Neither your squad nor the enemy are safe when crouching behind a sandbag, dilapidated building, beat-up old vehicle or piece of machinery. A few well placed grenades and your makeshift defences crumble – often with you inside. This means there’s lots of movement and action during every encounter. No hiding behind a pile of bricks and picking off the enemies at a leisurely pace and, best of all, no more invulnerable enemies sealed inside the modern equivalent of a Pill Box or dug out a hideout like an Alabama tick. If you can’t get a clear shot, take a dirty one – it all bears results in the most spectacular way.

Of course, an FPS is naturally going to deviate from the standard Battlefield franchise’s sandbox style of gameplay; but DICE have gone a long way toward evolving the concept to new levels of realism. As it would be with a genuine army unit, you’re given a series of linear, incidenced objectives as with any FPS, but how those objectives are achieved is where the impressive levels of choice come into play.

Essentially, it’s up to you. Go in on foot and snipe the enemy or steal a tank and crash the front gates. The mini-map points out the objective, and you make your own way in and deal with the consequences of your actions. Some missions are better achieved by specific methods, but having the option of whether or not to take that easy road is a rare privilege. From this point on, most every subsequent FPS is going to have to meet these high standards of player freedom – even in a linear game such a Bad Company.

At this point it becomes a little grey as to whether Bad Company is too easy or too hard (and cheats). The game would be irritatingly difficult if it weren’t for a system that essentially grants infinite lives and infinite energy – assuming you’re ready on the health button. In the single player campaign, a dead character is immediately respawned at the last checkpoint, which is usually a few moments behind the point where you were killed. The action continues once you stomp your way back to the previous point, so it’s hard to know whether this is making things too easy, or making up for a prohibitively unforgiving difficulty level.

It does meant that all it takes to get to the end is time, and a working console. It also means there’s almost no reloading time, and a more entertaining, gung-ho approach to death and mayhem doesn’t mean dire and frustrating results. Whether this works or cuts the longevity short (or, most likely, both) is something that’ll polarize players, but at least DICE have clearly made a bold design decision rather than leaving it to chance.