Mike Bantick
Monday, 14 July 2008 06:53
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
To balance this out, DICE have made some interesting game-play decisions. The most obvious of these are the healing and check pointing systems.
Rather than running around looking for illogically placed healing packs, or simply ducking behind a rock until health regenerates, Bad Company utilises a Haze like health injecter with a short cool down time, meaning sometimes you will be pumping the syringe into your belly over and over again as you find somewhere to hide, retrieve your weapon and retaliate.
Not long after this occurs you will realise the folly of the strategy. The checkpoint system makes worrying about your health situation mute. Like the [now optional] vita-chambers in
BioShock , death is nothing more than a short restart away, returning Marlow to the battle as if nothing happened, with all enemies still dead, and the only inconvenience being having to run from the geographic respawn location.
This turns Battlefield: Bad Company from a ‘Saving Private Ryan’ to a ‘Rambo 3’. This is further enforced with the focus on map collectibles; there are an assortment of weapons lying around, along with a smattering of gold bars that can be gathered together in a hi-tech treasure hunt.
