Some of you maybe anticipating to get your hands on the demo of Battlefield Bad Company next week to determine if the game lives up to it’s hype. I recently had a chance to try the demo early courtesy of Xbox Solutions and the game doesn’t disappoint.

As hyped by EA for the past year, the game does offer truly destructible environment. Pretty much anything you think you can blow up you can from all the vehicles, chairs, buildings, trees, even shred grass. Even small crates and objects laying around you that you would assume wouldn’t be destructible are.

You take on the role of Preston Marlowe a rookie that just joined B-Company or "Bad Company." With a rag tag team of misfits you will find yourself going from one hot spot to another. The humor is executed flawlessly much like watching a comedic movie with excellent character banter and voice acting. The game quickly becomes a "Three Kings" story in search for gold in the middle of battle.

The multi-player portion offering looks arguably similar to Call of Duty 4’s setup, with initial classes such as: Assault, Demolitions, Sniper, and Specialist. As you play more you can get ‘unlockables’ which will augment and enhance your arsenal. Using the destructible environment adds a new slew of strategy to the gameplay, such as destroying a building where a sniper was hiding at the top.

However not all was good with the gameplay itself, it wasn’t as polished as some of the offerings out there. With noticeable framerate stutters, and less that stellar visuals mar the overall experience. One thing noticeable that was an eye sore was the lack of motion blur effect when turning fast, at times causing a bit of disorientated un-comfort. The iron sight is a bit cumbersome covering more than half the screen as well.

The life health shot, or simulated "regeneration" was frustrating at times. It seems like they did not know whether to have health packs or regenerate health. You have to press a shoulder button to select a health shot, and press fire to administer it which takes 7 seconds to refresh your health bar. Oddly you have infinite health shots, so I fail to understand the logic of having a health shot you have to administer constantly when they could have just put in regenerative health in the first place.

Aside all the issues with the game, it truly provides for a fun title and is worth a least a rent and if you like the multiplayer it definitely is worth buying. Next week when you get your hands on the demo you can be the judge for your self. 

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Related:

Battlefield: Bad Company trailers copy Gears of War, Rainbow Six, SOCOM

Haze fails to dazzle, PS3 suffers hype hit

Microsoft hit with lawsuit over Xbox live outages

Microsoft to compensate Xbox live gold members for outages

Nintendo pays $21 million for having hands in the patent cookie jar

Stumble It! Tips N4G

Entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 2:58 pm under Games, PS3, PlayStation 3, Reviews, Uncategorized, Xbox 360.

Read more entries by Mike Ferro.