Battlefield: Bad Company -- Truckasaurus Rex Would Win.

It's been a while since my last update. There are a couple of reasons for that. One Battlefield related, and the other being Pokémon. It just happens that Pokémon is a black hole of a time sink that I wasn't quite prepared for. But this entry is about Battlefield. I've completed the offline game of Battlefield twice over. I originally went through it on the hard difficulty level and earned the achievements for it. Once I realized that the normal achievements don't unlock alongside the hard achievements I sort of only halfheartedly searched for the collectible weapons and the bars of gold hidden in each level. I saved my more thorough searching for when I went through the game the second time on the normal difficulty level. So how was Dice CE's first real attempt at an offline mode? It wasn't bad. It wasn't great either. Some things they got right, and others they need more ironing out. What's right about it? First and foremost, the character of the characters. They have it in spades. Stereotypes though they may be, they're all wonderfully entertaining with smartly written banter and great voice work. The story is shallow to begin with. You're just out to steal some gold. It's the banter that will keep you entertained throughout the game. The game is also really pretty with some massive levels that show off Dice CE's great level design skills. Something they've always exceeded at. The game also features what might be the best surround sound design I've ever heard in a video game. Everything sounds great from the pinging of bullets to the clanging of shell casings hitting the ground to the booming explosions and they all rock and roll through the speakers. The controls are pretty functional and never get in the way of things. So what did they need to spend some more time on? The artificial intelligence is the chief complaint on both sides. Your squad mates aren't the brightest bunch when it comes to actually shooting as they are when talking trash to each other. You have to do all of the work yourself. The enemies in turn are freaking brilliant. Not only are their tactics quite sound, but they're gifted marksmen who don't ever miss and they're seemingly smart enough to ignore your squad mates and concentrate all their considerable firepower solely at you. Which makes things tough. Did I mention the greatly designed levels are massive? Maybe a bit too massive as each of the game's eight levels take a serious amount of time to complete.  What Battlefield: Bad Company really shows is great potential for future offline efforts from Dice CE. But as anyone who has ever played a Battlefield game knows, it's all about the online baby. And that will have to wait until next time...