The “Battlefield” series has been a powerful force in multiplayer first-person shooters for years thanks to a focus on massive maps with tons of players and a sandbox of powerful vehicles. The latest entry, “Battlefield 3” takes the same epic gameplay and adds a new coat of paint.
Like its predecessors, “Battlefield 3” is a military-themed, class-based FPS with a focus on objective gametypes.
Two teams fight over territories spread around the maps, or one team attacks while the other defends.
Since games can hold up to 64 players, teams are further divided into squads to facilitate coordination.
There are ground vehicles like Humvees, tanks and armored troop transports, as well as aerial vehicles like helicopters and jets. The more powerful vehicles are more difficult to drive but well worth the effort.
The incredible visuals add a stunning amount of immersion to the multiplayer experience.
Whether you’re fighting an uphill battle in the wilderness, weaving in and out of crumbling buildings on an oil refinery or inching through the city streets of Paris, “Battlefield 3” stuns with detailed environments. Buildings take damage and collapse realistically, forcing players to alter their strategy after waves of destruction.
The class system has been simplified so that players choose from just four.
There’s the standard XP system that lets you unlock new weapons, accessories and perks, but unlike “Call of Duty,” you level up each class separately. This creates an incentive for players to become specialists without completely discouraging changing roles based on battlefield conditions.
The single-player campaign isn’t the main draw for “Battlefield 3,” ; though it’s quite atmospheric, it’s a very linear corridor-crawl that feels more like an interactive movie than a game. This is an instance where “Battlefield 3” clearly aims to be a better “Call of Duty,” but can’t nail the massive sandbox encounters that define the campaign of its rival.
“Battlefield 3” is out for PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, with the biggest difference being that the console versions are capped at 24 players online, while the PC game features up to 64-player matches and superior graphics (if you’ve got a competent graphics card).
But there’s one glaring flaw on the PC. Rather than just launching the game and finding a server to play on, the game makes you launch the game from the “Origin” online store, which is a mandatory install, and then all games, single-player or multiplayer, are found through the somewhat broken, browser-based “Battlelog” service. It’s a poorly designed mess of systems that makes just finding a game to play take forever.
The marketing hype has positioned “Battlefield 3” as the modern military shooter that will unseat the “Call of Duty” series, but as expected, it depends on what kind of game you really want.
If you’re after that indescribably perfect feel of the weapons and lightning-fast pacing, “Battlefield 3” falls short with wide-open maps that provide little cover and plenty of downtime moving between objectives.
But the lack of structure is a compromise for the sheer freedom “Battlefield 3” provides.
If you want the thrill of being part of a coordinated assault on massive maps with a selection of vehicles, where teams dig in and fight for inches of territory, the flaws of the visually stunning “Battlefield 3” are easy to look past.
