Battlefield 3 (2011) review

Battlefield 3

PS3, Xbox 360, PC

EA, Dice

FPS, Action

Rated: ESRB Mature, Pegi 16+ 

Battlefield has always been a blockbuster franchise with a very dedicated fanbase. It started out, much like it’s today archenemy Call of Duty, on PC, and has later made the move onto consoles. But unlike COD, Battlefield has always had it’s core group of followers on the PC, and that’s where most of the players today are. The reason for this would probably be that again, unlike Call of Duty, Battlefield has always pushed the boundaries of technical limitations. Always going for the most spectacular moments and the most epic battles. These have always come together in the online world, making the singleplayer the underdog of the series. Whilst this is also true for Battlefield 3, i’ll have to give them credit for making a game in todays media where you can also greatly enjoy it’s offline portion, and thus feel like you’r getting more for your money.

As mentioned, the multiplayer is the main event for Battlefield 3, same as it is in all it’s predecessors. That being said, the singleplayer, despite not being particularly original, does have it’s charm. yes, it features a terrorists-scheme involving a nuke, being plotted by a russian extremist, targeting the US, but that being said, the story really doesn’t feel like the main event. When you’r playing thru, it feels like it’s just about taking the most epic moments from the past decade of shooters, and compiling them into a 6-hour epic with amazing visuals, great level-design and the fantastic gun-feel the battlefield games are known for. I can’t with clean conscience say the Campaign is good, from a critics point of view, but as a player, you don’t really care. The game has such breathtaking visuals, amazing feel, fast-paced epic sequences and the incredibly adrenaline-inducing battlefield music, that you don’t can’t help but enjoy it, despite it having cheesy dialog, generic, unoriginal story and uninspiring voice-work combined with dull characters.

The multiplayer on the other hand, is an entirely different story. It has the same incredible feel, visuals and music as the campaign, but it doesn’t feature poor voice-overs or a bad story, and neither is it a streamline-choreographed setup just feeding you the battle. You yourself create the battle. You and your teammates/opponents are put on a huge map, given a set of tools and then set free. The most epic battles imaginable can occur, and no game is ever alike another one. You’r constantly either the witness or the participant in an absolutely epic moment. A jet gets shot down fifty feet infront of you, the airplane body comes burning, rushing and whilst constantly shedding scrap-parts flying towards you, and just barely cleares your head and hits the hill behind you. You plant C4 on a tank, run off, and just as you’r about to hit the detonator, you see a tank-shell fly just above you’r shoulder. You bring down a wall with your rocketlauncher, jump thru the hole with you’r SMG equipped, take out two guys, switch to you’r pistol just in time to take out a guy coming thru the doorway. The game is just full og absolutely incredible moments, witch is what sets it apart from so many other shooters. Take for instance Call of Duty. It’s always got you’r pulse in «medium-gear». You’r heartrate is always elevated. Though this is great, it also means that you can never get a really epic moment. There’s never something that truly stands out. In battlefield however, it’s often slightly slower than that, but when it does kick up (witch is quite often) you get taken to such unbelievable heights, that you’ll think you’r in heaven. This keeps you in a constant suspense, making it impossible to let your guard down. Then, all of the sudden, a rush of adrenaline more potent than anything. It's because of this that, when at it’s best, Battlefield 3 multiplayer is better than most any other shooter out there.

As far as upgrades goes, Battlefield 3 features a far more weapons, attachments and gadgets than any previous BF-title. The selection is really topnotch. It also packs quite userfriendly UI, allowing you to easily manage you’r squad and equip/customize you’r weapons whilst in-game. As a sweet little touch, you can also, on the class-customization, press a button to get up a info box, with facts and the short-story of the weapon, gadget or attachment you’ve selected. You can read and learn about the claymore or see witch special-force first perfected the iconic Red-dot sight. The fact that they have a quick summary of information not only about each weapon, but about every last attachment, is both interesting and impressive.

There is also a Co-op section to BF3, and it’s worth mentioning. It has a sets of missions, separate from the campaign, that you can play thru with a friend online. They’re all fun, and offer a good variety. It’s greatly entertaining to tactically move thru the missions with something other than you’r less than hyper-intelligent AI buddies in the singleplayer. The only real complaint i have about co-op is that it doesn’t feature a split-screen, or the abillity to play with more than two players. 4 would’ve been a very significant upgrade, simply because you would feel more like a special task-force, tactically and cleanly sweeping thru missions. I’ll have to say it’s hard to say wether the co-op or the campaign is the weakest part of the game, because they’r both equally fun. When it breaks down to i though, I’ll still say the campaign is slightly stronger than the co-op part, quite simply because the co-op could’ve much more easily been flushed out. Also, i would have wished for them to add more missions thru DLC, but this was never done.

All of this being said, Battlefield 3 is, just like it’s predecessors, all about the multiplayer. I feel i can’t really give a game negative points, seeing as it’s main component is by far well worth the retail-price, and the side-orders are just few fun bonuses. If the MP had been weaker, and the game had been dependent on the 

co-op and campaign to be worth the $60, i would have to draw the verdict-score down, but seeing as this is necessary here, and you don’t ever feel cheated because of a weak story, i’ll give Battlefield 3 a final score of 91/100. Excellent.