Battlefield: Bad Company Hands On

Dice has come a long way since Codename Eagle (geek points aplenty if you used to LAN party that game, back in the day - or even know what I'm talking about) - their Battlefield series really established them as a multiplayer gaming powerhouse. Not a bad feat when going head to toe with the people that all but invented the genre (iD software) and those that further refined it (Epic).

It's been a few (six) years since the original and support on the consoles has been fairly lacklustre, always an afterthought to the frontrunning PC version. Not anymore. The new Battlefield: Bad Company, which is currently in closed beta testing, is exclusive to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

The concept is pretty straight forward - it's a first person shooter with a heavy focus on team play, with realistic (ish) weaponry and damage models. So there's no rocket jumping, you need to be careful when falling from heights and you're not going to be standing in the middle of a firefight watching bullets bounce off your forehead.

EA / Dice are mixing up the game modes this time around, adding an all new mode (Gold Rush) and shifting the overall focus of the game to single player (!) - a dramatic twist for the series. The current beta, however, is all about multiplayer so it's there that we're focusing on for this hands-on preview.

There's no training or sandbox modes in the demo so it's straight in the deep end with dozens of other players who have been playing it lots longer than you, so there's lots of initial frustration as you get to grips with the controls (which, in fairness, are pretty typical - the learning curve may be made steeper by all the pros on the server but it's still pretty short).

Graphically it's appealling enough, as you'd expect, and skips along at a good rate - no complaints there. It's not going to blow your mind but there's a lot going on and it's very polished, which is no mean feat given that this late stage in development is normally where you'd expect the developers to really make their game sing. Look for good things indeed when they're done with it and have put it on the shelves.

One of the new (and much discussed) environmental features is the destructable environments. The press leading up to this beta suggested that anything was destructable - that doesn't appear to be the case, at least not yet and not in the beta. You can destroy buildings but they always collapse in the same way, suggesting a pre-canned animation over any sort of cool procedural or physics-based effect. Still, it does change the way the map plays over the course of the game, lending an organic feel to the proceedings. Hopefully there's more to come in the full product, which is due to hit kiwi stores at the end of June.

Check out the game hub (360 and PS3) for more information and our full review, as soon as we get our grubby mitts on it.