The Battlefield series has been known for many things both good and bad, but one thing the series is not known for is its single player gameplay. With the release of Battlefield: Bad Company, EA and DICE are looking to add some depth to the series with a group of awkward outcasts and a storyline that follows the hunt for the spoils of war.

Players take the role of Preston Marlowe, a soldier who has been placed in B Company, the sub par band of soldiers that are given a tour of duty in lieu of a prison sentence. Once you arrive at B Company, you are quickly introduced to your new squad mates Haggard, Sweetwater and Redford and their quirky sense of humor and are then sent off to help out the real soldiers in combat. After a confrontation with some private mercenaries, the squad realizes that these particular mercs are being paid in gold. Once the gang gets a small taste of the precious metal found on a dead enemy, they decide to search for and recover all the gold they can find.

Like previous Battlefield games, the gameplay is focused on the weapons and vehicles. There are plenty of each to be found throughout the seven chapters in the game, ranging from tanks, armored cars and even golf carts. Unfortunately the helicopter, being one of the most fun vehicles to use, is only available in one chapter in the entire single player game. There are numerous guns to use, most of which can be retrieved from the bodies of fallen enemies and found in buildings scattered about. There are additional weapons such as the laser guidance system that brings fiery destruction down from the skies and the mortar assist device that packs some serious muscle when things start to get a little hairy.

With most weapons also comes the standard secondary fire of a grenade launcher. While in most games it is simply a way to clear out enemies quicker, in Bad Co. it is a little more useful. Just about everything in the environments is destructible, which means loading up the grenade launcher and firing it at a house will blow a hole right through the wall, exposing everything inside. Bunkers, sandbags, crates and even forests of trees aren’t safe from your mischievousness and can all be blown up with a spectacular outcome.

While the environments of each chapter tend to vary from forest to mountainside, to a golf course – and there is nothing sweeter than driving a tank across a golf course – the enemies always remain the same and become quite repetitious. With only two main types of enemies to encounter, it really does feel like you are killing the same enemies over and over, even though the difficulty of them goes up and down like a rollercoaster. One thing that Bad Co. has in it that many games don’t, is that the more you die, the easier the game becomes.