2.5/5 ★ – WrathofBen's review of Battlefield: Bad Company.

After finally going through all of the Call of Duty and Medal of Honor games, I figured it was time to take a dive into the Battlefield games, starting with Bad Company. From what I could tell, this game was the first Battlefield game to truly have a single player campaign mode. And boy, you can really tell. This game has the humor, charm, and character of a great game, but the gameplay of a really bad game. Let's get into it! The story is about Preston Marlowe, the newest recruit into the U.S. Army's "Bad Company". This company of soldiers are comprised of convicts looking to shorten their sentence by serving their country and going on more dangerous missions than other companies. In your group is Sarge Redford, Haggard, and Sweetwater. Redford is close to getting back home but has "one more mission". Haggard is a not-so-smart but talented tactician who love to blow things up, while Sweetwater is the book smart technical expert of the group. Together, you discover that the enemy Russian faction has hired mercenaries who are stashing gold away. Once Haggard gets a sniff of this, the Company decides to go after this gold trail and help drive the mercenaries out of Russia. That may have been a really bad synopsis by my standards, but that's the story as best as I can recall. I honestly don't remember much, because I took a week in between major play sessions to beat this game. Where the character's humor and the game's atmosphere impressed, the gameplay as a whole drove me crazy! Each level of this game is an open world mission, each one taking over 90 minutes each when playing on Hard. Weapons feel weightless, and often unimpactful. On top of that, you can only carry one weapon at a time, unless you find a sniper rifle with a pistol. This got really frustrating when any other FPS game has taught me to swap weapons when in combat instead of reloading. Here, I HAVE to hide and reload/heal/repair vehicle, etc. And don't get me started on how terrible the vehicle controls are... Yeah, this game controls horribly, and nothing really feels satisfying except for collecting the different weapons and gold bars on each map. And your informant in the game that briefs you on each mission (Juliette) is probably one of the least helpful characters in a video game EVER! Even before you're left for dead halfway through the game, she gives you garbage intel, and never offers help for your squad going against an ENTIRE ARMY!!! And she seems proud of that. Like, what an unlikable character for the sake of being useless. What a waste. If it weren't for the personality of your squad and the promise of a better sequel, I would've dropped this game after level 3. However, there are pros here. This game LOOKED really great, mostly due to the new Frostbite engine. This engine would go on to be one of the reasons Battlefield is so revered today, as it almost always looks incredible. On top of that, sound design is fantastic, with most nature and weapons sounds being very realistic. AND we got a little bit of the Battlefield theme mixed in at moments in the game, which was pretty cool! All in all, this was a disappointment, and not a great start for the Battlefield games. I expected a lot from this one, which is on me. Playing this game reminded me of how much I hated the open combat missions in MWIII (2023), as they took FOREVER to complete. However, props where due, respawning in real time and losing no progress was a HUGE help here. But with levels that lasted WAY too long and boring combat and terrible controls, it's hard for me to remember the decent story, fun characters, and great atmosphere. 5/10. Here's to hoping Bad Company 2 picks up the slack!