Battlefield 3 is visually stunning, surround sounding, is the best to play on-line and the story is interesting.
Publisher: EA Games
Developer: EA D.I.C.E
Platform: Xbox 360
Rated: Mature
Released: October 25, 2011
Visuals:
The visuals for Battlefield 3 are quite amazing to look at and are very stunning and are one of the best games visually that as come out this year and it is up their with such graphical gifted games like Alan Wake, the Mass Effect series, Red Dead Redemption, Mafia 2, the Gears of War series and the most recent Rage and in my opinion the visuals for Battlefield 3 are right up their with Alan Wake and Mass Effect 2 and just a bit better than Red Dead Redemption and Mafia 2 and not as a masterpiece as Rage and agree with me or not it is just an opinion here on the graphics and regardless the visuals for Battlefield 3 are quite memorable and very impressive and the visuals are just great in the on-line portion of the game as they are the single-player part of the game. So The detail to the character's and the environments are just amazing from the night mission's to every single mission that take's place in the day and there are to mission's in specific that are just spectacular and they the one where you get to be in F-16 and the scenery is just breath taking to look at and enjoy the view and I'll talk more about this in the gameplay portion of my review and the other mission that was quite beautiful to look at while playing it is the one where you navigate a tank and the game lets take brief moment to take in the beautiful land scape as you and your platoon of tanks rolling down the beautiful desert like thunder and I'll reflect more about this later in my review.
So now the detail to every single non-playable-character in the game and even the two you get to play as are in such great detail and is remarkably stunning and you can clearly see the great work that went to the overhaul of the Frostbit 2.0 engine from the beautiful land scape's that you get to see and and the great detail to every single character (NPC's) to even the two main one's you play as and the detail in the NPC's faces and every other aspect is just amazing. So now you might want to know if this game as any flaws and I'll point out that I did not experience any problem's but I also installed the game to my hard-drive and I down loaded the HD patch and the launch day patch as well and for that was a bit of a pain in the you know what, but still it was worth it. Now you do not have to do all this and if you don't you might experience some freezes or some frame rate issues and they are just minor if not installed to the hard drive and downloaded the two patch's for the game. So in short their are minor issues with the visuals if the HD patch is not downloaded, but still the graphics for this game are just breath taking and are in one word are just stunning.
Audio:
The audio for Battlefield 3 is just spectacular just as it always is in the Battlefield series with it's Dolby 5.1 surround sound and just give's you the best sounding weapons, vehicles and give's a more believable sound when bullets hit or go through walls and even when a bullet just misses you head or body you just hear that sound as whizz's by and just makes the game that more intense regardless of playing it in single-player or in the on-line and just like in previous Battlefield game's and one of the main reason's this game series as become one of my favorite's in the First-Person-Shooter genre is the audio from the accurate sound from all the guns and I love that and the fact they do not sound like I'm firing an air rifle or paint ball gun, and then you have the accurate sound from all the the vehicles and that include's all the vehicles from the Jeeps to the Tank and from the Helicopters to the F-16 fighter jets and this is including the on-line sos well and actually I'm just talking about the audio in the on-line at the moment and so the audio is just great overall on-line or even in the single-player.
So now I'll mention the audio in the single-player and that as well is just amazing with the sound of the weapons and vehicles and the voice acting is just amazing from the main character and the secondary character you get to play as and even all the supporting cast voice work in the game is just amazing as well and in short every aspect of the audio in this game is just simply amazing. So in short the audio for Battlefield 3 is as always quite amazing and is just superb to listen to and really will give you a great sense of being in a actual battlefield and be life like, and the audio is just awesome.
Gameplay:
The the single-player for Battlefield 3 is quite interesting and like most Battlefield game's that have interpreted a single-player campaign they are quite short and so is this and unlike the Bad Company games where the single-player and the dialog was not trying to take it's self seriously well the first Bad Company game did this and as for the Bad Company 2 they tried to have the story and the dialog be a little more serious which it was a little bit, but the Company was still full of some humor with a more serious story.
So now you have Battlefield 3 which is a true sequel to the Game of the Year from back in the late 90's on the PC only and now this one is here and is a multi-platform game and so with Battlefield 3 the story and the dialog is a more serious the other's in the Battlefield series, you get to play as an elite marine named Blackwater as your character is being interrogated to uncover a plot that is suppose to take place later in the game and try to prevent it from happening you start this game their but before that you had to go through a quick pre-spoiler tutorial where the game starts you at a certain point in the game and that it takes you through on how to play the game their is a couple of brief quick time moment's then you get to the opening credits and then the game take's you through some fun and intense moments and you have parts in the game where you get to be in a F-16 fighter jet where you get to shoot down some enemy fighter jets and defend you and your pilot from getting shot down and then you get to spot shooting or what ever it is called at the end of this moment and then you get to go through a mission with a tank and most of the time are in the tank but you have a part or two where you have to get out of the tank to take out an help out some fellow soldier's that are trapped and cut of from their objective and you seem to be the only one that can get the job done.
