Whenever a game developer decides to do a beta it is an exciting thing for fans of the previewed game everywhere, the amount of time between the announcement that the newest Battlefield franchise would be receiving a beta and the actual release of that beta was so short there wasn't much time for the hype to build. Nonetheless being a huge fan of anything Battlefield I was excited to say the least. The next game in the series goes by the name Battlefield: Bad Company and is the first of it's kind to feature a detailed single-player mode and fully destructible environments. Unfortunately the beta released last week was multiplayer only, we will have a chance to see the single-player stuff this month at an EA event in California, so stay tuned for that. Bad Company is being developed Digital Illusions: CE (for short, DICE) and is being made from the ground up exclusively for consoles. This little tidbit of information alone is huge for gamers hoping to see some truly unique first-person action from this series, especially on a console. Being the first game to utilize DICE's new Frostbite engine is a big thing as well, putting a lot of pressure on the developer to deliver something that not only plays good but also looks spectacular. After putting a good amount of time in with the multiplayer-beta we walked away impressed and wanting to play more.
The Battlefield: Bad Company beta includes two maps, Acension (woods and log cabins) and Oasis (desert and stone buildings); both of which are classic BF in size and layout. Don't think DICE would have you playing boring team deathmatch or capture the flag; the beta showcases the new multiplayer mode which revolves around protecting (or attacking) large trunks of expensive looking gold. To win the match the attackers must slowly move forward across the map destroying gold crates and thus overtaking waypoints on the map, turning them into friendly bases. On the other side of the coin the defenders must keep intact at least one gold crate when time expires, doing so will win mucho-points for the winning team, boosting players towards that next level (classes) or un-lockable content. Battlefield of the past has been developed with the large-scale battle in mind; anything under 20 players was not really worth playing as the maps were so big it would not have been much fun. DICE tried to change this way of thinking by keeping the objectives small and the map compact (multiple way-points or "bases" across a large scale environment).
Because this was a beta a lot of the online features were not fully implemented. In the beta there was no matchmaking or friends list, only straight-up online mayhem with no structure and no user-friendliness. I have no doubt that this will be fixed in the final version but it's good to know that the game is fun even without all those features. Bad Company features multiple different soldier-classes allowing different style gamers to choose their weapon of choice and attack (or defend) the objective in their own way. The one we used most during our run with the beta was the basic "soldier" class who came equipped with an assault rifle (with grenade launcher attachment), a pistol, and some explosives. Some people online were complaining that the "sniper" class needed to be more balanced because the rifle was way too powerful. Speaking of guns we need to at least mention that it looks as though micro-transactions will be a huge part of this game, something we were disappointed to see. From the beta menu we were able to see a screen filled with guns, all with little price tags out to the side of them. Whether or not this will play as big of a part in Bad Company as it looks to be only time will tell but considering the game costs a full 60 dollars out of the gate one could only hope most of that "extra" stuff would be included in the box.
DICE has let leak little to no information on how exactly this gold hunting objective ties into the single-player mode, or if it does at all. However there was a short video when the beta started up, that was very intriguing (and entertaining) to watch. We can only hope that as much effort and polish went into the story mode, which would be something to see. Who would have thought that we would ever be more excited to see what is coming out of the single-player portion of a Battlefield game, pure insanity. Many gamers are going to look at the Bad Company beta and say that it has way too many bugs, needs too much polishing, and overall is just not done. Those people were spoiled by the Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 beta, which were more like trailers for their games than betas. The Bad Company beta is just that, a beta, and it has plenty of stuff wrong with it. To name just a few we would have to mention the insane clipping issues and for some reason it takes 20-50 bullets to take down a single soldier, no joke.
