Battlefield 3
Let’s get this out of the way first. This game is not as good as Modern Warfare 3. There I said it, and I mean it. Comparisons between these two games have been made since first announcement, Battlefield being the one to topple Call of Duty’s crown. Sorry but it is a long way off.
Let’s start with the campaign. Yes I know games like these are all about the multiplayer but a good game cannot exist on multiplayer alone. A game should still be fun alone and this is going to be a common theme throughout this review.
The campaign is typical military nonsense involving terrorists and nukes, filled with Jargon you’d need an extensive spell in the military to understand. Admittedly COD has this but definitely not as much as in Battlefield.
My biggest beef with the campaign is how lazy it’s been designed. I like DICE, mirrors edge was a lot of fun, but with Battlefield they need to go back to level design 101. Here are a couple of braindead examples.
Early on you find yourself in a car park. Two guys with RPG’s spawn off in the distance. They are well camouflaged and hard to make out with your standard rifle. Get too close and you’ll be overwhelmed by a swarm of enemies. Oh and the Cars explode meaning the only cover will kill you if an RPG hits them.
At no point does it mention that you have a sniper rifle in reserve. This helps a lot and without it the section is pretty much impossible. A simple press Y to change weapons hint would have been nice, but no you get that in the next section.
Later you come across a large room with 9 round desks neatly arranged in a square grid. Around the edge is a balcony with the stairs at the right hand side of the room. Now my gamer brain tells me that I should aim to get high because height gives you an advantage in a shootout. EHHHHHHHH! Wrong answer.
This section requires you to pass an arbitrary point in the room to continue. Remember COD4, remember how it would continuously spawn enemies until you pass an arbitrary point. Remember how everyone hated that and was glad when it got fixed in Modern Warfare 2. Well guess what’s back.
Yes if you go up high you will find that despite killing 30 to 40 enemies they never stop spawning. You have to edge your way to the door at the end of the room. But here’s the kicker, if you jump down from above the door and reach it that way nothing will happen.
You have to edge along the floor making the area above pointless. This actually works against typical strategy like it punishes you for thinking.
There are moments where the game just feels unfair. I know I’m playing on hard but it never feels hard but fair, usually unfair.
Take the AI, like all games now you are part of a squad but how does this game identify friendly AI characters, you know the ones you don’t shoot, by a tiny triangle above their heads which nine times out of ten blends perfectly in the background.
But when you actually shoot one you get a huge unavoidable message saying “Friendly Fire will not be tolerated”. Admittedly I did not fail the campaign by shooting friendly AI but even so it shouldn’t be this hard to identify friend from foe.
And this is By far Battlefield’s greatest weakness and it spills onto Multiplayer too. A lot of the time it seems that you are shooting enemies that are a fair bit away, usually wearing dark green and standing in front of a black background. Just seeing your enemy is a challenge and is far harder than in any other shooter I have ever played.
I did enjoy some of the shooting but this was when you were given a sniper rifle with thermal, at least then I could actually see the enemy.
To make matters worse for the sake of realism they have scattered “dust” on the screen. They’ve really gone all out to make it impossible to see what you are supposed to be shooting. But do you think the enemy has that problem, No! If the slightest part of you body is exposed they will be able to hit it.
Identifying targets to shoot gets a little easier in multiplayer but not by much. Icons are really small as are names above the heads of friendlies. As a sniper you have the ability to “Spot” enemies by pressing Back while aiming. A Useful addition and one that should be explained to you before you start playing multiplayer. I only found out about that through the internet and I will say that Battlefield 3’s multiplayer isn’t the best for welcoming newcomers.
Earlier I said a game should be fun when playing alone, Battlefield isn’t, not in campaign and not in Multiplayer. You need friends to get anywhere with this and this is where it fails for me. Playing Battlefield 3 in a squad of randoms just doesn’t work. Without communication and strategy the whole reason Battlefield 3 is “better” than MW3 goes out the window, and really who speaks to randoms, I don’t, fuck Randoms.
