The original Bad Company was a good game – not great, but good. Single-player established a bunch of wisecracking fools as the titular B Company and took players through a rather forgettable campaign. Multiplayer, however, was great – though hamstrung by its lack of modes. It seems, then, that DICE has learned from its mistakes and turned Bad Company 2 from a single-player-focused title with multiplayer tagged on to the exact opposite.

That moustache looks uncannily familiar.

That’s not to say the one-player campaign is entirely forgettable. It sees the boys on the trail of some naughty Russians who have their hands on a superweapon, which may or may not have the ability to bring down society as we know it. While a fair bit has been made of the more serious tone in the game, BC2 hasn’t forgotten its sense of humour, and the dialogue between two characters on their favourite moment in Predator raised a fairly big smile at this end (“that’s not a scene – that’s the movie!”). But all of this is just window dressing on what is a straightforward, fairly bland campaign that takes the chaps around the world – though mostly through South America.

The main problem is that the player feels shockingly funnelled through the game and its set pieces, and the instances of on-rails, mounted gun/vehicle sequences are just too many to bother putting up with. It’s hard to play through the campaign without constantly having the nagging feeling that this is a game made by a multiplayer developer, and would be far more suited to being multiplayer only. Glitches, an unbalanced difficulty level that sees you cruising through before hitting a complete brick wall, noticeably poor checkpoint placement and a general feeling that it’s just a bit half-baked all serve to drag the experience down.

If this review were just taking into account the single-player portion of BC2 then it would score far lower – around the 75% mark, to put a number on it. Bear that in mind if you don’t have access to the internet (you Luddite, you).
But we’re breaking with tradition here and incorporating multiplayer into the standard review – it would, as in the case of Modern Warfare 2, be unfair not to. And this is where BC2 really excels, allowing DICE to bring to the fore its unquestionable ability as a multiplayer developer. Without multiplayer, BC2 would only be a decent game: with it, it’s fantastic.

Arica harbour is bleak, but utterly stunning.

Whereas last time around there was only one mode out of the box, Gold Rush (two when Conquest arrived via DLC), this time we have no less than four and the potential for more to be added, again via DLC. It was this lack of variety first time around that made us mark the game down and question its ability to tackle the might of Modern Warfare. This time, though, it’s a genuine challenger.

DICE would be the first to admit it stutters a little on the single-player side of things, but that would be missing the point. Online is its bitch, to put it lightly, and playing Bad Company 2 with 23 other like-minded warmongers is something incredibly special. It isn’t just that the game feels so very right, that it’s tight, balanced and simple enough to get into – it’s that there’s an extra layer of tactics, technique and skill to proceedings that simply isn’t done in other online shooters, including Modern Warfare 2, MAG et al.

… continued