Battlefield 3 is the new benchmark online FPS

Battlefield 3 is the new benchmark online FPS

By Periander
10:59 Nov 20, 2011

Multiplayer is huge in so many ways.
Vehicles mix it up a lot.
Graphics are extremely realistic.
Deformations change everything.
XP system is subtle, but rewards replay.

Singleplayer is quite linear.
A little unwelcoming for new players.

Battlefield is an FPS series that has been with us now for some time and has a large and faithful following. It is with shame that I admit that this is my first outing; with Valve dominating my FPS genre attention for the better part of a decade. I also have yet to pick up Call of Duty yet either, and as such I'm not tainted with prior knowledge of either; obviously though it's been hard to avoid the raging flame war between connoisseurs of these series.

Setup wasn't too bad; certainly not nearly as bad as what people had told me and what I'd heard on the net. In fact, Origin picked up a few of the Sims titles that my wife had registered and lost disks for; so that was kind of a bonus, (although I still don't know if it works without the disk, haven't tried yet). I'm a big proponent of Steam, and to be honest if Origin works half as well as that, then I'm all for it.

I should comment on battlelog though, their browser page/plugin system. The browser coming up really threw me at first, I thought it was some pop-up so I killed it! Eventually I realised how the whole thing works; and I think it's really convoluted. You need to run Origin, then you click on Battlefield 3 which opens a browser window, then you click on things in the browser to run the game; crazy!

Once that was all done though, I fired up the single-player campaign as it seemed like the best place to start. The first thing that hit me was that the cut scenes were noticeably lo-fi. That started ringing the old console port alarm bells straight away. However it's forgivable as they definitely have not skimped on the in-game graphics for PC, with my GTX580's default settings @1920x1080 looking just stunning, with beautiful lighting effects and explosions, and buildings crumbling all around you.

One moment in particular early on really highlights how well they've handled building deformations and sucks you in to their world. This is the war on terror, and it is chaos, with so many things happening, and no idea what's going to happen next. It also highlights just how hard real-life urban warfare is, because I could not see who was shooting me half of the time!

Then to really give you a taste of all facets of battle, all of a sudden you're cruising at altitude dog-fighting and performing precision bombing runs, and literally blasting across the desert in a tank.

Eventually I got my eye in and finished the campaign on normal over a period of 3 days, playing a few hours a day. I think if you were committed and a regular to the series you'd finish it in a day fairly comfortably, so maybe up the difficulty if you want a challenge.

I still had a few gripes with the single-player campaign though. The first level on the train was obviously a very linear intro to the game, after which I expected that it would expand out to a fuller world; and it did, but somehow, it was still very linear. It was all about following the strict objectives given to you, and you had to do those to progress. Don't follow the order and you'll be facing endless waves of enemies; go outside the 'zone' and you're all of a sudden dead. For me it was annoying because I wanted to explore and tackle things from different angles. I guess maybe I'm not cut out for the military, but gosh darn it, I just didn't want to have to wait at yet another door for my stupid AI team mate to open it and progress the game.

I guess that last bit's especially why I didn't 'get' the campaign; I just didn't feel any connection to my squad, and therefore the whole ultimate emotional decision that you 'have' to make, (a key point in the story that I won't go in to), just didn't make sense to me; I was rather peeved at the fact that you didn't really get a choice at all, and in fact I failed that 'mission' twice before getting it on the third go.

I also don't like the action sequences. I enjoy watching them don't get me wrong, but I feel like they're there for no real purpose other than to make you feel like you're 'in' a cut scene; when you're obviously not. I failed the last long sequence a good three times; that's partially because I'm a trigger happy type of guy that can't remember a sequence of four buttons, but it really worked me up that I had to then sit through the same sequence again each time; just play the damn scene and progress me dammit!

After that, I noticed a co-op mode, but decided that I wouldn't bother; I wanted a taste of the real action, multi-player, and jumped straight in to that. If co-op mode means that the other guy opens up doors for you then let me know.

As a noob, but one who has been playing FPSes long enough to know that Nazis say 'my life' when they die, I was a little overwhelmed at multiplayer at first. The 64 player maps are pretty huge, and sometimes with teams controlling flags behind and in front of you it's a struggle to know where to go and what to do. I think I prefer the attack and defend maps where it's more focused in on the action.

As a consequence to my disorientation, (yes, nothing to do with lack of skill of course), my KD ratio is pretty laughable; but I've still got a few experience points because my rushing instincts meant I capped a few flags and got some random lucky kills here and there. I'm now level 4 and have just learnt that you can press 'q' to spot and tag enemies on the radar for your team; which is better than just dying and you and your team having no idea where that sniper was hiding.

I spent my first few rounds trying to work out what key was push-to-talk, only to be basically told that you can't; you have to set up friends in your command centre, but no-one does that, they all use TeamSpeak instead. Now, again for someone used to the holy trinity of Valve multiplayer FPS series, (CS:S/TF2/L4D1&2), no in-game mic support out of the box is a shame. Perhaps I'm fortunate to not have played games like Halo where I hear for years now that people have had to put up with all sorts of crap from prepubescents on microphones, and as a consequence they try to control it more tightly, but really, I would have liked to see this. As it is, I've just put up with, (relative), silence for now; but I'm sure that eventually I'll have to bite the bullet if I really want to be competitive.

I've also tried my hand at the vehicles. The tanks and jeeps are fun when you're driving, but it can be frustrating being the non-driving/secondary gunner for any vehicle, (again, voice comms would really come in handy here). There really is something satisfying about blowing away part of a building using a tank though. In multiplayer it occurs to me that others in tanks do much more damage, so I haven't really had much luck in tank versus tank battles. I also really suck at flying planes and choppers. I'm going to force myself to read the manual a bit and do it some more as it will be the only way to learn, but you do tend to get berated in text chat for using up all of the planes in multiplayer, and to let someone better do it. It's a bit of a shame that the single player doesn't introduce flying either of these, (focusing instead on shooting/bombing from a plane).

The XP system in multiplayer is all about unlocking better weapons, better gadgets etc.. This definitely does disadvantage new players, and even though it's a new game, I still see a lot of higher level players compared to my level 4. However it's fairly subtle and you can still get kills in a shootout.

I find that other players are quite conservative in play-style. Perhaps it's because some are on consoles and they prefer to stay more still and line up shots, (incidentally my console FPS experience is extremely limited, mainly because I cannot aim with a controller); perhaps it's because they want to preserve positive kill/death ratios; I don't know. It does somewhat stifle the action, but at the same time makes it tense. I thoroughly enjoy hunting down snipers who have just killed me by either sneaking up the stairs to their hole in a half blasted apartment, or by simply jumping in a tank and finishing the job of practically bringing the building down.

All in all, I've had a good time playing Battlefield 3. The campaign was reasonably fun, but was merely the entree; and I'm still getting stuck in to the main course. I'm giving it 90%.

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