Now compare this to pretty much any other shooter and I hope you’ll get my point. Where Communication helps, you can still get by without chatting to randoms and still have a good time. In Battlefield you can’t take advantage of its strengths without communicating. Vehicles are made with multiple passengers in mind, usually to man turrets and you’ll want an engineer to repair damage to extend the vehicles life. If you’re in a squad with mates this isn’t an issue, you’re communicating and planning on the fly. Take away that communication as it becomes a ball ache, do you take the role as engineer just so you have one? Do you wait for a team mate to jump in your vehicle? Should I jump into this vehicle or is the driver waiting for his squadmate to join him?
With a full squad of four friends, all communicating and working together Battlefield 3 can be a lot of fun despite its obvious flaws when it comes to finding people to kill. Alone though the game fails in campaign and multiplayer.
Other problems include a severe lack of modes (only 4, and two are deathmatch modes) and an insistence for realism throughout. Take the vehicles, Yeah you can fly a jet and it’s cool when it works, but you need a PHD to fly them as they are so awkward. Halo has shown us how vehicles should be in FPS, flying a banshee feels like a QTE in comparison to Battlefields flying vehicles. Why? This has always been one of the things I hate about this series, offers nothing and takes away so much.
How people can say this is better than Modern Warfare 3 I’ll never know. I get that COD is popular now and it hasn’t changed much since COD4, but I can’t see how Battlefield 3 is better. The Campaign is a rubbish mess, compared to MW3’s sublime campaign and Multiplayer requires friends to be any good. I’m convinced that those that say Battlefield 3 is better are sick of COD and want something different, Battlefield 3 gives that but different does not equal better.
Battlefield 3 is a game where its greatest strengths become its greatest weaknesses depending on the scenario. The Realism is impressive but ultimately gets in the way, the multiplayer is set up for team play but then fails when you haven’t got a good team to rely on. The campaign is a rubbish mess with very little redeeming qualities and the multiplayer could do with more modes.
If you really need a realistic modern war shooter and COD aint doing it for you anymore, Battlefield 3 may be just what you need, however it is far from being a brilliant game.
6/10
Let’s start with the campaign. Yes I know games like these are all about the multiplayer but a good game cannot exist on multiplayer alone. A game should still be fun alone and this is going to be a common theme throughout this review.
The campaign is typical military nonsense involving terrorists and nukes, filled with Jargon you’d need an extensive spell in the military to understand. Admittedly COD has this but definitely not as much as in Battlefield.
My biggest beef with the campaign is how lazy it’s been designed. I like DICE, mirrors edge was a lot of fun, but with Battlefield they need to go back to level design 101. Here are a couple of braindead examples.
Early on you find yourself in a car park. Two guys with RPG’s spawn off in the distance. They are well camouflaged and hard to make out with your standard rifle. Get too close and you’ll be overwhelmed by a swarm of enemies. Oh and the Cars explode meaning the only cover will kill you if an RPG hits them.
At no point does it mention that you have a sniper rifle in reserve. This helps a lot and without it the section is pretty much impossible. A simple press Y to change weapons hint would have been nice, but no you get that in the next section.
Later you come across a large room with 9 round desks neatly arranged in a square grid. Around the edge is a balcony with the stairs at the right hand side of the room. Now my gamer brain tells me that I should aim to get high because height gives you an advantage in a shootout. EHHHHHHHH! Wrong answer.
This section requires you to pass an arbitrary point in the room to continue. Remember COD4, remember how it would continuously spawn enemies until you pass an arbitrary point. Remember how everyone hated that and was glad when it got fixed in Modern Warfare 2. Well guess what’s back.
Yes if you go up high you will find that despite killing 30 to 40 enemies they never stop spawning. You have to edge your way to the door at the end of the room. But here’s the kicker, if you jump down from above the door and reach it that way nothing will happen.
You have to edge along the floor making the area above pointless. This actually works against typical strategy like it punishes you for thinking.
There are moments where the game just feels unfair. I know I’m playing on hard but it never feels hard but fair, usually unfair.
