Developer: DICE
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Author: BPD 007
Rating Guide: How I Review Games

Review:

As I sit to write this review, it is Saturday night 11:43pm on a cold Fall night in Boston with a couple inches on the ground.  It is indeed an interesting night after I have played some Battlefield 3 multiplayer and finishing the campaign earlier today.  There has been much discussion before this game was released with the rivalry with Activision’s Modern Warfare 3 and the whole debacle that was the BF3 Beta.

Before reading just be aware I am just a regular gamer.  I am not a hardcore FPS player or anything like that. I am generally easy to please. SO LET’S GET IT ON!

Gameplay, Graphics and Sound

The funny thing I noticed immediately when I opened the game case was that Disc 1 was labeled Multiplayer/Co-Op and Disc 2 was labeled Single player.  Usually the first disc is the campaign and the second is multiplayer.  Obviously, BF is much more known as a MP game.  I am more of a single player/coop player.

I decided to try the SP campaign first.  As soon as I popped the disc in BOOM I got a notification for a 167 MB patch update.  Normally I expect a small size but apparently the developers had some late nights with bugfixes/updates.  As with most of these games they want to impress you from the start.  Well, unless you install the 1.6 GB HD content you won’t be impressed with the graphics.  I highly recommend installing this HD content.  I played the first mission without it, then with the HD content and I noticed a difference.  I’ll talk more on the graphics later.

The intro puts you right in the action on a train.  First thing I noticed was the music.  The tempo was good and I felt agitated.  The mood was set for sure.  There were some onscreen prompts to help me along.  Of course, at this point you don’t know why you are progressing on the train and shooting enemies.  I liked the intro a lot.  It set the mood for the whole game for me.  The first mission also familiarizes you with the controls.  I would have liked a more training type mission but maybe I should have read EA’s 4 page manual.

As you progress through the missions the story unfolds. The problem with this is, it is very difficult to understand what’s going on. It’s not until much later in the game where you kind of understand what’s going on. I do like the way the story was told though. Many people will argue it’s a generic story, been there/done that, etc. But it IS a story and the joy of a story is not only the story itself, but also how it is told. There were surprises I think even some die-hard gamers were not expecting.

Can we talk guns?  BF3 has some nice weapons.  I noticed right away the sounds these guns made were awesome.  Put on your Turtle Beaches or whatever and listen as the pop-pop-pop from the weapons is amazing. There was one point in the game where I was moving from outside to the inside of a building.  I had been shooting outside, then proceeded in the building.  I was in a room and had to shoot.  The gunshot sounded like it actually was shooting from within a room.  I was pretty impressed.  This added realism made me enjoy the game more.

Graphically, I’m playing the game on a 52” LCD.  Some areas had some really nice details like the curbs on the streets and buildings whereas other areas were just plain bad like the cars parked on the streets.  They looked like box cars and they all looked the same.  The framerate kept at a good pace.  A couple times the framerate dropped because of some major action, but it wasn’t that bad or that often. There seems to have been a small grain texture added to the game, which I like.  It adds a little more realism.

Many scenes had this lens flare.  Sometimes it got in the way but nothing serious.  Again, I think they used it a bit too much.  The cutscenes seemed to have more grain and the voice acting is pretty good.  Dare I say the writing here is better than Gears?  But I don’t play games for graphics, especially these fast paced first-person shooters.

When I’m running for my life looking for the next enemy to shoot, I’m not stopping to look at the leaves on the tree.  This is why I consider the music and gun sounds more important.  They added more realism and immersion than the graphics.  Another realistic aspect the BF series has always had was the destruction of the environments.  I was taking cover behind a wall and obviously it wasn’t a strong wall because some dude blew the wall and me to smithereens.

There are some quick-time-events (QTE) spread throughout the game.  These were never bothersome except if you fail and you have to go back to the last checkpoint.  These were not that far back so it was ok.  What was interesting on the QTEs was how they are implemented.  Make a successful QTE and you’re rewarded with seeing some nice action. Fail, and you will see how the computer takes advantage of you.  The failure doesn’t immediately show right when you mess up the button.  I thought that was pretty cool.

