Preview: Hands on with quite possibly the most thrilling game you’ll play this year – maybe even this decade... Battlefield 3 is that good.
Following this year’s E3 show, we looked back on our four days in Los Angeles with some alarm. After all the light and sound, the endless demo sessions and PR handshakes... we struggled to remember what we had actually seen. Seriously – we’d played and been shown about 20 different titles all up, but with one exception, when asked what we’d seen we had to step back and think hard. It’s just that kind of show.
However, as intimated, there was one game that we could not forget if we tried. Hell, if we could, we’d have stolen the entire demo PC we played it on, and run cackling from the LA Convention Center.
That game was Battlefield 3, and we’re confident – in a way that makes our promise of Homefront’s excellence seem churlish by comparison – that this will be the game that serious PC shooter fans have been waiting for. It’s just that good.
We are Oscar Mike! Well, thankfully, we never heard that now over-used phrase in the game, but it does pretty sum up our own gung-ho joy at what we got to do at E3. We saw a couple of different gameplay sections, from an awesome tank battle and A10 Warthog sortie in the single-player, to a brief bit of multiplayer at the EA conference, but the crowning achievement was a closed doors session on the game that not only delivered the goods on the game’s class system – basically a tweaked version of Bad Company 2, with the Medic kicked out (Assault dudes now have medpacks), and an added Support class for LMG love – but that was followed by a totally unexpected 20 minute hands-on session.
We got to play a Rush match on an un-named map set in Paris. Probably called something clever and esoteric, like... Paris. For those not familiar with Bad Company 2, it’s a simple mode; one team must defend its MCOM station, the other must destroy it. As each MCOM is destroyed, another leg of the map opens up, with another MCOM to defend/blast to constituent parts.
The map is great. Being in a city, you’re surrounded by tall buildings that naturally channel and focus the action; the map is quite long, too, so with objectives at one end and attacking spawns at another, you never feel like you’re being artificially limited in your movement – there’s a natural flow to the map, just like Rush mode in BC2. The maps starts in a park, with rolling hills and dainty bridges over streams, but then moves to an underground section in a bombed out stretch of Metro tunnel, complete with abandoned trains. From there, the fight moves to a Metro Station, and then onto the street, in a narrow but rather wide section of map that effectively caps the T of the entire level. It’s elegantly designed, with a lot of variation in required tactics. It was purely infantry, too, so it was great to be able to get to grips with small-arms without having to worry about getting run flat by an M1 Abrams.
Let’s just say this now – it looked stunning. Even on obviously early code, this is the best shooter we’ve ever seen on PC. And yes, we meant ‘on PC’. BF3 was the only cross-platform game we saw at E3 being demoed on a computer; but we’re talking looks. It makes Bad Company 2 look dated, and that’s even before we got into the chaos that is the new Destruction Engine. As to the ANT technology, that DICE has borrowed from EA Sports, it adds so much to the game, being able to see your whole body move fluidly, and the movement of your fellow soldiers, that you’ll be spoiled by BF3.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012