The battle for the best game of the year is hot and heavy and two of the year’s biggest competitors for that title are Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3. First Person Shooter fanboys have even taken sides in the battle with nonstop forum arguements of which game is the best. Well, Electronic Arts and developer DICE are first up to bat in the military shooter beef battle.
At it’s core, Battlefield 3′s multiplayer is the ultimate large scale battle FPS on the market. Ever since DICE developed the legendary Battlefield 2 game exclusively for the PC back in 2005, FPS shooters for both the PC and console games have tried to recreate and expand upon the magic that still has thousands of players running back to even today. DICE spent years developing a new game engine called Frostbite that saw its genesis in the well received console and PC game Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Utilizing destructible environments, this game engine became the skeleton for what DICE now showcases as the Frostbite 2 engine for Battlefield 3. A truly ambitious undertaking, this version of Battlefield looks to provide similar experiences in both the console and PC world. As trailers for this game ran, the gorgeous visuals were taken from expensive video game PCs. Then, when the multiplayer beta dropped in Oct., console gamers got their first taste of both the graphics and the new gameplay. Surprisingly, many Battlefield:Bad Company 2 fans either felt that the game didn’t hold up graphically or that it just “wasn’t what they expected”. Thankfully, the beta was a single map and an unfinished version.
Now that the finished version of Battlefield 3 is there for the masses, many are hesitant to spend their hard earned money on a game that had such a highly devisive beta. Well, fellow Heeders, I’m here to tell you that Battlefield 3 is the epic that it sought out to be.
Just to give you an idea of how the game is, here is an interesting scenario that only Battlefield can deliver:
In one particular multiplayer match, my squad was forced to advance down a steep hill towards an enemy base complete with a tank, a few guard towers, some rocket emplacements, and bunches of soldiers raining bullets, rockets, grenades, and such up towards my team. As the bullets whizzed by and explosions happened all around, I grinned thanks to my new set of gaming headphones that I purchased that have 7.1 Dolby Surround Sound. Thankfully, it was nighttime and there were plenty of rocks and bushes to slightly obscure my descent. The rest of my squad was pinned down on one side of the base by gunfire and the mission’s goal was on the opposite side of the base. It was located in a building clearly marked on the map and I snuck my way down to it. Unfortunately, the wall had been blown out so if I attempted to run inside and destroy the equipment, the tank would surely have seen me. So, I snuck to the back of the building facing the hill and awaited for more of my teammates. Eventually the enemy saw us and they began to camp out in the building waiting for us to come around the corner. I remembered I had C4 so I placed it on the way just outside of the equipment and destroyed the wall which thankfully took out the enemy squad as well. My teammates quickly launched rockets to destroy the tank and the mayhem gave me enough time to arm an explosive and destroy the equipment. When the match ended, all I could say was, “Whoa!”.
This is certainly a small taste of the immense amount of tactical possibilities there are when playing this game. Motion detectors, laser targeting, remote repair robots, remote UAV units, mortars, and more provide so many different ways to support your team or simply make it harder for the other team to stay alive.
Even so, just as with any game, the experience is different for everyone. Some people will not enjoy the strategy, tactics, and teamwork required in a game like Battlefield 3. This squad based shooter is more dependent on how your equipment usage benefits the rest of your squadmates and team than how it benefits your own killstreak. While having the most kills typically garners the highest scores in Call of Duty, supporting your teammates and spotting enemy troops can often lead to higher scores than the leading kill tally in a given match in Battlefield. The result is rewarding gameplay that allows players of various styles to become successful rather than just the player with the most deadly equipment. Of course, this mantra can be thrown out the window if the player is an exceptional pilot. Those that are expert pilots can typically rack up huge scores since taking down aerial vehicles can be a difficult without the right equipment (or another good pilot). Even so, lone wolf infantry typically do not fair very well in this game.
