next until there wasn't enough space on the map for any more Battlefield, and a new level needs to be brought in.
Games that appear seamless in this way are great, don't get me wrong. When a set of objectives makes some sense, you're whisked along in a way that feels true to life. The work of a soldier doesn't neatly stop, does it? Not when they're in the thick of things. Nor should Bad Company, but damn you've got to book some time off for this one.
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| Source // MobyGames |
The controls are mostly what you'd expect from a console FPS. It's a little weird to have driving controls on the left shoulder buttons, but you get used to it. What I didn't really get used to was the all the swapping you'll do between equipment and weaponry.
If you've just healed yourself, for example, pressing R1 will attempt to heal you again. To use R1 to shoot someone you obviously need a gun, so you've got to press R2, then R1 to shoot. Maybe you want to quickly through a grenade somewhere to flush out some opposition. Well, there's no "quickly" about it, as you have to press R2 to switch from your rifle to your grenade, and then R1 to throw that.
What if, at any point, a Russian runs right up into your face? Well, the Triangle button pulls your knife out, and one swipe of that seems to be a kill. Of course, pressing R1 with your knife out now just swings your knife, so you've got to press R2 to get a weapon out again...
Maybe you've picked up a rocket launcher, and now there's a tank to deal with. Press R2 to switch weapons, right? Wrong. the rocket launcher is a piece of equipment, it's on L2, which has probably just brought up your health thingy, so press L2 again to switch to your rocket launcher and then R1 to fire that.
The last thing I did was protect a tank in the middle of town. You could shoot rockets at incoming vehicles no problem, but if you wanted to repair the tank, you've got to swap the rocket launcher for the engineer's tool, use it, and run back to the rocket launcher pickup, swap the tool for the rocket launcher and get back into the action.
You want an emergency pistol? Forget about it. I've not seen a single pistol yet. Weapons can be picked up from the deceased, but it's one for one. You can't carry an arsenal of weaponry around with you. You're a soldier, damnit.
I'm well aware that even in the Battlefield games I do like, you didn't have a huge selection of weapons and items on your person at any one point, but in Bad Company it feels incredibly limited because of how faffy it is to cycle through it all.
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| Source // MobyGames |
I've also heard of sections of missions which can come across as a bit of a nightmare for vehicle controls, for example. Helicopters and aircraft in general always seem to stump people in Battlefield games, and while I've not encountered it yet on my Bad Company travels, I have seen some grumbles about how they handle in the game, used in objectives that only a helicopter can deal with, I bet, despite the pseudo-open-world nature to the way you can get everything else done.
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| Source // MobyGames |
I mentioned at the start that when you don't know what you're missing, all is good. Console FPS titles have always been limited by their field of view. Constricting it allows for lots of action to happen in front of the player, and seeing as that's where people tend to look, it makes sense to pack a lot of action front and centre and neglect the screen edges, where they are, ironically perhaps, better used to indicate the player's peripheral perception of the battlefield.
I grew up playing FPS games on a console. This was how we all did it back then. Field of View? What's that? Well, when you find out, you can't easily go back to the way it was before. It's like there's a box on my head, and I'm hunched over with my gun held high, filling up a sizeable chunk of the screen itself, as it happens. The world is large but my view of it is not, and it's noticeable. It probably made my attempts to familiarise myself with console FPSs once more even harder, after playing games on an ultrawide.
Final Word
Harder, but not impossible. I wasn't playing Bad Company with the skill I once had on the sticks, but I was generally having a good time. I do wish it was broken up in more manageable chunks, but that's old man grumbles I'm sure.
The gameplay is often explosive and chaotic, which probably made for absolute carnage in the multiplayer modes back in the day. Battlefield games are usually home to unusual tactics the community finds and subsequently makes use of - launching vehicles across the map right out of your base, for example - and Bad Company seems to give off this air of just sitting back and having a bit of fun.
As I say, the sequel is highly regarded, and a sequel to that often raised as an idea fans wish the developers would take, especially after the tangents the more recent games have taken. But I know them only as the funny off-shoot to the series, a little bit of action on the side for those who want it, limited but still with a flavour of Battlefield.
Despite the control quirks, there's a decent game here. I don't know how the difficulty plays out, or how repetitive it gets, or whether the characters will get on your nerves after a while, but as a sort of introduction to Battlefield, it does a good job. In places, it made me wish I was playing an actual Battlefield game. Is that to say Bad Company isn't an "actual Battlefield"?
I'm not an expert on that. I think, especially after all this time, that I'll see Bad Company as its own thing because I'll only be experiencing it as a single-player Battlefield title. Had I been playing it at the time as a multiplayer title, maybe I'd have found out about the Battlefield series sooner, sure. It's hard to say.
I have an idea of what Battlefield is to me, and Bad Company isn't it, but it's enough of it to still have a pretty good time, quirks and all.
Fun Facts
To really sell Bad Company as a game with a silly side, its trailers were all parodies of other video games, including Metal Gear Solid, Gears of War, and Rainbow Six.
Battlefield: Bad Company, developed by EA DICE, first released in 2008.
Version played: PlayStation 3, 2008.