Back To The Real World After Battlefield 3

 

EA and Dice teamed up to bring us the “most realistic combat experience” and they fell short. There are three playable options with BF3. The first is the campaign, then co-op and finally the multiplayer experience. When I receive a game that has all of these options the last thing I do is jump into multiplayer. Sure it’s usually a blast, but I want the most gratifying experience, I want to experience everything the game has to offer. With that concept in mind, let us break off and talk about the campaign.

This time around, like most games I play, I opted for Hard as my difficulty of choice. Upon starting the game and after a few missions we get the gist of the story and by the time you beat the game, well let’s just say I should have had a V8! The story as it turns out is not a page turner, it is very close to being a rip from Call Of Duty: Black Ops and Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The nukes and missions in MW2 flash back as I ran through these missions and who can forget the interrogations in Black Ops?

Okay, so the story wasn’t exactly original but what about the gameplay and difficulty. The gameplay was fluid and worked quite well and wasn’t much different than I’m used to in Call Of Duty. The Difficulty was something unexpected. If it weren’t for the glitches, freezes, and enemy irregularities it would have been normal, maybe even easy. The Ai in this game was all over the place. One minute your putting 40 rounds into one enemy who is not dead yet, the next it’s one bullet to kill him. The Ai was also able to shoot through buildings, rocks, dumpsters and other solid objects-killing me quicker than the game would load that mission. And cover wasn’t cover, they always knew my location. However, with glitches there were points where I could shoot without being shot when I should have died and others that were the opposite. Just a few other glitches include game ending freezing on certain missions like Thunder Run and little staggered freezing that prevents you from moving correctly or making it to the next area without being shot. And truth be told 2-3 shots and I’m dead is fine with me, I like a challenge. But this game just did not feel right.

Graphics look good, but not great and after all the hype that we would get some amazing graphics fell short. But don’t get me wrong they did look good, but with the colors of the H.U.D. it just looked off and not as realistic as they hyped. Now I do understand that the PC version looks better, but that’s a whole other story. As for the sound it sounded awesome when it worked. The sound would cut out at points leaving no sound at all or in some cases we lost only dialogue, only music, or only sound effects. Not very friendly when you listening for gun fire or footsteps or maybe the roar of a tank! What they did do right here was the waves of the ocean, lighting and facial expressions and the lens flare made a few places look very good.

I would also like to point out how idiotic some of the ways we completed objectives. We have missions where we are in a tank and could easily complete the task in that tank, but no the mission requires us to get out and fight on the ground. This is unrealistic and there are many places where such nonsense occurs. Also those weapons didn’t seem to make a whole lot of difference between each other, other than the type of scope! With the glitches and irregularities along with rehashed story and unrealistic warfare, I seriously did not enjoy much of the campaign. To be honest I had more fun playing Duke Nukem Forever on hard than I did with Battlefield 3 and I take serious insult to the explicit nature of Duke Nukem’s latest portrayal.

Next let’s look at the co-op section. Here we can progress through only six, yes six, missions. They play much like the campaign only you must rely on a partner to succeed. This partner can be a friend online or a random individual. If you want the few co-op achievements choose a friend! There is not much more to say other than what was said about the campaign, though I must admit I found fewer glitches here. But they are way too short for any real enjoyment.

Multiplayer is what the game was built for, as if my review so far hasn’t indicated, and they succeed. The online gameplay runs mostly smooth with a large playing field and is actually fun. It also looks better and sound better than the campaign. You also get to operate tanks, helicopters, and fighter jets online and they operate ok. One thing missing is locale multiplayer. You can expect many to be playing this game online for quite some time, but as for me it’s being traded in.

After all is said and done, EA and Dice should have stuck to their strong points and made just a multiplayer game and left the campaign and co-op out. It’s such a stark contrast between the two that it leaves you stunned and baffled. I feel like this was rushed and with the amount of frustration from the single player, I have had enough. I am no where near compelled to keep playing online, not even for the Mass Effect 3 Beta!

Well that’s going to wrap it up here. I can recommend this game at $59.99, maybe when it reaches $20. Oh what’s that? You want a score between 1 and 10? Okay, let’s take a look at that. Single Player was a huge disappointment and didn’t get very much right. The same for Co-op, but multiplayer certainly shines. That’s 3 parts of 10. So I would have to say that each part represents a possible 3.33 of 10, thus my score would be 4 out of 10. Better luck next time EA and Dice, up next is MW3 and I wonder how they will fare?