War. What’s it good for if you can’t blow shit up? I think Churchill said that. I also agree with that statement. Too long have we been forced to play games with indestructible buildings and with trees and fences left standing after calling in a carpet bomb air strike. I was never one to complain about such things but with the technology being used on the current generation of games, we’ve become spoiled. If there are games that don’t allow me to shoot through a window or water without causing a realistic effect, it definitely takes away from the experience. Battlefield: Bad Company not only does the above, it let’s you blow the crap out of pretty much any structure on the battlefield.

I played it for a few hours yesterday with fairly high expectations and so far I haven’t been disappointed. This game takes first person shooters to another level man. Imagine the following scenario…

You’re driving towards a small village on an APC with a .50 caliber gunner mowing down every tree, fence and small child that enters your path (okay, no small children). You enter the village only to be greeted by a bunch of baddies laying a barrage of bullets to welcome you. You take out as many as you can using the APC gunner, but there shots coming from inside the village shacks. You decide get out of the vehicle and take these mofo’s out Rambo style. The shot indicator shows that you’re getting hammered from the right side, you turn around and switch to your gun mounted grenade launcher and blow a hole in the side of what used to be a house, revealing the poor bastard inside and finishing him off with a few carefully placed rounds.

When it seems like things are going your way, all of a sudden a tank rolls up out of no where and starts moving towards you and laying some serious cannon fire. You run to the nearest house for some cover, start to make your way up the stairs, only to sustain some heavy damage, you turn around to find a huge hole where the door you entered used to be and the tank has it’s barrel shoved up your you-know-what…

Your arsenal consists of the usual rifles, snipers, shotguns and explosives. All of them very satisfying when used and sound uber realistic. Another small but important detail.

My biggest disappointment with BBC however, is the lack of online co-op. I feel any current-gen first person shooter that doesn’t have online co-op loses points. This game would be much more fun if you had a buddy along for the ride. The only time you can play with a friend would be in multiplayer, which I played in the demo but have yet to try on the full version. The maps are appropriately huge as you can have up to 16 players on a single map and you have plenty of tool at your disposal like helicopters, tanks, trucks and the ability call in air strikes.

So is Battlefield: Band Company a Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4 killer? I wouldn’t think so, but with a feature like destructible environments this is definitely going to give the more popular shooters a run for their money and even change the way games are played.

If you’re a FPS fan it’s definitely worth checking out. Rent, buy or download the demo on PSN or Xbox Live.

4/5