Battlefield 3 Review – PC
EA’s latest installment in the Battlefield series is one of the most anticipated games of the year and it has finally arrived. But can it live up to the hype?
EA decided to make a much more agressive marketing campaign than ever before. They entered a direct competition against Activision, especially during the last few months, replying to every move they made with a bigger and better one. As much as I would like to avoid it, it is impossible not to mention Call of Duty when I talk about Battlefield, even though there are many differences between them, they are also very similar. This isn’t a comparison between them and you will hopefully notice the unbiased character of this review.
Campaign
Most reviewers agreed that Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was an unbalanced mix between a forgettable, cliched campaign and a very solid and long-lasting multiplayer experience. DICE tried their best to balance things out this time, but there still is room for improvement.
The writers’ aproach is similar to the one in they had in Medal of Honor. It’s realistic, plausable and sometimes over-the-top (similar to the campaigns in the Call of Duty series). I won’t spoil key story elements because they should be discovered as you play. The action is set in 2014 and it takes place in various locations, mainly in Iran, USA and France. Every mission has its own atmosphere, whether it’s the iranian desert, Tehran, New York or Paris, you always feel immersed and that is a very important factor in video games. The main character is Sgt. Blackburn, who is held in an interogation room by two CIA agents. Throughout the game you get to play as different characters as well, as the interrogation moves forward and you relive Sgt. Blackburn’s memories. Almost the entire story seems familiar, some events look like they were inspired from Call of Duty’s Modern Warfare games, which might be true or it might be just a coincidence. There are several dramatic moments, but sometimes it feels like there is not enough emphasis put on them. This is both a pro and a con at the same time. It may not be enough for some players to feel the drama, but on the other hand it also avoids becoming cheesy (soap-opera cheesiness). I don’t know if their goal was not to become cheesy or they tried their best to create drama but didn’t go that far, but the end result is alright.
All in all, there’s not much that you never seen before in the singleplayer campaign, but the plot is good enough to keep you hooked for 4-6 hours, depending on the difficulty and the experience of the player. It’s short, but intense. Could have been better? I would say it could, especially if it was longer. They went head to head with Call of Duty this time, and when you try to create a better product by trying to make it very similar to the competition, the audience will most probably not like it more than the original. I personally enjoyed the campaign and I consider that it acomplishes what it wants to, but being more original wouldn’t hurt.
Presentation (graphics, sound, menus, cutscenes)
As soon as you hop into the game you are greeted by the stylish logo and the distorted sound that we all seen, heard and loved in every single trailer of the game. The menus are slick, simple and intuitive.
During the campaign, the pre-rendered cutscenes between the missions take place in the interrogation room. Seeing the same location over and over again is becoming stale over the course of the campaign, but there are plenty of savorous in-game dialogues, during the missions. Many of you might remember the Modern Warfare 2 references regarding the heartbeat sensors and the snowmobiles. This time I noticed a single reference to Call of Duty: „History is written by the motherfucking victor!”, but the humorous aproach from Bad Company 2 is gone. There’s another line that caught my attention, which I won’t quote. There was a reference to Bin Laden before breaching in to capture a target, saying that they need him alive and there’s no need for a Bin Laden style resolution. Making a reference to such a recent event adds to the authenticity, even though the story conflict is fictional. The voice acting is solid, as you would expect from such a big title.
EA has a solid history with great-looking games, Crysis, Mirror’s Edge, Bad Company 2 and Crysis 2 being the more recent titles. Battlefield 3 follows the same pattern, creating new standards in the industry. The level of detail is amazing and it looks surprisingly well even on low settings. People who don’t have high-end gaming rigs shouldn’t be discouraged, because the game runs fairly well on mid-range rigs. A dual-core processor and a AMD 3870/Nvidia 8800 GT are enough to have a decent experience on low to medium settings. Multiplayer requires more power from the CPU, especially when it comes to 64-player games. DICE did a great job by both making the game look great and making it playable on a wide array of computers. This is the result of having the PC as main platform in development, which is a rare thing nowadays. Thumbs up to the developers for that.
Some locations look very familiar to people who played Crysis or Mirror’s Edge before, there were a few rooms during one of the russian side missions that looked like they were transfered from Mirror’s Edge with almost no modification (see the screenshots at the bottom), but the environments are varied and they don’t get old over time.
The sound design is definitely one of the best I have ever heard in a video game, aside from Bad Company 2. Every single step, movement, bullet, grenade, environment elements sounds crystal clear. The explosion sounds are breath-taking, the engine roars of a tank or a jet get your adrenaline pumped, the entire sound system is a big factor of the immersion level that Battlefield 3 achieves.
Multiplayer and Co-op
-to be reviewed
Conclusion
When we talk about the first person shooter section of the gaming industry at the moment, it all comes down to two giants: Battlefield and Call of Duty. Both have very large groups of fans who eagerly await a new installment in the series year after year. Battlefield 3 improves over its predecessor and achieves what I consider to be today’s highest standard when it comes to what it stands for. The campaign could have been longer and better, but the multiplayer is what will keep gamers coming back for more and more. Large maps, plenty of weapons, unlocks and equipment that will keep even the most determined collectors busy for a good amount of time, the variety of vehicles which can be used for both transporation and attack, the necessity of working together as a team in order to win, the graphics and sound design, all these elements make this game a long-lasting experience that won’t go old in a few weeks or even months. Another must-buy coming from EA.
Final score (not average): 9.5
Gameplay: 10 Story: 8 Graphics: 10 Sound: 10 Multiplayer: 10
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