I had heard a lot about this game, since its announcement quite a bit back now. It was to promise an advancement on the Battlefield series, with nearly fully destructible environments, a thrilling single player campaign, coupled with focused multiplayer. This demo allows you to play the first missions of the game and a multiplayer mode.Before I begin on the multiplayer, the basic idea behind the game is that you are part of B Company, a company in which the soldiers which have not behaved particularly great in the army are put into, rather than prison. You are based in a conflict in the fictional eastern European country of Serkozache, and your company fight more for personal gain than the good of the army etc. During the demo mission, you are the new guy, who has joined the casually commanded company. You are ordered to attack an enemy outpost to clear it out for a convoy of vehicles. You grab a vehicle, of the many available i picked the bog standard Humvee and the 3 other squad members jumped in.
The dialog behind the characters is superb, playing half on the stereotyped American army style of things, whilst having a subtle satire behind the scenes. Animation is also good, as I saw two of my squad mates playing rock, paper, scissors whilst waiting to go. The demo's main purpose, being the first mission of the retail game, is to introduce you to the concepts and characters in B:BC, offering a variety of pop up, non-intrusive tips of some of the options, such as changing a radio station in you vehicle.
A lot has been made of the destructible environments, and for the most part they work well. Walls are destroyed in various ways depending on the strength of the weapon and at one point, when running through an artillery barrage, sandbags, trees and mortar were flying everywhere. It's nice to be able to run over trees, though I did find myself subconsciously slowing down after playing GTA IV, where mother natures finest are invincible.The only disappointing part is that buildings cannot be completely flattened, whether this is a gameplay choice or not, the developers have not allowed the building's supports to be destroyed. The way the buildings are damaged then, is much more similar to BLACK, seen on PS2 and Xbox, than Crysis.
Moving on from the single player, the multiplayer portion has one game mode
'Gold Rush', where a teams of attackers and defenders attempt to destroy or protect gold stashes, over one map, Oasis. Similar to the single player, whilst the maps are large in size, areas remain closed off until you have taken the gold stash, which allows for the attack to remain focused. Similar to BF:2142, the number of classes has been reduced, mirroring those found in CoD4.
The actual gameplay was really quite enjoyable, for someone who was more used to CoD's style than Battlefield's, it offers a easy to pick up, lag free experience. The respawns are fairly quick, and the game allows the tide of battle to shift very easily, one of the weaker points I felt of Cod4. The demo allows you to play in ranked matches up to rank 4, in which you can unlock a weapon to be used at retail.Overall then, BF:BC has done a good job of convincing me to get the retail. That comes with eight maps and thankfully, weapons that can all be unlocked at level 25, rather than being forced into purchasing them. Graphics could be touched up in places, some areas look pretty barren, but generally, the game has a polished feel, no doubt helped by the beta release.
Battlefield: Bad Company is due for release on June 23rd for Xbox 360 and PS3
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