Battlefield 2 set the bar higher for all military first person shooters in 2005 and since then, a lot of competitors tried to surpass it and resulted in a lot of failures. Six years later, Dice finally released a direct sequel to Battlefield 2, except for the in-between Battlefield Bad Company 1 and 2. It's called Battlefield 3 and they could not have picked a better name for the game. On to the review!
The Graphics
If there was one feature in this game that could beat the others, it would definitely be this one. The graphics in Battlefield 3 are simply jaw dropping, making the game stand out in comparison to other fps. The game runs on a new engine named Frostbite 2 and is visually stunning. Everything in the environnment has been detailed with such precision it would have been hard to do it any better. The environnment itself is destructible (not as much as in Bad Company 2, but still) and it adds a new level of competitive gameplay.
Walls are exploding around you, rpgs leaving their smoke trails flying next to you, dirt flying around you when you're being shot at, buildings falling on you when hit by explosive shots, ennemies flying in the air when a tank shell hits them, amazing lightnting effects, incredible locations and even better vehicles and weapons deatils. If I could describe the graphics of this game in one word, it would be immersive. You feel like you're on a real battlefield (reference to the game name?) and your very own life is at stakes. (And I'm not even talking about the PC graphics, which are even better).
The sounds
Normally, I would not bother reviewing the sounds in the game since they don't make it any better, but I will do an exception for this one. If there is one thing that can really make you feel like you're in the middle of a big firefight, it's the audio, and that's what Battlefield 3 wants, make you feel like a soldier. Sound of bullets flying next to you? Checked. Explosions making you deaf for a short time? Checked. Ennemies screaming horribly when shot? Checked. Hearing your own footsteps, breathing and climbing? Checked. Awesomely detailed gun sounds? Checked. Realistic vehicle sounds? Checked. Everything you hear in the game is as close as possible to real life sound, which helped push the game towards it's main goal, make you feel the heat of a battlefield. My video below will help you understand the points I stated above. (My personnal sequence is at 56s)
The Multiplayer
The main attract of today's shooters is the multiplayer section, and Battlefield 3 stays true to the genre.
Battlefield 3 takes everything that made Battlefield 2 popular and takes it a step higher. Graphics, vehicles, weapons, class customization, maps and realism have all been tweaked to today's settings. Let's start with the basics, what about the game modes? Well there are a few, but no real innovation. The game is back with rush, where you have to destroy 2 bomb sites while the ennemy team defends it, then move on to another duo of bomb sites 3 more times. Conquest is there aswell, where 2 teams are pitched in a map with neutral spawn points. With each spawn point a team captures, the ennemy spawn tickets decrease a little bit faster (like Call Of Duty's domination mode). You also have team deathmatch, squad rush and squad team deathmatch, which are like the original ones but with a smaller player count.Finally, there is co-op mode, that let's you team up with a buddy to do some boring single player related missions (for a total of 6). So, no real innovations here.
Next is the weapon section. In Battlefield 3, there is a LOT of weapons to unlock and even a greater number of attachments for each of them. Even though most of the weapons have the same attachments, it will take you more than a hundred hours to unlock all of them. Every single one of them looks, feels and sounds authentical, which is great. They all act realistically too, making it hard to kill someone without aiming down your sight, considering the important amount of recoil.
But what would Battlefield be without it's class system? Don't worry, it's back as well, and better than ever. You still have the same classes: sniper, assault/medic, engineer and support, which all have their pros and cons. All of them have their own selection of weapons and gadget to unlock, so you won't be unlocking a sniper rifle while going shotgun style on your ennemies. If you like laying back and take out your targets from afar, you can do that. If you like blowing up everything, you can do that to. If you like healing teamates or giving them ammo, do it! You'll always be rewarded when you help your team towards it's objective.
