How can you not love a game that features a smiley face pin on a grenade?

Battlefield Bad Company is coming out soon and the folks at Electronic Arts were kind enough to provide your humble author with a beta key to experience the game before it comes out. They also allowed me to give you a head’s up on this one. Tonight, I downloaded it on my Xbox 360 and wanted to share my initial impressions.

Remember, this is only the beta version and right now, it is strictly multiplayer. What is Battlefield Bad Company? Well, glad you asked. It is a first person shooter (fps) that is rated M. The multiplayer portion puts you on the side of the attackers or the defenders. If you are attacking, you are getting the gold bars while the defenders are there to prevent that from happening. If you have seen the movie Three Kings, you have some idea of what the game is about.

“But wait, wait” you say. “Doesn’t the world have enough fps games?” Well, yes and no. Personally, I enjoy fps as a genre, but there are a lot of clones out there. This one is different. For sometime, company PR machines tell us that their new game features “never before seen levels of destruction!” Usually these are evolutionary, incremental changes that while adding some level of destruction are not huge steps in moving the genre forward. The developer, DICE, has changed the landscape with their new Frostbite engine. This, dear readers, is a revolutionary advance. When they say it is a destructible environment, they mean it. Cannot find a door? Well, fire some rounds of machine gun ammo and presto, who needs a door when you can create your own opening? That sniper in the lower level causing problems? Introduce him to your grenade launcher as you remove the wall. A machine gunner keeping your team pinned down? Swing around with some shoulder launched rockets and properly welcome him to the neighborhood by making a modification to that chunk of the house he was hiding behind. Only the frames of structures remain to prevent the landscape from becoming too desolate.

So, I jumped in, head first and apparently made quite a target for the opposition at first. Must have been the bullseye on my back! The controller scheme is pretty straightforward. Graphics are solid. I could not speak to other players in the beta, but the game generates voices in a foreign tongue as well as English. Mostly, they were calls for a medic, warnings about snipers, grenades etc… Certainly, the final version will allow for chat so better teamwork can be achieved. Well, after a few deaths and re-spawns, I got my bearings and it was time to go to work. Weapon changes are a breeze with the bumpers. Changing classes is available at spawn and re-spawn as well. Players choose “kits” which dictate primary and secondary weapon selection. Choices include: Assault, Demolition, Recon, Specialist and Support.  One can spawn (or re-spawn) right in the middle of the battle or back a bit in a safe (safer?) zone. After that, it is all about the gold. The game has a ranking system in which scoring points (kills, assists, opening crates of gold, etc…) allows one to move up from a private, sergeant and so on. Not really sure if the rank gets one anything other than letting others know your skill level.

There are Internet reports that Electronic Arts will offer five special weapons to purchasers of the Gold Edition. If you are not getting the Gold Edition, do not despair; they will be happy to sell them to you via downloadable content. Now, EA is saying that the new weapons are balanced and do not provide an advantage or disadvantage. So I am wondering what purpose they serve. If there is no advantage, why offer it? If there is an advantage does that create an unbalanced playing field? Will everyone need to buy it? I am really not sure if I like this as an option and want to see what you think. So here is your chance, read up on it and post your thoughts. I hope Electronic Arts is not floating a trial balloon here. Right now, in head to head play, victory is largely based on skill. If one can purchase advantages, the balance is lost. I do not know if that is the direction we all want to go as console gamers. I say that as a fan of capitalism and with Libertarian sensibilities. I am all for the free market in business. I just like having a level playing field on which to compete. Fair competition makes us all better. I just do not know if this falls under my concept of fair.

All that said this looks like a fun game. Perhaps we can all use a little bit more Frostbite in our lives. Battlefield Bad Company will launch for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

See you soon!