Enemy AI wasn’t too impressive.  At certain points when I would kill an enemy taking cover another enemy would run up to the SAME spot where I shot.  I would shoot him and then ANOTHER enemy would run to the same spot.  At one point in the game I counted enemies doing that 5 times in one spot.  I do wish they would have implemented better AI enemies.  The missions are pretty varied which is nice. There is one mission where you are in a tank blasting away.  That same mission will put you on some satellite, grey colored infrared shoot-from-the-sky attack, which was very cool.  I think CoD4 did something similar.  This mission I really liked.

The really cool mission was when you are in the jet.  This is wingman at its finest.  This is Ebony and Ivory flying the skies chasing down bogeys.  This mission both utilized attacking AND defending in the sky.  It was a lot of fun.  Of course every shooter now pretty much comes with a sniping mission.  I can’t help but think this was copied from CoD’s sniping mission with Capt. Price.  But that’s ok.   Using a nightscope on a sniper is a lot of fun. There was a cool achievement in that mission too.  What made this sniping mission so great was that it was almost entirely through a night scope. WICKED COOL.

There’s a moment in the game when you say “oh shit, I get it now” where the loose ends on the story come full swing and you know what’s going on.  It may happen early in the game or later in the game for you, but regardless I think you will enjoy it.  I was pretty pleased with the campaign.  It was nothing special or out of the ordinary, but like I said earlier, it is a story and the experience of that story was fun.

Multiplayer

Luckily when I first tried multiplayer DarkMethod4 and Thump from U360, were online and invited me in on the game.  This was an Attack/Defend game.  Attack by detonating 2 devices in each section.  Detonate both, you move on to the next set.  Complete them all and you win the match.  At one point in a game, I saw players on my team looking over a cliff.  Then they were jumping. I was like what the F???  When I walked up to the cliff I saw our next 2 points were down about 15,000 feet.  My teammates were jumping and parachuting down. How cool!?  I told you I am easy to please.  So I jumped!

When you defend, you obviously have to defend the two points from the other team.  This game requires strategy, which made it more interesting.  You can use tanks, helicopters, and jets.  Someone from the opposite team had a damn drone flying around shooting.  These maps are BIG.  Sometimes I felt like I was running and running and running.  Depending on where you spawn sometimes you can be close, other times far. I didn’t like that too much and I think there is a way to make you spawn closer but I didn’t know about it when I was playing.

You can choose your role- medical, support, engineer, etc.  There are massive amount of weapons.  Playing co-op will unlock more weapons for you to use.  There have been some issues with EA servers, which I am unsure if they resolved them.  I haven’t really experienced any of those issues.  I did not notice any framerate drop in any MP matches.  The MP aspect of BF3 is no doubt the KEY reason why you would want to own this game.  The amount of different guns and varied gameplay you can use in a match is wild.

I was a bit disappointed in the Co-Op play for BF3.  Not all the missions are unlocked, only the first two.  You need to complete both before you unlock the others.  The first mission was a defend your area type of mission.  I found this to be more difficult than the campaign.  I also found the AI was smarter in the Co-Op than the campaign.

The second mission was a helicopter mission and unfortunately I nor my partner were unable to fly the damn thing! There is no training at all on how to fly the helicopter.  Not even in the campaign do you fly a helicopter.  Maybe people knew how to fly one in BF2 but DICE didn’t need to assume that.  They should have done a better job.  You need to use both sticks to control throttle and tilt.  You need to tilt forward and increase throttle to move forward, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.  You touch the ground it’s FAIL and you start the mission over.

Conclusion

Co-Op left me wanting more, sadly, and I was really looking forward to it.  Multiplayer lived up its reputation.  I was pretty happy with the campaign.  I still believe you Battlefield fans will be sticking with Battlefield 3 even despite that “other game” being released.

8.0
“Standout”