Battlefield: Bad Company 2 – PC Review

Gameplay – Single Player

Bad Company was originally designated as the special unit for insubordinate soldiers. The Bad Company unit is an “expendable” squad and are therefore used for high risk missions by throwing them into action before any other troops. The benefit is, of course, getting the job done relatively quietly without the need for a battalion of soldiers.

You play as Marlowe as part of a squad of four misfits in Bad Company. You are the one that dabbles a little in everything. Alongside you are Haggard, the trigger-happy explosives guy, Sweetwater the techie and Sarge who is the big bad one that actually signed up to be a part of Bad Company instead of being transferred there.

Together the four of you follow the single player campaign in Battlefield: Bad Company 2. It is one that takes you on a journey of death and despair and also of bittersweet victory. As a part of this unit, you work closely with the others and become a force to be reckoned with.

The game starts with a flashback to the World War II era with a similar group of soldiers being sent on what was really a suicide mission to retrieve a piece of technology that could be used to manufacture a weapon of mass destruction. However, after several decades, this technology has been developed greatly and is on the brink of being used to stem a US invasion by the Russians.

You and your crew are expected to go in, kick a lot of ass, retrieve this technology and save the world. Sounds easy enough but Bad Company seems to also have ‘Bad Luck’. After being given the primary mission, you will end up having to traverse 3 continents and a myriad of different terrain types and weather conditions. As we would say in Jamaica, “Di bwoy dem salt!”

The single player campaign turns out to be a very good one though. Instead of playing a deathmatch versus computer bots like in previous Battlefield titles, you actually get about 7 hours or so of a riveting story line and a superb ending. Being the sequel to Bad Company which was a console-only title, Bad Company 2 does justice to PC gamers providing a solid feel to it rather than having that clunky console-port feel. Many times I had to remind myself that I was actually playing Battlefield and not Call of Duty!

As usual, I don’t like to give spoilers in my game reviews, so I will go easy on the single player details. I will say though, that there is also quite a bit of humour to be found along the way. My personal favourite quote came from Sweetwater who said, “When the defecation hits the oscillation, we always get split up!” I had to pause the game for quite a few minutes due to laughter…it really hit the fan right there.

I wouldn’t recommend purchasing this game for the single player campaign only though. This is because Bad Company 2 is really all about the online play. The multiplayer component really stands out. Now let’s take a look at that.