The different classes and their unique battlefield roles return and work quite well (balance wise) so that none of the classes are particularly useless. These classes cannot have pre-customized loadouts that can be saved and quick swapped (as is done in Call of Duty).
New to the series is the much desired ability to lay prone (to the delight of snipers everywhere) as well as the ability to use suppressive fire as a benefit. Now, even if you don’t hit someone as you are shooting at them, if a teammate manages to take down that same target, you are given a suppressive fire bonus. If you are that target on the other hand, you will notice that your view becomes distorted a bit to simulate that fear of being shot at. This effect certainly affects your accuracy if you are shooting back.
What makes this experience so different and so rewarding is the amazing number of gadgets, weapon attachments, and skills that can be unlocked through specializing in a particular class, weapon, and/or vehicle! The unlocks for certain classes are so valuable that spending all of your time acquiring that one gadget will make you aware of another that would be just as valuable in another class. This keeps you coming back for more and more. Being a vehicle expert makes you harder to destroy and more of a death dealer with better weapons and protective skills and equipment. Thankfully, no one gadget or vehicle is so powerful that there isn’t some other piece of equipment or vehicle that can’t counter it on any given map. This can make for some pretty frantic and exciting matches at times that when you throw in the ability to destroy buildings is an amazing amount of fun. Without a doubt, there isn’t a multiplayer shooter on the market that provides a similar quality experience. Bar none.
With that said, there are a few gripes that one should be aware of. New to the series is the ability to climb and leap over structures. Pressing the jump button vaults you over an obstacle while running. The only problem is that this doesn’t always work. Many times I found myself running in the city and either a piece of rubble or a waste high gate along a road allowed my to go into my ‘vaulting’ animation but wouldn’t allow me to actually get past the barrier. When running away from gunfire, this is NOT something you want to struggle with! Also, the icon for flag captures is WAY too big and obscures the view too much in the heat of battle.
One of the largest issues with this game is how cumbersome the class customization screens are for weapon and vehicle customizations. There is a quick change equipment bar on the screen that allows you to quick swap equipment and gadgets before respawning but changing loadouts is particularly time consuming. Though this can be performed mid-match, the time it takes to cycle through the options just doesn’t make for a pleasant experience.
Lastly, the Team Deathmatch and Squad Deathmatch modes just seem to come off as a cheap immitation of Call Of Duty. Due to the structure of Battlefield, the maps seem too small and don’t really take advantage of the various kit gadgets and such. The Conquest and Rush modes are the ones that shine in this multiplayer focused game.
While this review is based upon the Xbox 360 version of the game, the PC version is surely the ultimate version of the game. While console versions will have a maximum of 24 players on a map, PC versions can hold up to 64 players. As a result, the maps in each mode are significantly bigger with more vehicles, more bullets, more explosions, and more aerial madness than it’s console versions. Of course, a true gaming PC (with 12 gigs of RAM and at least a decent 1 Gig video card) is the ideal setup so that the photo realistic visuals shown in all of the pretty commercials become how you experience the game.
Top all of this off with the return of great stat tracking (both in-game and online), lots of badges, medals, and dogtags to received and you have the formula for yet another time consuming FPS experience that military FPS gamers are sure to return to over and over again.
The look and feel of Battlefield 3 honestly isn’t much different from Bad Company 2. Aside from slightly faster gameplay and a ton more unlockable guns and gadgets, this next revision of Battlefield hits the same high notes as the previous game only better. The destruction possible thanks to DICE’s gorgeous Frostbite 2 engine has some gritty lifelike visuals that are enhanced when buildings crumble, explosions boom, and environments catch fire due to the chaos both teams inflict upon the map. Battlefield 3 is about as close as console gamers will get to an authentic large scale multiplayer battlefield experience.
Final Score: 95 out of 100
(Note: The single player and co-op modes were not included in this review.)
Info:
ESRB Rating: M for Mature (Blood, Intense Violence, Strong Language)
Available for: PS3, Xbox360, PC
