Battlefield 3 PS3 Review

The Battlefield series has always had a cult following and has always lived in the shadow of the inferior Call of Duty series. I never quite understood how Battlefield never gained market dominance even though in terms of story and gameplay, it was a superior product. Vehicles, destructible environments, amazing graphics, and a plot that wasn’t too absurdly unbelievable. Everything that Call of Duty didn’t have, yet it was always panned as a clone rather than an innovation, even though the first game was released one year prior to Call of Duty. Unfortunately, Battlefield 3 fails as a single player campaign, but redeems itself as the best multiplayer experience ever.

Battlefield 3 single player campaign puts the player in the role of a soldier named Blackburn on a New York City train that has been hijacked and rigged with explosives. At the end of the opening sequence, the players is captured by one of the hijackers and the game proceeds to tell the story in a series of flashbacks prior to the train incident, with the final sequence taking place in the present. The player is after a terrorist named Al-Bashir across Iran that is dominated by the PLR. The player learns that Al-Bashir is part of a larger plot masterminded by a mysterious figure named Solomon to blow up Paris and New York with nuclear WMDs. The player action takes place mostly on foot, but the player will also participate in aerial combat with a jet, gun fighting from within a moving vehicle, and tank battles across 12 missions. The story in Battlefield 3 is believable and well written compared to the ridiculous story in Call of Duty Black Ops. The gameplay mechanics are tight and responsive, but the checkpoints are often randomly spaced. In one instance, the player is providing cover fire for the squad by way of a sniper point, but the sequence is so long that if the player fails, the entire sniping sequence must be redone. Also, respawns of enemies are actually visible to the player. A player can watch an area and visibly see enemies appear out of thin air when no enemies were there previously. This is unacceptable in this day and age in gaming. Exasperating this experience is the absurd duration of loading times. It will literally take almost 30 seconds at times to load a level even after death. Installing the game should have been an option to remediate the load times, otherwise the campaign is actually fun.

Multiplayer is where Battlefield has always shined. Environments are still destructible, not to the extent of Battlefield Bad Company 2, but enough to keep players happy. Adding to the arsenal of vehicle is the introduction of jets. Vehicles in multiplayer now have upgrades available as the player increases in experience. For example, tanks may take more damage to take down or jets have the ability to fire missiles. Multiplayer consists of 9 maps to choose from and the limited edition version adds the Back to Karkland expansion. Multiplayer modes include all of the classic modes, Rush, Squad Rush, Squad Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Conquest. Players can customize loadouts and vehicle abilities. Players who stick to one class will be able to customize more deeply as weapons are unlocked versus a jack of all trades switching between classes frequently.

Battlefield 3 is the pinnacle of first person shooter games and continues the tradition with the latest game. The single player campaign is not without flaws because of theloading times and visible enemy spawns, but the multiplayer experience makes up for it. Honestly, who really plays Battlefield or Call of Duty for the single player campaign? These games are meant for multiplayer consumption only and inthe future, it would be nice if the single player campaign were scrapped completely. The single player campaign issues take away one star from an almost perfect game. The only gripe with multiplayer is that waiting too long to buy the game will put players at a huge disadvantage to veteran players, so go out and buy this game now. There is no need to play any other FPS multiplayer except Battlefield 3.