Battlefield
Bad Company Online Impressions

Unfortunately, for those of you who played the Bad Company demo to death the majority of what I’m about to tell you wont come as much of a surprise. The first thing you will notice from the demo, upon starting up a multiplayer match, is the ever so familiar gold crate and status bars – yes, sadly, there is only one multiplayer mode. And despite my slight disappointment at the lack of death-match and team death-match modes, the 8 maps make up for this quite nicely.

Each map has it’s own defining features from the damp dreary environment of Over And Out through the ridiculous metalwork of Deconstruction to the CQC-inducing tight corners and narrow alleys of Oasis. Each map has it’s own play style to accompany these features the likely hood of it is you’ll find yourself feeling a bit lost as each map will take time to master.

For each of these maps, the individual character classes have a different set of weapons that differ in spec and age. This is a nice touch, you’ll find yourself using your upgraded weapons pretty quick off the bat, as levelling up takes no time at all. As far as progression goes, not a great deal has been added beyond mini-achievements, which are locked to each map.

As far as everything else goes, gameplay is still action-packed without becoming so hectic that sometimes inhuman reflexes are required. The graphics are still quite nice although I’m really not keen on the strange noise effect that has been added to your vision and the fact that there is no anti-aliasing however as is the case with the occasional freezing, I suspect that this is solely an issue for the PS3 version.

Despite these issues the multiplayer is definitely an enjoyable and compelling experience thanks to the natural feeling controls, the crisp and immersing sound effects (not to mention the jazz) and the addictive mini-achievements. If the single-player campaign doesn’t interest you then so far the multiplayer alone is worth the buy.

A full review of Battlefield: Bad Company will be on Nidzumi.com soon.