Battlefield Warfare 3: Revenge of the Fanboys

I don’t think there are three words in gaming that both make me smile and cringe harder than Call, of and Duty. Initially I wasn’t interested in a realistic war simulator in First Person, I’m still not. But eventually I caved when I realised my friends were always playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

I was converted. It wasn’t the realistic settings, or the large number of real guns, or anything to do with replicating real life war as accurately as possible. COD’s strength came in its pace and fluidness and how easy it was to kill someone.

Previously in shooters it took a full clip to take someone down, that a kill had to be earned and that everyone had a chance to get away and regenerate after an attack. COD changed all that and made it easy to kill opponents and harder to prevent your own death.

Then came the Killstreaks, kill 3 opponents without dying have your enemies appear on a mini map, Kill 5 opponents without dying call in an airstrike and at 7 call in a helicopter, all too keep your Killstreak up. This meant every game became about trying to keep your Killstreak going for as long as possible, as well as the objective.

In 2009 COD4 got a direct sequel in the Form of Modern Warfare 2. MW2 was bigger, bolder, with more customisation options and a lot more killstreaks. Some would argue it went a little too far. The addition of the game breaking Tactical Nuke (which instantly won the game) and having as many harriers on the field are you wanted left most gamers feeling overwhelmed.

Still the game proved to be a hit and I really enjoyed it.

In the first half of 2010 we saw a rival appear in Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Battlefield had already been a successful series on the PC and it was now gathering steam on consoles. I must confess I never got into it. I hated the XBLA game Battlefield 1943 which was a scaled down version of the series.

I’ve always considered it the bastard child of COD and Halo, with the weaknesses of each and very little of the benefits. It was just as hard to work out friend from foe (like in COD), and it took en entire clip to kill someone (like in Halo). The focus was placed on large maps and vehicles. Games became a rush for the vehicles, particularly the planes. Much like in Halo, but unlike Halo they were given realistic handling making them awkward to use.

On top of all this you were limited to squads of 4 and couldn’t communicate in game with the whole team of 12. This really doesn’t make any sense to me and made getting a game in a party of more than 4 a massive ball-ache. Heaven knows how people do this on the PS3 seeing as how there is no Party Chat.

So essentially Battlefield 1943 put me off the series, especially since it got rave reviews. Since then I’ve tried to demo of BC2 and the Beta of Battlefield 3 and neither has won me over. There’s no denying however that BC2 was really popular and was starting to steal fans from COD.

Going back to COD, later in 2010 we saw the release of Call of Duty: Black ops. This scaled back the number of Killstreaks giving a good selection and removed the Tactical Nuke. CODBLOPS found the middle ground between COD4 and MW2. By now though people were realising how similar the games had become.

Now in 2011 we have seen the release of Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3. The war between them is now in full swing and where there is competition there is the dark side of gaming, the Fanboys.

From what I can tell the childishness and hatred seems to come from the Battlefield side. Their argument seems to centre on the major graphical improvements of Battlefield 3 (I will admit it does look stunning). Modern Warfare 3 on the other hand looks just like Modern warfare 2 and CODBLOPS.

Essentially the formula for COD has gotten stale while Battlefield is new and exciting to most. As such those that are fans of Battlefield can’t see why MW3 is still getting all the attention, and believe the series should die out so Battlefield becomes king. Considering Activision are notorious for overpricing their games and content it would help stamp out bad practice from developers, e.g. 3 maps being the price of a full XBLA game.

As well as getting all the attention MW3 is being rated quite highly by critics while Battlefield 3 got slightly worse scores. While MW3 is seeing 8’s and 9’s, Battlefield is seeing 7’s and 8’s. This is largely due to MW3 having a good Single Player campaign as well as good multiplayer content, whereas Battlefield 3 is all about the multiplayer. I would definitely argue that is the correct way to mark a review, multiplayer should never come at the expense of single player.

But then the argument comes that Battlefield 3’s multiplayer is so much better than COD’s stale re-release, with some even dismissing MW3 as nothing more than an expensive map pack. Visually they are correct of course but as we all know there is more to a game than just visuals.

This isn’t the case of course. There are a couple of notable Gameplay change that seem absent from most people’s criticisms of MW3. Firstly the addition of Pointstreaks get overlooked.

Instead of rewards coming purely from kills you now get to chose to get them from points instead. The assault killstreaks are what have traditionally been used and are designed to sabotage the enemy team. The new support pointstreaks are designed to help your team and getting them is very different.

Firstly they don’t reset when you die and secondly you get them from points gained not only by killing but by capturing points, defending points and generally helping your team achieve the match’s objective. What I like about this is that the player that will throw themselves onto a grenade to help their team win the match, is equally likely to get rewards as the player that can suppress the enemy team without putting themselves at risk.

In theory this should lead to more competitive matches in objective game types, but only time will tell if it works in practice.

Another thing these Battlefield Fanboys don’t seem to comment on is the new kill confirmed mode. From what I’ve played this is a lot of fun. When you kill someone they drop dog tags. To score a point you have to collect the dog tags. You can also deny the enemy a point by collecting your own teams dog tags. This means that those that like to stay back and snipe aren’t going to get any points if they don’t collect the tags. They have to either rely on team mates or risk their own lives by running out of their sniping positions.

This is all in an effort to encourage people to stop camping and start taking risks. Each time you have to quickly judge the situation to see if it is safe to collect the dog tags. Get it wrong and not only will your opponent deny you the point they may take one from your death. This element of risk and reward is always welcome in any game.

So in my view there have been a couple of significant changes that will hopefully change the way people play COD for the better. Then again often well meaning changes don’t often get the result you were hoping for.

Take a look at Gears of War. The biggest criticism anyone can give that game is that for a tactical shooter it is far too easy to run up to someone and get an insta-kill with the shotgun. Epic addresses this in Gears 2 by introducing stopping power. By shooting an enemy you slow them down. If they charge straight at you you can keep shooting and they will be slowed down until they can barely move, meaning in theory they will be down before they get anywhere near you. Unfortunately this didn’t work and people still run through all obstacles to get to you and hit you with the one hit kill shotgun.

So what’s the point of all this, well I just wish that those that criticise Modern Warfare 3 would base their criticisms on more than just visuals. That they would take into account significant changes to the Gameplay, researching all the facts before condemning a game. But alas there’s no such thing as a smart reasonable fanboy.