This was my introduction to the Battlefield series. I had many friends who were already playing Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142 before it, but alas, here I was.

One thing that stood out to me right away was the use of humor in the single player campaign. All of the characters had, well, character! It was an odd thing to see in a genre where everything is overly-serious and full of faux military speak. Private Preston Marlowe (the character you play as), Private Terrence Sweetwater, Private George Gordon Haggard, and Sergeant Samuel D. Redford are all enjoyable characters that help make the campaign special.



The graphics were not necessarily amazing for the time period, but I never had an issue with them. They were more than passable. This was the first Battlefield game to make use of the Frostbite game engine, also developed by DICE and later spread around by EA to be used by all of its developers. There are many new features included in Frostbite 1.0 as compared to DICE's previous engine Refractor, but easily the most important feature was the addition of destructible environments. This changed the gameplay quite a bit from typical FPS games. One excellent example of how it benefited the game would be that it is much harder to camp. If you do, your surroundings will simply be blown up by another player within a short matter of time and you have to find a new place to hide.



Again, I never played any Battlefield games before this one (yet), but I was immediately impressed with the audio. Luckily my father had a surround sound system which was absolutely put to use with this game. One of my favorite examples of great audio quality in this game is the dynamic range when driving a tank...when you fire a shell, everything else is quiet and you can only hear the shell being fired for a minute. Many people may not notice this detail, but for me it made the vehicles and weapons sound much more "beefy."



The game only launched with one multiplayer mode, Gold Rush. If you have played any Battlefield games recently, they all have a game mode called "Rush" which is just a continuation of Gold Rush. Basically, there are two opposing teams (Bad Company supports up to 24 players in a match); one will defend two gold crates, and the other will try to destroy the gold crates. At first all I wanted was some simple Team Deathmatch, but I quickly adjusted and learned to enjoy this game. After the game launched, DICE added a Conquest mode which was a very nice addition, since the game didn't yet have any variety at all in terms of multiplayer modes.



Overall, Bad Company was a more than notable entry in the shooter genre that changed just enough to keep it feeling fresh and new. I really am happy this game came out when it did, as I have purchased every game in the series since Bad Company came out.