Single player shooters are like a magician's show. They're an active lie that both the viewer and the artist is allowing to happen for the sake of entertainment. A good magician deceives his audience, making them believe in magic - even if only for a second, until they remember that despite what the Insane Clown Posse would have you believe, magic isn't in fact everywhere. Or anywhere.
A good single player game needs to deceive its audience as well. The lies being told are many; the enemies are 'intelligent', they exist beyond the scope of the game, your character exists, and so does his world.
Battlefield 3 does an OK job of selling this lie - but too often it shows its hand, ruining the illusion. You'll see enemies appear from nowhere, you'll watch them move through their fixed, rigid patterns when they should be reacting to your actions. The confines of the maps will display themselves too, reminding you that you are playing a video game.
It's not the first game to make these mistakes - and it won't be the last - but it's disappointing to see. BF3 isn't DICE's first attempt to inject a singleplayer campaign into the series, but where they succeeded previously is in playing by their own rules. BFBC2 for example didn't have the most amazing SP campaign ever, but at least it was still a Battlefield experience (though lessened to an extent).
BF3's mistake is that it is playing by Call of Duty's rules. Where the Bad Company series was a light-hearted, joke-filled excuse to get players acquainted with the various weapons and vehicles in the multiplayer, BF3 is a tense and serious thriller, taking place across multiple countries and told from the perspective of a few different characters.
The story is actually quite good. The primary character is Sgt. Henry Blackburn - he's being interrogated over the death of his CO on mission. Along the way you'll fill the boots of Lt. Jennifer Hawkins (seriously) as she asserts Air Superiority over the skies of Iran, Sgt. Jonathan Miller - a tank commander - and Dimitri Mayakovsky, a GRU Operative with more than just Russia's interests at heart.
Some of the levels are great - everything you do in Paris, for example, highlights the best of what Battlefield 3 is offering. Others - like Lt. Hawkins - are little more than on-rails tag-alongs. It seems odd that in a series where the biggest draw is the ability to pilot/drive vehicles you're given so little opportunity to do exactly that.
It's not as if the ability to fly jets isn't present in the multiplayer, after all. Instead of forcing the player to simply watch as the AI flies - and occasionally having to shoot another plane down - why not let the player come to grips with how piloting works elsewhere in the game?
Still, it's not as if you need to see 63 other players in a game before you'll be allowed to pilot a vehicle. One of the first coop maps, for example, is a Helicopter flying mission, and it's a great introduction to the new flying mechanics in BF3.
The coop missions, in fact, are probably the highlight of the non-competitive Battlefield 3 experience. There are only six missions but there's clearly a lot of love (and variety) in each one, and they really manage to break up the BF3 experience.
The voice-acting is surprisingly solid most of the time, and I was surprised when the score showed not only that it had more than just the iconic Battlefield sound - it includes some genuinely good music.
Still, the real highlight of Battlefield 3 is the sound effects - and the game sounds brilliant. It's not just about the gun chatter sounding realistic, or each distinct vehicles roar being spot on - the soundscape changes depending on where you are and what's going on around you, and it's completely immersive.
If a rocket crashes into the wall next to you, exploding, you'll notice the temporary tinnitus washing out all other sounds around you. A tank navigating the urban canyons of the Seine Crossing map sounds more ominous than one careening across the desert in Noshahr Canals.
The game looks gorgeous, too. The realistic animations and the attention to detail in terms of physics creates this atmosphere which sucks you right into the game - but the star is the lighting. The flashing lights of a cop car in the Co-Op map 'Drop 'Em Like Liquid' bathes everything in an intermittent blue. The orange flame from a newly blown up tank dynamically changes your world to have a red hue. These lights will change, too - shoot out those flashing lights and the world will return to normal.
Overall, the non-competitive experience in Battlefield 3 isn't the greatest. Instead of trying to wage a war on Call of Duty's terms DICE would have been better served to emphasise what we already know they're great at - the best large scale multiplayer on the goddamn planet.
Luckily, DICE apparently dumped a **** load of emphasis into giving Battlefield 3 the best large scale multiplayer in any game you've ever played.
The multiplayer experience of BF3 begins with Battlelog. Granted, all BF3 experiences start here, but it's crucial to the MP, because through the Battlelog you can team up with friends, organise parties, start the built-in VOIP and choose a server. You can sort by mode, region, number of players, expansion pack support - if there's a specific server you want to play on and it exists, you'll be able to find it.
A lot of hate has run the way of Battlelog, but if you ask me it's a crock of ****. Thanks to the server browser being... browser based, it takes mere seconds for the game to sort through all your parameters to find you somewhere to play. Even as recent as BFBC2 I can recall 30 - 40 second waits while the game found servers.
Once you decide to join a server, Battlelog reserves you a spot in the server, starts the game and you get connected. Just like that.
In-game, the fun really starts. Conquest mode is a battle to control up to five spots across a usually quite large map. Maps like Seine Crossing or Grand Bazaar perfectly capture the urban warfare feeling so many loved in the likes of Strike at Karkand, while Kharg Island and Caspian Border will remind you of the sheer size available to Battlefield gamers.
The Rush game mode gives players staggered objectives in the form of MCOM stations you either need to defend or blow up. This allows those with ADHD a little extra guidance in case they can't decide what they should be doing. Many are probably sick of Operation Metro as a Rush map - it was the only option for most of the Open Beta period after all - but I still enjoy seeing the landscape change dramatically as you move from objective to objective. Damavand Peak offers a similar experience - and it throws Base Jumping in the mix as well - while Nashahr Canals is a little more like the BFBC2 Rush experience... except you have A-10s flying overhead.
There's also Squad Rush, Squad DM and TDM - each one changes how the maps play out, and all of them significantly smaller as well.
The upgrade paths are different to BFBC2 or BF2 thanks to there only being 4 different classes. Assault/Medic gets the noob tube and the medpacks, Engineer gets access to rocket launchers, Stinger missiles and cool little robots, Recon scores sniper rifles and UAV support and the Support class gets Ammo packs, LMGs, explosives and the mortar.
The way they've redistributed the items amongst the classes is great for supporting teamplay - though the power of the M249 combined with the ability to infinitely refill your ammo does lend itself to a bit of a one man army situation.
Vehicles get upgraded too now, so it's not just your weapons which can earn new scopes or attachments. For the ground vehicles this is a great addition - it allows you to maximise your use of a tank or LAV - but for the jets it seems quite odd. For example - you don't have flares (used to shake off heat seeking missiles) or missiles until you unlock them. To unlock these things, you need kills - but getting kills is pretty difficult when all you have is a 30mm cannon.
The squad system - sorely missed in the beta - is back and working great in the full game. You can pick a squad and play with your mates, spawn on each other and tear up the game to the best of your shared abilities.
The Frostbite 2 engine is a thing of beauty. Not only does it allow all the dynamic lighting, fantastic soundscapes and massive maps I've already discussed - you can alt-tab without any issues, and it runs at a solid 100+ frames on my (admittedly quite beastly) PC. Loading times are tiny and the overall heat footprint is negligible. It performs what I consider to be quite significant tasks with ease - and that's impressive.
It's pretty easy when it comes down to it. If you're looking for an offline experience, look elsewhere. Battlefield 3 has a decent singleplayer - it's certainly better than some other games I've played recently - but it's not mind-blowing. If it's the best multiplayer game in the world that you're after, get your affairs in order. You're re-enlisting soldier.
Battlefield 1942
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