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With oodles of fire power, all out destruction and plenty of explosive chaos, EA’s Battlefield Bad Company 2 is literally nothing short of an absolute blast to play. This is a package that will please any FPS fan, offering tons of weapons and battlefield possibilities – not least the Frostbite powered ability to level buildings with a well placed rocket or two. Ah, we love the smell of smoking rubble in the morning. Smells like…victory.

First instincts when popping a game of Battlefield’s history in your disk tray is to make a beeline for the multi-player modes, and understandably so. Many PC fans will have a story or two to tell you from their Battlefield playing days, and a fair few are aggravated by the sudden console-focused switch the franchise has taken. Nevertheless, Bad Company 2 well and truly blasts the series to consoles with confidence, offering a blockbuster single-player experience to complement the already renowned multi-player.

You take place in the same squad of over-the-top soldiers as you did in the first Bad Company, controlling Preston Rowe as you and them try to prevent evil villain Victor Kirilenko from firing an ancient weapon. It’s your standard “Russians are git’s” storyline, but it provides enough thrills to act as a decent basis for the campaign. Though the story often takes a back seat to the action, acting solely as a reason to pin each set piece of action together, it is saved by some well placed cut-scenes reminding you there is a plot unfolding while the madness ensues. Immersion in the story is mainly provided through breathtaking scenery and sound design, and is well and truly upped through the banter of the rest of your company, who often have the type of mundane discussions and debates that you would with your mates at the pub during happy hour. Listening to them is hilarious and really adds to the feeling of brotherhood while you’re out on the battlefield with them.

The first Bad Company’s single-player had a pretty tongue-in-cheek narrative, but that’s not the case here. BFBC 2 is exhilarating from start to finish, jumping from one set piece to the next with diverse, memorable moments. But more notably, the realism is increased. Health is regenerated over time rather than replenished through pick-ups, while a more linear approach boxes you into the intensity of fire fights way more effectively than it did before.

Your team mates are also improved, with tweaked AI meaning they’re more capable of helping you out on the battlefield. Sure there’s still moments where you feel like you’re doing all the work, but they’re few and far between and your team ultimately help you take on the vast number of enemies, who are also handling the battlefield with increased intelligence.

This single-player in no bolt-on, and EA have successfully put a lot of thought into crafting a solo experience to compete with the best of them.

The feeling of playing Bad Company 2 is somewhat unique; it provides you with options, yet creates a claustrophobic experience through the fear of having nowhere to hide.

Duck and cover is hardly ever an option, both adding to the frantic feel of gunfire-battles and serving as a way to ramp up the frustration. Each area of cover to fire from; a wall, a block of rubble or a pile of cars, can all be blown to bits. This creates a sense of pressure on every move you make, never staying still under intense explosive fire if you want to survive.

This is all great, but the frustration, and the one fault to pick with the entire game, is that cover often falls a few inches short of actually covering you while you’re ducked behind it. The result is a frustrating few hits, sometimes death, because your character is unable to kneel just that little bit lower.