Battlefield 3 Review

Developer: DICE

Publisher: EA

Release Date: October 25th 2011

Score: 8.5

Platforms: PS3,Xbox360,PC

The Short:Battlefield 3 boasts one of the best ever multiplayer tactical experiences and will be the shooter to beat this year.

Battlefield is a series synonymous with creating epic battlegrounds and combining them with immersive gameplay that really makes you feel like you’re in the heat of the battle, Battlefield 3 manages to live up to the series’ reputation with only a few tarnishes .Battlefield 3 has followed in the footsteps of the Bad Company series by having a single player campaign instead of Battlefield’s old style of multiplayer with AI to replace actual players. Sadly Battlefield 3’s campaign fails to show off the charm and wit of Dice’s writers like the past 2 games. On the upside the competitive multiplayer is extremely reminiscent of previous games being extremely addicting and managing to promote cooperation as a squad. As usual the multiplayer experience incorporates both soldier and vehicular combat like no other series has managed to.

The battlefield 3 single player campaign follows the flashbacks of a US marine whilst being interrogated by an unknown US government agency. Sgt Blackburn has to explain himself after he raises an alert about a covert government operative, who goes by the name ‘Solomon’, Sgt Blackburn believes Solomon has stolen 3 nuclear weapons and plans to blow up both Paris and New York. You play as Henry Blackburn through a series of flashbacks of him and his squad trying to quell outbreaks of terrorist activities in Iraq, with the occasional protagonist switch to participate in the only jet sequence in the campaign where you only take control of the gunners seat or take the gunners seat of a Humvee. Granted there is a single mission where you take complete control over a tank passing across a serene desert only to be greeted by several hostile APCs that only seem to move in circles waiting to be destroyed. The campaign attempts to make some form of impact but seams to ‘steal’ its high intensity moments from other shooters of its kind and the one or two emotional moments seem to have been half-heartedly thrown in there to add variety Sadly Battlefield 3 fails to provide a satisfying campaign and only gives out a poor generic on-rails corridor military FPS.

You probably won’t find yourself hanging around in the single player for very long after you get into your first online game. The competitive online multiplayer provides one of the most immersive and exhilarating experiences one could find on the market today, with 9 different modes and 9 different maps to choose from combined with 6 Co-Op missions multiplayer can keep you entertained for hours on end. All the guns sound and feel brilliant and the satisfaction you get from gunning down that pesky sniper is fantastic. In usual battlefield style there are a multitude of vehicles as well ranging from jets to jeeps to helicopters all the vehicles feel like you’re actually driving or flying the real thing, when you hit the ground after some hang-time on a Humvee it really feels like you’re driving a real car. Players are rewarded for working together and even more so if you work as a squad, the class selection and kit customization is extremely detailed meaning that no one soldier is the same as the next one. Not only can you choose from a secondary and a primary weapon you also have the ability to select different perks that boost your sprinting time or increased resistance to explosions, as well as some nifty gadgets like the all-time classic defibrillator or maybe some nice bricks of C4. Whether or not you chose to customize your weapons and gear you can be safe to say that every experience on the battlefield will vary drastically from player to player.

 

Battlefield 3 is the first game ever to show off the potential of DICE’s new Frostbite 2 engine boasting a new and improved destruction engine as well as hyper-realistic graphics. The graphics and destructible environments aren’t the only thing Battlefield 3 shows off; supreme sound effects and great voice acting provide a little relief from the dry campaign and add even more realism and immersion into the multiplayer experience. Battlefield 3 feels like a good game with the minor glitch here or there it has an easy to master control system and all the guns and vehicles handle like they are the real thing and sound like they’re the real thing coupled with the new graphics engine in Frostbite 2 Battlefield 3 looks like one of the prettiest and realistic games out there on the market today. The game’s sights are best enjoyed on a recently constructed gaming computer, although it still looks and feels sublime on any other console.

Battlefield 3 does well to live up to the family name but is weighed down by a sluggish and generic campaign, you would be doing the best by yourself if you skip the single player campaign and stick to either the co-operative multiplayer or competitive multiplayer.