The Call of Duty and Battlefield franchises have been at open war for some time now. (I don't count Medal of Honor--great as it might have been, it has fallen to the wayside.) With Call of Duty 4, the two series came face-to-face in the realm of modern-day, real-world warfare. Which series is better? In all honesty, each has its quirks. But in my opinion, Bad Company just misses the mark.
The game is set within a fictional war against Russia in the present day. You are Preston Marlowe, a private freshly placed in B Company, better known as Bad Company for reasons that, if not already obvious, will be very soon.
The physics in Bad Company are something EA has tried very hard to sell. More specifically, the ability to drastically alter the environment with explosives. Personally I wasn't terribly excited about this feature, after bad experiences with other similarly marketed systems (Red Faction 2 is the big one, here). But this game actually manages to pull it off. It's very satisfying to fire a grenade at a building with snipers in it and blow off the wall, then proceed to mow down said snipers with automatic fire. On the downside, it does become a bit of a crutch--in another FPS, I might storm into a house and clear the rooms myself. In Bad Company, I just lob an explosive and level the house. It does kind of detract from the game once you're into that little rut, but that may be more of a me thing than a problem with the game itself.
On the other hand, the controls are a bit wonky. The character makes little "steps" when you move, meaning that if you just attempt to sidestep a few inches, he takes a step or two, ending up not quite in the position you wanted to be in. Most of the time this isn't a game-breaker, just an annoyance, but still. Throwing grenades also is a bit counterintuitive...actually, projectiles of almost any kind are. It's difficult to make a grenade, thrown or launched, land where you want it to--somehow the game manages to throw it off every time even after you've learned to correct for it. Vehicle movement is the one thing that is definitely in need of correction. For some reason, the gas is on the left trigger and the brake/reverse on the left bumper. This is a bit hard to use after years of playing games with the gas on the right trigger, it's almost a universal arrangement. Even after playing a while, it throws me off every so often as I fall back on the old habits.
The game's plot is ultimately a bit thin, but the characters of Bad Company are just priceless. Haggard's unthinking, run-and-gun style plays off well against Sweetwater's massive nerd factor and his crush on the radio girl back at HQ--and both of them possess a total disregard for the authority of the group leader, Redford. Your character, Preston, serves as a foil to all three of them, being the only squad member with any real desire to be a professional soldier and act as such.
Overall, it's a decent game. The graphics and lighting are very good, the way buildings can be damaged and destroyed not only looks good but can have a dramatic effect on gameplay, and the characters in the campaign are nothing if not amusing. But ultimately, I would personally prefer Call of Duty 4.
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