Heading out to the battlefield, it seems like common sense that there are certain people you'd want at your side, and others you wouldn't. You'd think folk with the title 'Bad Company' would fall into the latter. Electronic Arts and DICE don't care. They're chucking you in with some Baaaaadddd Company.

In Bad Company, the latest in EA's Battlefield series, players take up the gun of

Preston Marlowe, a rookie in the 222nd Army battalion. As you might have guessed from the title, he knocks around with a crew of misfits, and these misfits aren't quite so interested in fighting the enemies of democracy as they are in finding a tasty payday. More specifically: gold. So, off you trot behind enemy lines in search of the shiny stuff.

What sets Bad Company apart from the rest of the crop of military shooters is the sheer destructibility of everything. Walls and doors are no longer the barriers that they once were, and that's going to change the way that you play. Hiding behind a wall and taking pot shots at a tank isn't going to get you too far, because a couple of shots and it'll be gone. In fact, a whopping 90% of the game world is destructible.

 The game comes with a robust multi-player offering, with 24 players able to pile in and make the mortar fly. It wouldn't really provide much company at all without multi-player, after all.

 Let's face it, if you're going to fall in with a bad crowd, it might as well be a bad crowd with top-end military hardware.