From the jazzy musical number that greets you upon the first time you reach the main menu Battlefield: Bad Company is just a bit different than from what you would expect from the series. The game develops the series in a variety of new ways such as the addition of a true single-player campaign as well as the destructible environments, but its heart still beats with the same addicting gameplay fans expect. It is a game that never takes itself quite seriously, backing up the competitive fighting with the fact that all of the combatants are greedy soldiers trying to line their pockets with gold.

The campaign of the game is a full-blown experience in itself spanning multiple maps, with each one comprised of multiple objectives. You fill the boots of Private Marlowe who is the newest addition to B Company, nicknamed Bad Company due to the Army’s use of it to house all of its disposable misfits and morons. The members of your squad are a cast of interesting characters including a gruff sergeant looking forward to retirement, a demolitions expert whose love for explosions and gold leaves little room in his brain for anything else, and a meek young soldier who only signed on with the Army for a scholarship. The dynamic of how the characters act and interact with each other is fully fleshed out, making cutscenes often both informative and humorous.

The plot centers on the squad going AWOL in search of a shipment of gold bars, with their hijinks leaving a swath of destruction in their wake. The objectives needed to complete are easy to find thanks to their appearance on the map, and are also easy to figure out and complete. However the campaign shines in that often due to the size of the map and the location of the objectives you can go about completing them however you see fit. Sniping from afar then moving in, bombing the area with mortars from a nearby hilltop, or simply ramming through with a tank are all viable options to get the job done.

Enemies are just smart enough to get relatively near cover, but more often than not they are completely predictable. Your teammates are similarly afflicted, and while they are capable of firing their weapon and generally following your lead they aren’t dependable for pretty much anything. The fact that they cannot die and never directly support you only leads to further disconnect, making the campaign feel that you are more or less fighting alone anyway.

The campaign’s best use is that of a primer for the brilliant multiplayer action. The multiplayer mode is comprised of one game mode, Gold Rush, which has one team fighting to steal crates of gold while the other protects it at all costs. The lack of the Conquest game type is surprisingly missing from the roster though it is purported to be made available as downloadable content down the road. In Gold Rush the attacking team has to destroy two crates of gold to capture the bars held inside, and while they are impervious to small arms fire heavy artillery can break them as can a demo charge capable of being placed by any attacker who can get close. The defending team must defuse any set charges and generally protect the crates as best they can, as if the first set is destroyed the attackers push forward to the next. For each set that the attacking team destroys they get a sizable number of respawns added to their team, and while the defenders have unlimited reinforcements it is hard enough to keep the crates intact.