Take the AI, like all games now you are part of a squad but how does this game identify friendly AI characters, you know the ones you don’t shoot, by a tiny triangle above their heads which nine times out of ten blends perfectly in the background.
But when you actually shoot one you get a huge unavoidable message saying “Friendly Fire will not be tolerated”. Admittedly I did not fail the campaign by shooting friendly AI but even so it shouldn’t be this hard to identify friend from foe.
And this is By far Battlefield’s greatest weakness and it spills onto Multiplayer too. A lot of the time it seems that you are shooting enemies that are a fair bit away, usually wearing dark green and standing in front of a black background. Just seeing your enemy is a challenge and is far harder than in any other shooter I have ever played.
I did enjoy some of the shooting but this was when you were given a sniper rifle with thermal, at least then I could actually see the enemy.
To make matters worse for the sake of realism they have scattered “dust” on the screen. They’ve really gone all out to make it impossible to see what you are supposed to be shooting. But do you think the enemy has that problem, No! If the slightest part of you body is exposed they will be able to hit it.
Identifying targets to shoot gets a little easier in multiplayer but not by much. Icons are really small as are names above the heads of friendlies. As a sniper you have the ability to “Spot” enemies by pressing Back while aiming. A Useful addition and one that should be explained to you before you start playing multiplayer. I only found out about that through the internet and I will say that Battlefield 3’s multiplayer isn’t the best for welcoming newcomers.
Earlier I said a game should be fun when playing alone, Battlefield isn’t, not in campaign and not in Multiplayer. You need friends to get anywhere with this and this is where it fails for me. Playing Battlefield 3 in a squad of randoms just doesn’t work. Without communication and strategy the whole reason Battlefield 3 is “better” than MW3 goes out the window, and really who speaks to randoms, I don’t, fuck Randoms.
Now compare this to pretty much any other shooter and I hope you’ll get my point. Where Communication helps, you can still get by without chatting to randoms and still have a good time. In Battlefield you can’t take advantage of its strengths without communicating. Vehicles are made with multiple passengers in mind, usually to man turrets and you’ll want an engineer to repair damage to extend the vehicles life. If you’re in a squad with mates this isn’t an issue, you’re communicating and planning on the fly. Take away that communication as it becomes a ball ache, do you take the role as engineer just so you have one? Do you wait for a team mate to jump in your vehicle? Should I jump into this vehicle or is the driver waiting for his squadmate to join him?
With a full squad of four friends, all communicating and working together Battlefield 3 can be a lot of fun despite its obvious flaws when it comes to finding people to kill. Alone though the game fails in campaign and multiplayer.
Other problems include a severe lack of modes (only 4, and two are deathmatch modes) and an insistence for realism throughout. Take the vehicles, Yeah you can fly a jet and it’s cool when it works, but you need a PHD to fly them as they are so awkward. Halo has shown us how vehicles should be in FPS, flying a banshee feels like a QTE in comparison to Battlefields flying vehicles. Why? This has always been one of the things I hate about this series, offers nothing and takes away so much.
How people can say this is better than Modern Warfare 3 I’ll never know. I get that COD is popular now and it hasn’t changed much since COD4, but I can’t see how Battlefield 3 is better. The Campaign is a rubbish mess, compared to MW3’s sublime campaign and Multiplayer requires friends to be any good. I’m convinced that those that say Battlefield 3 is better are sick of COD and want something different, Battlefield 3 gives that but different does not equal better.
Battlefield 3 is a game where its greatest strengths become its greatest weaknesses depending on the scenario. The Realism is impressive but ultimately gets in the way, the multiplayer is set up for team play but then fails when you haven’t got a good team to rely on. The campaign is a rubbish mess with very little redeeming qualities and the multiplayer could do with more modes.
If you really need a realistic modern war shooter and COD aint doing it for you anymore, Battlefield 3 may be just what you need, however it is far from being a brilliant game.
6/10
posted by Master hunter at 1:09 pm
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