The map design in this game is wonderful as well. There are many different locations including mountains, deserts, ruined citys, forests, jungles, villas, train stations and a lot more. All of them offer many different routes to your objective, making every game session different from the last one. They are huge, varied and so amazing that you will probably end up wandering around and admiring all the hard work DICE put in it's new baby. Since most of the environnment is destructible, the map often looks completely different at the end of the match than at it's beginning. Think you're safe from that tank just because you ran in a house? Think again! Even though the level of destruction in Battlefield 3 does not match Battlefield Bad Company 2, it's a lot better than many modern shooters, including the ones that brag about their destruction engine.
Teamwork in Battlefield 3 also is a vital strategy. If you think you will survive by going rambo style on the ennemy team, you are deadly wrong. Battlefield 3 does not simply encourage teamplay, it makes it almost impossible to play without! In BF3, your spawn system works like previous Bad Company games. You are in a squad of 4 players and you can shoose to spawn next to any of your squadmates, providing they're still alive. If not, you spawn to the original spawn point, which is usually VERY far away from the main battles.
It also rewards religiously every single one of your moves that help your team win or your soldiers to stay alive. You can get a really highscore at the end of the game without shooting a single bullet simply because you revived your allies, repaired friendly vehicles and captured vital objectives.
Now I really don't have anything bad to say about the multiplayer in general except for this : Playing on consoles instead of PC is like eating a banana instead of a sunday. The reason I say this is because the maximum player capacity on PC version is 64, while the max on consoles is 24. Now they didn't just put 24 players on a 64 players map, but I couldn't help but feel that maps were empty at some time. I often found myself running around for a few minutes before getting to kill someone. In one of the bigger maps, while playing conquest, the average players kill count ranges from 4 to 10 kills. That's not enough!!! If you choose to only play rush, the difference is not so noticable, since all players are heading towards the same objective. But in conquest, the maps are about the same size as they are on the PC version, giving birth to some boring and slow gameplay. This is what most of my conquest games were like on console versions, except for the close quarters maps, which were still fun and not so boring.
They tried to make the maps more compact, but I couldn't help feeling they were still a little bit too big.
The overall multiplayer experience in Battlefield 3 is outstanding, using amazing graphics and environment effects, sometimes making you wonder if you are still playing a game in your living room or trying not to get killed. If the objective of Dice was making Battlefield 3's multiplayer immersive, they could not have done it any better. Just remember to pick it up for PC if your computer is strong enough to run it, since it is a very hungry video game. The multiplayer should be a stand alone game, but sadly....
The Campaign (yes there is one...)
Call Of Duty has been Battlefield's rival for a long time, and this time Dice wanted to end it. To do so, they thought they had to produce a signle player experience as action packed as Call Of Duty's famous campaigns. The worst part is not that they failed miserably at it, it's because they could have simply skipped the single player experience and enhance even more the multiplayer, maybe even make a 64 players console version. Battlefield 3's campaign feels outdated in everyway possible. Everything it does, Call Of Duty has done it in a better way before. Amazing graphics is not enough to make a game good.
Battlefield 3's story puts you in the boots of someone you don't care about in the middle of pakistan to find the nukes of a bad guy who's going to use them on america. Not really original and even worse, they completely ripped off the concept of Call Of Duty Black Ops, since the protagonist is being interrogated through the whole story. There is just ZERO new concepts in the campaign to make you care about what's happening. It's all outdated stuff. There are even a few quick time events where you have to push the correct buttons to avoid being killed by some ennemy jumping from behind a closet or something (real original).
Well you get the point, it's a real pain the a** just having to review this crappy portion of the game and it's a shame it will make the final score lower, since games are judged as a complete package, not just by the good things. Luckily, the campaign itself is just a couple hours long and before you know it you'll be having some real hard fun in multiplayer.
In conclusion, Battlefield 3 (multiplayer) is a groundbreaking game that has everything a good military first person shooter needs to be good. It's visually stunning, will make your ears bleed because of explosions, make you jump in front of your tv when you die, give you a good replay value and make you ask yourself : why would I play at any other fps than this one? The only thing that could have made it better was if they didn't do the crappy overused campaign part and use that wasted disc storage to improve the multiplayer even more.
Overall score: 87%
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