Of Walls and Blowing Holes In Them

Though I was able to procure - through purchase and other means - several of the hot releases for this holiday season, I've been the most satisfied by the titles I've managed to score at various sales and out-of-business clearances. While none of the titles I've picked up are by any means bad, it is also becoming evident to me why these titles have failed to stand out amidst the torrent of triple-A calibur titles that flooded the market these past two months. I'm convinced that this satisfaction stems from something intrinsic to me. Perhaps, in another life, I was a carrion bird, contentedly picking at flesh of creatures too weak to defend themselves. It is sad that in this analogy, video games parallel my source of sustenance.

I've been playing a bit of Battlefield: Bad Company, and I'm surprised that it is competing so well with Call of Duty: World at War for my attention. I guess that it shouldn't surprise me this much, as it appears to be the very antithesis of the Call of Duty franchise. While CoD does a very good job at evoking the visceral nature of warfare, it is something one experiences on tracks. It is reminiscent of a carnival horror-house, where one sits on a cart while shit jumps out at you. It's effective, and it's damn entertaining, but it's something you see from a passenger's seat. There is never a doubt that the game, and not you, is driving.

Bad Company, on the other hand, presents the player with a veritable sandbox to decimate. While one isn't free to roam on the scale of Mercenaries 2, one is never limited to a single approach or solution to a problem. Tired of hoofing it? Jump into a tank. Anti-armor got you down? Gank that gunboat. Tired of the high seas? Evade tank shells in a golf cart. The gameplay variety isn't limited to the level design and vehicle options, however. Anyone who remembers the hype over the game last June should remember the high destructibility of the environment. To say that everything can be blown up is a bit deceiving. The game doesn't aim at a fully destructible world. One can't level every building. Indeed, bathrooms and internal structures seem miraculously invulnerable to all forms of conventional weaponry, like some form of low-tech panic room standard for wartorn Eastern Europe. What the game does aim at - and succeed at - is revolutionizing the micro-encounters that characterize the FPS experience. For all of CoD's production values and emphasis on cinematography, they have yet to match the sheer thrill of cowering in a house from a tank only to have the wall blown apart from behind you. The number of strategic and experiential possibilities such a seemingly simple addition brings to the game is profound.

It's an odd day when blowing a new entry way into a house, right next to the front door, becomes profound.

--Mike