Battlefield 2042, the next entry in DICE's series of big, noisy multiplayer shooters, is set in a grim vision of the future where climate change has irreparably ravaged the planet and everyone is divided, angry, and depressed. So basically like the world today, but with more robot dogs. The series didn't always take itself so seriously, though. Back in the spring of 2010, EA's flagship studio launched Bad Company 2, a delightfully silly, self-aware shake-up of the series' established formula that not only had an infectious sense of fun, but was a killer FPS in its own right. I honestly don't think there's been a better Battlefield since.
Bad Company 2 was one of the earliest games to use DICE's in-house Frostbite engine, which these days powers games as varied as Mass Effect and FIFA. It made especially memorable use of a technology called tactical destruction, which let you tear levels apart, topple buildings, and blow big chunks out of concrete walls. The series has since taken this concept further, including an entire skyscraper collapsing in BF4's Siege of Shanghai. But it's a gimmick. After seeing the building fall a dozen times, you eventually become numb to it.
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Bad Company 2's destruction is much more unpredictable, in a way that can dramatically alter the flow of a multiplayer match. A tank can roll into a village, fire a few shells, and completely reshape it—demolishing cover, exposing the enemy flag, or rooting out hidden snipers. There's something immensely satisfying about violently transforming the face of the game's maps with explosives. It also helps that, even by modern standards, the destruction looks—and sounds—so damn good. Buildings explode in a fury of fire, smoke, dust, and debris. The audio dulls, simulating the blast's effect on your ears. You can really feel it.
For a game that's now over a decade old, the attention to detail is wild. Explosions leave smoking craters in the terrain and powdery snow falls from trees on winter maps. Fire a tank's gun and the shockwave ripples through nearby rubble, knocking it over. The level of fidelity is remarkable, and all these crunchy little details make for a wonderfully dynamic, chaotic military sandbox. It's one of the most fun video games to just make a mess in.
The multiplayer maps are excellent too: the snowy forests of White Pass, the war-ravaged waterfront of Arica Harbour, the wide open spaces of Islae Inocentes. It's one of the best collections of maps in any Battlefield game. There are ten in total, and they each have their own distinctive atmosphere and personality. They're generally smaller than you might expect from the series, but this gives Bad Company 2 a feeling of pace and energy that some of the newer, more sprawling games lack. It's a tighter, faster, more focused multiplayer game overall, which was a nice alternative to the sometimes overwhelming BF2.
Singleplayer is where the humour I mentioned earlier comes into play. The titular Bad Company is a ragtag crew of soldiers caught up in a war between the US and Russia. There's Marlowe the sniper, Sweetwater the technician, Haggard the explosives expert, and a weary sergeant, Redford. They're the kind of scrappy misfits you'd never see in a modern Battlefield, and their inability to behave like professionals is the source of much of the game's comedy. Yet despite them being considered cannon fodder, they repeatedly prove themselves to be capable soldiers—even if their methods are, let's say, unorthodox.
It's a completely linear campaign, but a fun one. The maps are big, varied, and dramatic, and the missions feature a nice mix of land, sea, and air combat, mirroring the multiplayer. An abundance of tedious on-rails action sequences spoils things somewhat, but this is still the best singleplayer Battlefield has ever been. The story is good, the characters are likeable, and it has a light-hearted, knockabout energy that is highly entertaining. Multiplayer is where Bad Company 2 really shines, but there's way more value in the campaign than most military shooters. War is hell, but sometimes you need a laugh.
Will EA ever greenlight another Bad Company? The future of the series is uncertain, but the inclusion of BC2's Valparaiso map in BF2042 suggests DICE hasn't forgotten about it. I'm looking forward to the next Battlefield, but I'd love to see the studio revisit Bad Company in some form, if only to inject a bit of personality and humour back into the series. These are games where you can jump out of a plane, snipe a rival pilot in mid-air, then jump into their seat and fly away—they don't need a super serious backstory.