Good engine makes up for mediocre campaign

Battlefield: Bad Company takes the proven Battlefield formula firefights on a massive scale and tries to make it into a single player as well as a multiplayer shooter. Touting the Frostbite engine with a mostly destructable world and focus  
on high quality sound, the engine really shines and the game is technically very impressive with a steady frame rate. The gameplay in the single player campaign falls a bit short however. 

In the single player, you play as Preston Marlowe, recently transferred to B-company (or Bad Company), a company where the army sends various misfits who don't fit elsewhere. The story follows your four-man squad as you go off in a search for gold bars, owned by a mercenary called "The Legionnaire".  Your squad mates are fun, and the story is presented in a nice funny way. 
 
As previously stated though, the game falls short of the presentation. Your'e often left feeling lost without direction, especially early on when you haven't figured out all the quirks of the game yet. How do you take down an armored car that just arrived in the small village you find yourself in? Well, it's up to you to find out, because the game won't tell you. Often it feels like the developers put you in a big sandbox world and then decided to throw a bunch of enemies at you, without any thought going to when and where the enemies come from. And though the single player contains 7 missions, most of them aren't visually distinguishable from the others, making the environments feel kind of bland. 
 

But even though the single player is disappointing, the multi player is a lot of fun. Two modes are available; the standard Conquest mode from previous franchise entries and a new mode called Gold Rush, where one team of attackers tries to destroy crates of gold, with the other team defending. The multi player sports a ranking and unlock system which will keep you motivated to come back to the game time and again. The destruction system is available in the multi player portion as well, and destroying the buildings and foliage of the levels is very enjoyable.  
 
If you are a fan of the Battlefield franchise and have been waiting for a Battlefield experience on the console, you will be content with this game. The multi player is fun enough to warrant a purchase if this is your kind of game, and the game has been adapted well to the controls of a game pad.