Musings on ... Battlefield 3

Hmm. Hmmmmmmmmm. Hmm, hmm, hmm. What to say about Battlefield 3? Hmm indeed. Well, let’s tackle the single-player first, massive disappointment that it is. Now, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that it is probably the worst single-player game I’ve played in the past 12 months. I mean, it is truly awful. Red Orchestra had bad single-player, yes, but it also didn’t have a multi-million dollar budget, and wasn’t trying to take on Call of Duty. Granted, I haven’t played MW3, but surely it can’t be as disappointing as this. You may notice throughout this piece that there aren’t any screen-shots from single-player. Now, for sure, this was because Battlefield is unable to run through Steam, so I can’t use it for screen-shots, and thus ended up having to use Fraps. But I just couldn’t bring myself to load the campaign up again to attempt to find a decent shot or two.

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I think the most egregious issue with the campaign is that it’s so tightly scripted. Beyond the usual’s of not being able to go through doors before your squad-mates, it really is horrendous. You can’t run too far ahead, or else the game tells you to stop before it kills you. Similarly, all scripted events (as far as I can tell) only occur if you trigger them. Like that bit from the pre-release footage where your mate gets shot? You can stand just outside the door forever and that will never happen. You are pretty much shooting him yourself. And then there are the quick-time events. I honestly thought we’d grown out of these by now. I honestly can’t remember the last game I played that actually had QTEs in. But here they make a stupendously horrendous come-back, forcing you to replay the whole event and the bit before it if you miss the event or happen to press the wrong button. Argh, it just makes me so mad that this is what we consider games to be now. Think back to 2004, and the release of Half-Life 2. Now fair play, most games can’t be as good as that, but it never took control away, and despite being hyper-linear, it pretty much allowed you to fight how you wanted, and progress at your own speed. You were always at the front of the fights, leading people, not following.

Anyway, rant over, onto the multi-player. Now I suppose that most people looking to buy Battlefield 3 will do so for this, and they’d be right to do so. Huge battles, with pretty fantastic visuals even on my aging PC, it doesn’t disappoint. Sure there are moments of frustration, as with any game, and snipers plague the larger maps like a… well like a plague really. Generally it isn’t an issue, but some games you can’t move for scopes glinting and bullets flying into your face. Of course, you could just jump into a tank and cruise around. For yes, vehicles finally make a return to mainstream combat games! Hooray! And they’re pretty awesome too. The planes are a nice addition, although I don’t think I’ve ever seen them kill anybody on the ground, meaning that they are just fighting a completely separate, yet beautiful, battle. Helicopters prove a nuisance, but generally there are so many other helicopters or AA tanks zooming around that they don’t last very long. Plus all is forgiven ‘cos you can jump out of them and parachute into battle, a feature which should be in every game.

The level design is pretty decent for the most part. The community seems to have weeded out the slightly less good maps by this point, meaning fewer stalemates in maps like Metro. Rush mode also makes a well-deserved return, but it seems less fitting than it did in Bad Company. I don’t really know why, but it just seems like BF3’s battles ought to be fought in huge open grounds, not funnelled around the MCOM stations. It’s still fun, but for the real moments, which BF3 delivers by the bucket load, you want to be in the conquest games. Five points, and a ticket limit, which respawning decreases. If you control the majority of points, the opponent’s tickets begin to decrease automatically. The only problem with this is that despite occasionally having a perfectly balanced, close game, you’ll more often than not end up with a bit of a one-sided fight. It’s still fun, but it just doesn’t provide what a game like RO2 does when you’re losing, a sense of desperation is sadly lacking. You never feel like you’re just holding on against overwhelming odds, but more that you’re just getting killed over and over and over again without the chance to just play the game.

But there are times that you can see the brilliance of the game, especially on PC. I honestly don’t know how you could choose not to play this on PC. If you have a semi-decent PC, and a decent internet connection, you could definitely run the game. Despite being way cheaper (about £22 on Amazon I believe), it’s also just better. I mean, 64 players. 64! That’s mental, and it can only happen on PC, where the game is meant to be played.

So, buy it if you like multiplayer, skip it if you only play single-player. Get it on PC if you can, and enjoy some brilliant moments of multiplayer gaming, interspersed with terrible moments of sniper-fuelled anger.