With the gaming public's voracious appetite for wartime blasters showing no signs of subsiding, any shooter adopting a different approach to battlefield carnage should be cherished. And while Bad Company's gung ho heroics and explosive action will be familiar to habitual gun toters, it's the game's sharp sense of humour that sets it apart from the pack.
Unlike the honourable skirmishes found in Activision's Call Of Duty, Bad Company features a wise crackin crew of renegades out for whatever they can get, each selfish squaddie more interested in the gold they can snatch than liberating the oppressed masses. This light-hearted take on wartime fireworks in turn delivers a jovial, less stressful experience, making Bad Company a charming alternative to the majority of hardcore shoot 'em ups vying for your cash.
Moreover, while success in Call Of Duty often depends on ducking behind cover when the bullets start flying, this is rarely an option in Bad Company; all structures in the game are completely destructible, adding pace to the action as you sprint between crumbling buildings to avoid enemy fire, or pepper a house with explosive charges to crush the villains cowering inside.
Delirious multiplayer and a range of robust military vehicles also make Bad Company one of the year's most entertaining blasters, and even though the single player romp is often let down by dumbass enemy intelligence, this is still a refreshingly jaunty adventure in a traditionally po-faced genre.