Believe it or not, there was time when first person shooter war games weren’t all that popular. The Call of Duty series actually started in 2003, but it wasn’t until they reached COD4: Modern Warfare in 2007 that the genre really exploded.

Even within the series, there are purists/snobs who will only play the titles developed by Infinity Ward, who more recently, have been behind COD 4 and the recent Modern Warfare 2. This year it was revealed that MW2 has sold over 14 million copies worldwide. That’s a hell of a lot of bam! Bam! for your buck.

With such a Commando’s choke grip on the War FPS market, only a fool would go head to head with the series. A fool or a company with balls the size of...FIFA 10. Oh hello there EA, we didn’t see you there.

The irony is that the Battlefield franchise has been going for just as long as the Call of Duty one, but has mainly been lurking on PC’s as a popular multiplayer experience. 2008 saw Bad Company enter the console wars; it saw the introduction of a single player campaign, as well as the introduction of the four man strong eponymous heroes.

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This sequel then not only picks up where Bad Company left off, but magnifies the whole experience tenfold. The real question however is can Battlefield: Bad Company 2 offer a substantial alternative to the Call of Duty franchise?

Although the two franchises have been fighting it out on two very separate paths, this outing is almost playing on a level battlefield.

Take the single-player campaign. It’s a surprisingly solid affair. Modern Warfare 2’s solo campaign is an edgy, darker toned experience that is closer to a James Bond film in feel, rather than war game. B:BC2 is certainly less solitary, creating a comfy sensation of camaraderie as you embark on your adventures with your three other squad members.

The story revolves around Bad Company travelling all around the globe after a deadly device known as Aurora; if this were a Hitchcock film, the Aurora would be the mcguffin – an element of the game that drives the entire story, that doesn’t necessarily even have to be seen, merely spoken about, to create a sense of intrigue and foreboding.

But where the game differs from something like the Modern Warfare games, is that it’s a more light-hearted approach. In fact, it’s probably the closest thing you could imagine to being an A Team game, but without one of them suffering from aviophobia. The dialogue is fun and helps you feel like one of the guys. At one point, you get to ride on a quad bike, where one of the characters takes a swipe at snowmobiles – which just so happened to feature in Modern Warfare 2. It’s cheeky, and for that we salute it.

Talking of vehicles, there are quite a few on offer here, all of which handle really well. A special mention should go to the tanks though; driving along and letting off shells left right and centre has never been so gratifying. The main reason for this is the game’s destructible environments, which is a point of uniqueness we weren’t expected to fall in love with.

Considering how many of these type of games we’ve played, you don’t really notice how integral to a war game destructible environments would be – until you play this. Firing shells from a tank at walls and watching them melt like butter before you is just a whole new level of satisfaction. Buildings crumble, water towers collapse and roofs that were once there are suddenly not. Bliss. We’re not sure that using a particular gun that can shoot through walls will ever have a similar impact after playing this.

Another thing to the single campaign’s credit is that there are quite a few hours to it. Considering that the Battlefield experience has been mainly focused towards multiplayers in the past, they could have been forgiven, to a certain extent, for skimping here. Thankfully though, they did no such thing, making it a compelling and thoroughly entertaining campaign. Our only disappointment is the game’s rather lacklustre ending.

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But then you have what many believe is the series’ piece de resistance: its online multiplayer. Basically it keeps intact everything that’s such a joy about the single campaign and takes it online. The first option you’re given when you load it up is a quick match, which is funny considering that out of all the many games we played they were anything but.

You have the now compulsory ranking system that allows you to upgrade weaponry etc after you’ve accrued so many experience points in battle. Don’t expect any fast-tracking promotions though; if you thought that fighting the baddies was an uphill struggle, you should try getting promoted. Who knew that war could be this hard?

There are four classes to play around with: engineer, recon, assault and medic; each one has its own set of primary and secondary weaponry as well as specific gadgetry.

The maps are diverse enough from each other, although nothing that we haven’t already played in a billion times before i.e. jungle, sea port, snow-capped mountains etc. For the most part, the spawn points are most often in a safe place; however, there were times when we only just spawned onto the map before being taken down – damn you campers!

A nice touch though is that instead of a designated spawn site, you can also spawn next to a fellow squad member, who maybe a whole lot closer to the action and save you a massive trek to where all the action is.

One minor niggle, which crops up in nearly all of the recent FPS’s is the unfairness of the ranking system. If you’ve just started out on the rank ladder, your equipment might not be that effective in battle; this means that you could find yourself emptying an entire round into a foe, and still have them bearing down on you, where with one shot from them and you’re dead. Maybe newbies are given ammo made out of liquorice, which is why it’s so darn hard to kill anyone with a bullet? If you don’t want to spend your entire life attached to your console playing the game, you just have to get used to the unfairness of it all.

That said, the joy of mega-destruction from the single player is just as much fun online. Be it flying on board a helicopter and unleashing death-delivering fire power, pumping out building—crushing shells from a tank, or simply using a fixed machine gun turret to spray your kill notice with. Obviously it’s less fun if you’re on the receiving end of any of those, but that’s the downside of war for you.

There’s no deny that there are similarities with the COD series, but that’s only to be expected; just as there’s not much difference between one driving game from another. The slightly light-hearted side of the single player is refreshing though, as is the idea of the group dynamic and having a buddy watching your back for you.

What is impressive however is how the game reaches the very high benchmark that certainly the Modern Warfare games have set. Graphically it’s impressive to look at, and the gameplay is so cosy that any FPS fan can easily snuggle in to. It is by no means a pale imitator; if anything it’s a thoroughly enjoyable brother in arms.

On this evidence, COD will have to watch its back in the trenches, because the boys from Bad Company look like they mean business.