Like I said you get to play as Blackwater for most of the game then the game will have you trade places with a small anti-terrorist character which is an ex-spetsnaz which may or may not be part of a group that I believe is part of a secret forces group from Russia and is name is Demitri "Dima" Mayakovsky and playing as this character you get to go through Paris as you try to stop a terrorist plot to (spoiler alert kinda) blow something up. So you will switch character's two or so time's with Paris being one of the times. So with that said you will play through this in about 5 to 6 hours on normal and about 6 or 7 hours on the games hardest difficulty which is a bit of a pain in the you know what and still is not that hard at all if anything the hard difficulty should have been the games normal but enough with that and lets just say the single is interesting and a bit fun while it last's. The control scheme is pretty similar to previous Battlefield games with some minor changes like with some of the weapon's you can press down and up on the D-pad and you can change the speed at which rate to fire your automatic weapon which is a pretty cool feature and comes in handy for when you feel like pulse firing or just all out prey and spray and with this feature some guns have three rate's of fire single, two to three round burst or fully automatic and other's you do not have this feature but it is still pretty cool.
So in short for the gameplay for this game is fun and interesting and you will have some intense and great moments but no real WoW moments or what the F moments, but we all know that this is not D.I.C.E's bread and butter and I'll get to that shortly and in just one word or two for this game single-player is just plain fun and interesting and is worth playing through once or twice.
Multiplayer:
So now the on-line for Battlefield 3 is quite impressive and fun with the game's team based style of gameplay for the on-line and as much as I love Battlefield game's on-line and I'll just put like this briefly only this as happen to me on a few occasion's and that they are and if guys have read any articles before this game and where EA wanted just crack into the sales of Call of Duty well in my opinion I think they did because just like in Call of Duty where you will be playing on-line and some idiot will decide to team kill you or send you and random message about camping and boosting like they do in the COD games in some of on-line experience I ran into this and I ran into some yeah hoo in my squad and will squad kill and team kill or even just kill me for no reason at and for that was one of the minor set back's for me and regardless I still love the on-line for this series more so then the Call of Duty series because of the realism that this series as delivered for me to enjoy, so enough about this little rant.
Now for the game mode's for Battlefield 3 and you have you standard two modes for this series in Rush mode and Conquest and if you are a fan of this series you what they are about and for any new people that are just getting into the series you have Rush is where you two teams one defend's M-COM station's the other attackers and the attackers have to take out these objective's to push the battlefield back further as a team until all the M-COM station's are all taken out or when the defenders have depleted the attackers ticket's or re-spawn's and this mode requires team work for most part as whole team or with your squad and in Conquest mode and in this mode is the only place where you can fly the F-16 fighter jets and is basically a big team capture the flag mode where you got three flag territories that one team try's to gain and defend and the other try's to attack and capture and defend it in turn and this cycle continue's until one team is out ticket's/re-spawn's or time runs out it's been a while since I played this mode and I think their is timer but I might be wrong. Their are also a Squad Team Deathmatch where you can jump in with a squad or join and get put in a squad and face of against 3 to 4 other squad's to win and you have Squad Rush where it's the same as regular Rush mode but less players and the final mode you have in Battlefield 3 is Team Deathmatch and in most shooter's this is probably the favorite on-mode well for most game's because everyone who play's this series loves Rush mode, so in Team Deathmatch you will be put on a team and a squad which you can leave and be a lone wolf or not and basically I do not have to give a description on this mode.
So with the modes talked about and you would like to know the classes and you an Assault class which provide's you with the old Medic class and you still have the arsenal that the Assault class has but you also have the the old Medic class perks as well, then you have the Engineer class which has the perks to repair and take down enemy tanks and other vehicle's, and since they put the Medic class with the Assault class and now they brought back the Support class and in this class you have an arrange class light machine gun's and you can be provided with claymore's when they are unlocked and you get a mortar strike when you unlock it and last but not least you have you the Recon class which is basically your sniper class and now you can lay down a strategic remote re-spawn station for your squad if they die and they can re-spawn on your station and so they can either spawn in a secure location or just parachute in and you motion sensor things that you can place some where for your self to detect movement or for your teammates and you have a bunch of other great gadget's to choose from when you unlock them.
Now the last part of this is on how you can get on-line by clicking on the quick match and choose what kind of match you would like to jump right into or you can choose the server browser and select browser from the variety of modes or click on the right thumb stick and you can choose your preference's of what game mode or mode's you would like to play in or even which people in the world and what map's you would like to play on the most or even the new expansion pack maps and even choose what style of gaming you would like to choose from hardcore, normal or even just infantry and ranked or not and in my mind that's pretty cool. Their is one mode in this game and that is Co-Op mode where the you can only play on-line you can't play locally on the same system which was a bit of a let down and with the Co-Op mode you get 6 missions that are separate from the main campaign and are fun to play. So in short and even with my little rant about what I did not like about the on-line and that is just me and in general this game's on-line is still pretty solid and deserves it's recognition and deserves to br part of collection.
Overall:
So the overall part for Battlefield 3 is this it is worth the price it is worth and because you do have a pretty decent but very short campaign and you have a great on-line and a Co-Op mode that is on-line only, great visuals from start to finish in the single-player and the on-line and the audio is impressive as always and if you are able to get the limited edition with the V.I.P pass and the code for the expansion pack for back to Karkand which four new maps, weapons. vehicles and much more that is just gravy and is worth the games price tag. Great work D.I.C.E very impressive.
9.0 out of 10