Battlefield: Bad Company for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, a Review.

Battlefield: Bad Company is the latest in the long tradition of fantastic games in the Battlefield series. The first version developed exclusively for consoles, Bad Company manages to capture the classic battlefield gameplay and transfer it almost completely intact.

Many who buy the game for its multiplayer gameplay may not know it, but this battlefield iteration actually has a full single player component as well. More than the simple bot play available in past battlefields, this fully fleshed-out mode has its own maps, a story, and even some passable voice acting.

Honestly, though, who plays battlefield by themselves? I suspect that many will pass up the single player component completely and jump straight into the fantastic multiplayer and frankly, I don't think they're missing much.

The single player game is passable, the levels are decent sized and the story is easy enough to follow, but it is by no means amazing. The writing is clichéd (at times downright embarrassingly so), the characters are unoriginal. You've got your grizzled sergeant, talkative white guy, demo guy who's obsessed with blowing stuff up, and your rookie with a mysterious past. This is the first battlefield with an actual story, and DICE's lack of experience in storytelling is evident.

Opponent A.I. is not much better than that of the bots in battlefields past. There is no point in sneaking around, the enemy always knows exactly where you are and will hit you with every bullet they fire. It's sad that a game with such adaptability and various options for play style in multiplayer really only gives you one choice when it comes to dealing with enemies in the single player component, run and gun.

Multiplayer, however, is simply amazing. DICE has had six long years to tweak and perfect their battlefield formula and Bad Company is incredibly well balanced because of it. No matter what the situation, there is always a solution somewhere close at hand. Playing a sniper faced with a horde of incoming enemy armor? Call in laser-guided salvation from the sky. Faced with a hillside covered in enemy snipers while playing support? Call in a mortar strike and blast them all to hell.

All the battlefield ingredients are here. Vehicles, turrets, various soldier loadouts, all the things you've loved about past iterations in the series are completely intact.

New to the formula is the impressive frostbite engine, which allows for unprecedented levels of battlefield carnage. No longer are players limited to the paths between buildings provided by the developers, now you can make your own path by destroying just about any wall, tree, fence, or any other kind of obstruction that blocks your way. Certain necessary structures are indestructible, like building supports and walls with ladders, but for the most part you're free to destroy anything you choose.

Certain tasks reward you with experience points, which you can use to unlock new weapons and equipment for your character loadouts. Earning levels and unlocking new weapons makes the multiplayer aspect even more addictive.

A great thing about the wide-open multiplayer is the ability to play pretty much any way you choose. Maybe you don't have the twitch reflexes necessary to assault the enemy base and capture the objective yourself. You can still earn lots of experience points by jumping on an artillery turret or repairing teammate's vehicles or laying down anti-tank mines. There are so many options in this game; almost any player can find a role that suits their playstyle.

The ability to customize your loadout beyond the boundaries of the five player classes would have been a nice touch, but I don't see how they could implement it without throwing off the game's carefully-crafted balance.

The game shipped with just the one multiplayer mode, but DICE plans to add the classic "conquest" mode sometime in the coming months.

Fantastic multiplayer makes Battlefield: Bad Company a must-buy for any PS3 or Xbox 360 shooter fan. The single player experience is disappointing, but just think of it as a sort of basic training for the online game, a way to familiarize yourself with the game's multitude of weapons, vehicles, and gameplay strategies before taking the fight online.