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Video Game Review: Battlefield: Bad Company

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KELVIN MA

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 25, 2008

System: Microsoft Xbox 360

Also available for: Sony PlayStation 3

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Reviewer's rating: ***

ESRB rating: Teen

Game type: First-person shooter

Kind of like: "Battlefield 1941" meets "Call of Duty 4"

Best feature: Multiplayer action; vehicles; everything is destructible

Worst feature: Dull single-player campaign; tricky aiming

The bottom line: Sometimes it's just more fun to blow everything up and sort it out later. It might not be the right thing to do, nor even the most practical. But it sure is the most fun.

"Battlefield: Bad Company" knows this. Oh boy, does it know this.

The single-player mode takes players through a campaign as a member of the eponymous U.S. Army unit as it goes AWOL in pursuit of gold. It doesn't really matter what's going on because everything that happens tends to devolve into an explosives demonstration involving grenades, RPGs and laser-guided missiles.

The best part of the game is the multiplayer action. There's only one game mode, basically a search and destroy with attackers and defenders. The action is relentless as teams throw everything they have - guns, tanks, humvees - at each other in some impressive battles of up to 24 players.

It's one of the more complete multiplayer experiences, encouraging strategy as well as machismo to win battles. Whereas many shooters emphasize using cover, turning many games into hide-and-seek/whack-a-mole affairs, "Bad Company" takes a more realistic approach. Because, really, there's no such thing as "cover" when enough explosives are involved.

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