5/5 for the Multiplayer plus 3.5/5 for the Singleplayer makes the 8.5 Score
Old Battlefield players would've hoped that there's a singleplayer skirmish mode like in Battlefield 2 or Battlefield 2142. Unfortunately they won't find that in Battlefield 3 singleplayer. The singleplayer campaign delivers a short decent war story, not really impressive, it ends in 6-8 hours of gameplay. Characters aren't well dug, some leaves question mark once the game ends.
Singleplayer gameplay is common, but less than expectation. The trailer show that you fly with jets but actually you're just the co-pilot. You got no chance to drive any vehicle in this game except for the tank seen in the Thunder Run trailer. It gives the overall Singleplayer gameplay repetitive and "been there done that" feeling. Several glitches are encountered, like AI's model T-Pose-ing, flying corpse, floating corpse, tanks clip each other, etc.
The Graphics and the environments is what makes the singleplayer scores. Destructibility, presented with impressive photorealistic cinema-like visual, and technically friendly if ran on the recommended hardware setup. A little bit of a minus point is that the level design is pretty linear, plus the jungle setting on the singleplayer campaign is somewhat unpleasant to see.
AI is decent. Enemy AIs are sometimes unforgiving and they seem to be able to distinguish between your character and friendly AIs and prioritize their attacks on you, while friendly AIs will sometime gets you stuck in the corner because they won't budge when you push or jump or crouch or fire or pressing awidgauiwndaislakhdwayf.
The Multiplayer Mode is where the true soul of Battlefield 3 lies. Online play offers immersive battle in a big map with a maximum of 32 vs 32 players. Driveable vehicles, has the same level of destructibility as the singleplayer, has the same graphical quality, plus teamwork experience. The only problem is that it's lacking of LAN options so that you have to be fully online in order to taste the multiplayer experience.
Final verdict, good game with a little bit disappointing singleplayer experience, but delivers great online multiplayer experience.