With all the hype leading up to the release of Grand Theft Auto IV, the excitement around the recently released map packs for Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3, another upcoming title has been quietly working towards its June 26th release date.

First Person Shooter fans should know which one I’m referring to, it’s the Battlefield series. Beginning long ago on the PC and starting off in World War II, moving into Vietnam then the present day in Battlefield 2 and even the future in Battlefield 2142! Heading to the Xbox 360 soon is the latest game in the series, Battlefield: Bad Company which promises to deliver a more rounded single player story based around a group of renegade soldiers.

I was invited by EA to take part in the multiplayer BETA, which was a solitary purely multiplayer mode with no glimpse of the single player campaign whatsoever. What was on offer though, were 2 maps from the games multiplayer mode which looks set to deliver an enormously fun time thanks to the amazingly destructible environments.

The multiplayer mode on offer in the BETA was called “Gold Rush” and puts two teams against each other, one side as the Defenders and the others as Attackers. The Attacker’s goal is to destroy the two chests of gold at the Defenders base and once that’s done, attack the next two chests at the next base that the Defenders then fall back to. Do this a number of times, or successfully hold off the Attackers and you win the map.

The two maps, Oasis and Ascension offered up vastly different experiences. Oasis, which is more of your ‘traditional’ Battlefield desert map features a cool home base for the attackers complete with an Apache Longbow waiting on the airfield, a nice selection of Abrams tanks and even an Artillery battery for those that choose to deliver some ‘death from above’ while sitting a few miles from the action. So preferring the safety of plate steel around me, I found myself jumping in tanks wherever possible (which now feature a nifty smoke camouflage that you can deploy with the RB button) and mowing down unfortunate enemy infantry with splash damage from tank shells, or the trusty machine gun.

In true Battlefield style though, things aren’t one sided and Defenders have mounted missile launchers, some nasty Anti-Aircraft defences and plenty of weapons and spots to hide. Or so you’d think, if this was a conventional shooter.

But it isn’t. As mentioned, Bad Company features not only some destructible environments, but amazingly destructible environments. Defenders hiding in a building waiting for you to come in through the front door? Guess again, blow the wall behind them apart with a tank shell and hopefully you’ll not only take a few enemies out, but also open up a new route to the gold chests. On foot with some stupid fence in your way that you can’t jump over? Switch to your grenade launcher (if you’re the Assault class) and blow a big section of it away. Need to get to the ammo box quickly, blow the wall next to it down and jump in to rearm. Spotted some Defenders sniping from an attic in a building? Blow a section of the wall or roof out and let the rest of your squad mop up anyone left standing.

It didn’t seem possible to totally level a building to the ground (most of the shell would remain standing), and sometimes you’d hit the wall in just the wrong spot so that there wouldn’t be any damage, but remember that this was a BETA and it did have a couple of glitches that have been ironed out since even before this build was packed up for release to the masses. What the environment destruction brought to each game was a completely new dynamic of not only leaving none of those pesky hiding spots that gamers always seem to find (usually through exploiting parts of maps), a much greater sense of personal fragility once out of the vehicles and a much, much greater sense of action from rubble and other shrapnel flying everywhere while the walls of buildings get blasted out beside you.

The second map in the BETA called Ascension features a European village with a vertical incline that the Attackers must take to reach the gold chests. There’s a great deal more ‘house to house’ fighting here as Defenders lay in wait and Attackers move stealthily along the narrow gaps between buildings, or simply blow walls down and run through them… Whatever works! As the Attackers destroy each pair of gold chests, the Defenders are forced back until eventually making a final stand in a castle on top of the hill. The only vehicle on offer was a Humvee but in a few maps I was able to get a few road kills in which is always good value.

The weapons felt great, but the aiming felt a bit floaty, even when looking down the iron sights, and is no doubt just the unfinished state of the BETA. The Battlefield series is known for its good quality controls (even the console versions) and after so many games in the series DICE know what they’re doing so this shouldn’t be an issue at all. Most of the classes I tried out had access to primary weapons (with more unlockable) with the normal assortment of grenades and pistols on offer as backups. As you progress in rank there’s also a few extra weapons and items that can be unlocked and I was able to get access to the medikit syringe and a new assault rifle for the assault class, although on the Oasis level the laser designator unlock for the sniper class probably would have been of more use. It certainly helps if at least one sniper on your team has it!

And that’s the crux of the whole Battlefield experience. You need a team that knows what to do, and a squad of friends that can work together all kitted out with complimentary gear. A clued up squad is able to dominate the action if they work together and tanks, humvees and helicopters flying around with one person in them is an absolute waste of that resource. Get a squad of 3 tanks with 2 players in each one, or even on foot, communicating properly with the right mix of weapons and gear and if the opposition is a rabble of people just running around on their own, they’re easily defeated.

Even with the remaining glitches in the beta, having to put up with a bit of lag (surprisingly there wasn’t that much!) from playing on overseas hosted games and only being restricted to the two maps, I found Battlefield: Bad Company surprisingly addictive. Throw in the obligatory ranking system with some snazzy new features, such as capturing the dog tags of people you knife, and you’ve got one hell of a shooter that should be an absolute blast when the full game hits.

Article by Shane Bryan.