Introduction
For a while now the team at Digital Illusions CE, known to most people as ”DICE”, had directed their attention at the Bad Company branch of the Battlefield franchise. The games themselves were good and came with a multiplayer side dish that was hard to overlook. But I and a lot of others were still to this day awestruck by the massive titan – Battlefield 2.
Building goes boom.
Completely revolutionizing the modern shooter by making people look at it in a whole new light. Battlefield 2 was released back in 2005 when the people at Infinity Ward were still releasing titles taking place in World War II. DICE proving time and time again that they’re ahead of the curve and this was truly their biggest success.
Infinity Ward backed by Activision later copied the modern style the newest edition of Battlefield had so skillfully shown the world. This in turn giving birth to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in 2007 and it was in many ways an easier game. Placing a lot of focus on the single individual to carry a team rather than using the same team to achieve victory.
This started what I like to refer to as the “First Person Shooter War for Supremacy”. Fought between the Swedish studio DICE with their publisher Electronic Arts and Infinity Ward being backed by Activision the latter team won a whole lot of battles during the coming years. Now when Battlefield 3 has been released it seems like they didn’t win the war.
Gameplay and Graphics
I feel that the first point I should remark on is the new graphical engine used by DICE in Battlefield 3. Their earlier version of it was used for both Battlefield: Bad Company and the second game of that series. The newly upgraded and completely glorious engine is called Frostbite 2.0. Compared to others in the First Person Shooter genre this is the best graphical quality you can ever hope to find. But since I play on Xbox 360 I’m limited to what the console itself can manage, still looks gorgeous though.
Simply sublime.
People who play BF3 on their stationary computers have probably had an even greater impression of the quality than I thanks to the “Ultra” setting. However – to make a title look this good on the consoles isn’t easy and the team did an amazing job. Got nothing bad to say about the graphics at all, I haven’t noticed any bugs or mistakes which are in most instances unheard of in the gaming community.
When it comes to pure gameplay Battlefield has always taken the cake as far as I am concerned. Other titles like Modern Warfare for example have felt very stale in comparison, where as the Battlefield franchise has been able to really make you feel as if you’re really in the boots of a soldier.
Simple things such as the running make a big difference. Those of you who have played both these titles know what I’m talking about, on one hand we have Modern Warfare where you can sprint for roughly 5 seconds (unless you have the perk to run further). On the other you haven Battlefield which gives you have the ability to run as far as you want to without having to stop.
Makes one wonder what type of soldiers Infinity Ward were looking at when they were trying to find their inspiration. As far as I know it seems like they had a peek at the German soldiers back in World War II who were watching the beaches of Normandy. Since they didn’t fear an invasion they got lazy, and also fat. Whereas DICE studied real soldiers that are trained killing machines that don’t get a heart attack after a few yards of running.
Weapon handling is also significantly different, here it also feels a lot more natural than other shooters and a simple act as standing up on your feet from a prone position actually takes time. This means that you really have to consider laying down, if you do be prepared to die quickly if someone finds you. The same thing can be said about using your knife, not only is there an awesome sequence of you slicing the other player’s throat, but you’re also very exposed when doing it.
Singleplayer
Go here, do this.
This new installment of the series had a much more solid storyline and singleplayer experience than any of the previous games, which is why I’ve even decided to mention it. You start off by watching a cutscene where the soldier you’re playing as is being interrogated. Apparently two portable nuclear devices are unaccounted for and the story unfolds by using flashbacks.
It can easily be compared to the way Treyarch told their story in Call of Duty: Black Ops but if you’re a normal person like me you couldn’t care less. There are only so many ways you can go through a storyline in a game so drawing parallels isn’t very hard because most routes have already been taken.
Throughout the campaign you switch characters as it moves forward, a part when you’re playing as a Russian Special Forces soldier trying to track down a nuclear device in Paris is most likely the highlight. Just like in the previous titles you’re allowed to play around with several different vehicles.
Battlefield 3 has an overall good campaign but there is still much to be desired. I’m glad that the team is heading in the right direction however and can’t wait to find out how much better the singleplayer experience will be next time.
Multiplayer
Now we arrive at the most interesting and wonderful part of Battlefield 3, the player versus player online warfare. The series has shined as a bright star in the sky of online gameplay for many years, at least in my own eyes and as before they don’t disappoint this time either.
Fight like a team.
In the PC version of the game you can enjoy true fights with teams spanning up to 64 users (32 in each team) where as on the console version you only have the chance to have 24 players. I don’t see a problem with this since the maps are scaled down, but still feel like we are getting cheated.
There are four different game types to choose between one of them being Conquest (my personal favorite), the objective is to hold a certain amount of areas until the opposing team runs out of “tickets”. These are lost when people respawn and automatically if one side holds more than half of the points. You’ve also got the standard Team Deathmatch mode and versions of the two but only with four players on each team.
I can’t complain about anything when it comes to the multiplayer part of the game, except that they’ve destroyed the sniper class. In the Bad Company games you didn’t have to hold your breath before firing for example, in this installment you have to do so to be accurate. They’ve also removed the ability to use mortar strikes, replacing them with surveillance robots and such giving the sniper class a more scout-like place in the team.
Another issue is problems with the servers; many times I’ve been booted from the session in the middle of a fight and then lost connection all together. This can only be fixed by rebooting the game and re-joining the match manually. I do NOT blame this on DICE however; the issue is with EA who hosts the servers through their network. This problem has persisted through Bad Company as well as Medal of Honor and Electronic Arts must do something about this pronto.
Final Thoughts
I had a lot of hope in Battlefield 3 and I have to say that DICE did an excellent job on this game. There isn’t much more you can ask for except for bigger battles and a better networking service that doesn’t die in the middle of things. It’s safe to say that a game like this released from a Swedish studio makes me extremely proud of being born here.
