Why am I reviewing the single player campaign of Battlefield 3 as a stand alone product you ask, well because it just feels that way. Sure it’s got the same menus, interface, controls and glorious graphics but it just feels separate, so separate in-fact that the librarian of all your stats that is Battlelog doesn’t keep track of a damn thing for single player. All we get on the PC is just a giant “Launch Campaign” button, no time played, no kills, no silent takes downs, no bullets fired and definitely no “hey, you beat mission 1 faster than your friends you rule” which seems to be the push behind EA’s insistence that you must launch Origin, then Internet Explorer and then finally the semi-menu of Battlefield 3 which let’s you finally play the game.
So lets get down to it, the graphics as you should have seen by now are amazing but they do get in the way of the game. The God rays that obscure your vision when looking at the sun or bright lights can be over powering for no reason a lot of the time. While used sparingly and in enclosed spaces the glint of light coming through windows and cracks set the tone perfectly. When you are trying to look at an enemy or A.I partner and instead see the sun, a street light or brake lights it seems to unfairly blind you only to say “don’t look at bring things” but hey we put two guys right in-front of them so go and get a better vantage point before shooting next time. Besides that little light issue the graphics are top notch.
The audio, often overlooked for graphics, is also top notch and I always feel that whoever does the audio for the Battlefield series seems to take it a step further every generation and make the guns sound so good you can feel it no matter what speakers you have. There are however a few complaints I have, there’s only one slider for audio, “master” that’s it. There were times when I had to read the subtitles because the music, explosions or that awesome gunfire were so amped up I couldn’t hear what anyone was saying, even if it was just rambling, it’s not good when the story is obscured by other sounds in the world and you feel like you may have just missed something important. But other than that the sound was great and I had to keep cranking it up just that much louder because it really puts you in the zone while playing.
The controls are fine on PC, there was a tool tip to play on hard and turn off aim assist that I saw which caused me to freak out. There is no aim assist on PC that I saw in the menus anywhere so this might be a console only tip that snuck in. Also I don’t like the whole “hold reload to pick up a weapon” action now with this series. I get that console gamers might have limited buttons but PC gamers have 99 keys available easily. We also regularly bind more than 10 in most games so why do I need to hold my reload key; which ends up most of the time reloading my weapon since I don’t always stand in the right spot. Another thing that’s weird is the whole Keyboard/Mouse/Gamepad key binding column, if I click on something in the keyboard column and then repeatedly hit mouse button 3, just maybe ask me “would you like to set the mouse control to mouse button 3?”.
The biggest issue with the campaign for Battlefield 3 is that it feels like no one looked outside their bubble at DICE to see what other people are doing and what can be done better. DICE has this really great looking engine to make a great looking game but it all feels held back by weird decisions. I’ll start off by saying the campaign is to short and feels rushed. There’s no meat or really memorable stuff I want to tell my friends about. It’s all just go here, go there, wait for talking, wait for movement, shoot and repeat. Contrast that to the best Battlefield single player campaign which is Battlefield: Bad Company 1, it actually felt like I was playing along with my friends, cracking jokes 85% of the time, serious the other 15% of the time. Then Battlefield: Bad Company 2 tried to be more serious and removed to much of the fun so it was a bit of a let down. Now Battlefield 3 ramps up the seriousness of the story so high it feels weak with the seen it, done that nuke scenario. In contrast I felt that Medal of Honor (2010) had a great story that I ended up playing through twice and it was serious in tone but it didn’t try to grab you by the shirt collar and yell in your face “take me seriously damn it” like Battlefield 3 seems to try and do.
So the story is ho-hum what about that gameplay, well that has it’s highs and lows as well. Your A.I. buddies are not smart nor do they seem to know how to shoot. I don’t know why in 2011 we can’t get some form of A.I. on both sides to not do stuff like shoot at walls, shoot blindly in the enemies direction and miss for minutes, call “all clear” while basically high fiving an enemy who then knives me, teammates who lag behind, having infinite waves of guys until X is reached, having invincible guys until X happens, not being able to skip some talking scenes and finally holding me back with invisible walls that are no wider than my apartment.
In a game released in 2011 we as gamers should expect more, if a developer is going to put a single player game on what has been historically a multiplayer only shooter series it should be well planned and thought out. Don’t try and give me the illusion of freedom and then tell me I’m out of bounds or that there’s landmines and I need to turn back, stick a mountain in my way just don’t do it forever while show me expansive cityscapes and telling me to shuffle down small corridors let me explore some. Why can’t a soldier, who you expect to be somewhat fit, climb over any chest high wall or for that matter pull himself over a wall seven foot high using his hands? As a single player experience while I appreciate all the hard work DICE must have put into the campaign it feels to out of place to recommend. Sadly the vehicle sections, which should be awesome!, were just ok, the best being the tank battle and the worst is the aircraft section where you don’t even fly you just click when it beeps as you ride in the backseat! Check back in for Part 2 of our Battlefield 3 Review where we’ll cover the core of the Battlefield franchise, the multiplayer experience.
We played Battlefield 3 on a PC with these specs:
Intel Core i7-2600k
GIGABYTE GA-Z68P-DS3 Motherboard
8GB (2x4GB) of DDR3 1600 Corsair Vengeance RAM
Windows 7 Home Premium
ATI XFX 6850 2GB Factory Overclocked Video Card
Wolfking Warrior Controller
Logitech G400 Mouse
M-Audio AV40 Speakers
ViewSonic 28″ LCD Monitor
