Battlefield 3 Review

The Battlefield series was originally multiplayer* and it would have been better if it stayed that way. However, the success of Call Of Duty was itching EA bosses, and they decided to release the Battlefield series on PC, adding a single-player campaign and co-op to it.

The first swallow was Battlefield: Bad Company 2, which was highly praised by both players and critics. At the same time, BC2 was excellently optimized for online battles — the multiplayer was one of the most developed in the history of online games. Graphically, BC2 was powered by Frostbite 1.6, which not only rendered stunning landscapes but also added interactivity to the environment — almost every building could be demolished, and it followed the laws of physics.

When starting the development of Battlefield 3, Electronic Arts promised a game that would surpass not only Battlefield: Bad Company 2 in all aspects but even competitors like Crysis 2 and COD: Modern Warfare 3. The game world was to be enhanced by Frostbite, which had reached its second version, and the script promised a well-thought-out single-player campaign. A four-player co-op was also announced, and, of course, an excellent multiplayer mode.

The PR department of Electronic Arts did a great job — a huge amount of information was known even before the game's release: we saw colorful screenshots, dynamic battles in videos, and the destructibility of many structures. It's a pity that all this will be available to multiplayer players. Apparently, 3.5 developers worked on the single-player campaign.

Glimmers of bright ideas on the dull overall background of the game's plot can still be forgiven. Yes, yes, the scriptwriters came up with a pretty good idea, but they didn't manage to implement it in colorful locations. In the single-player mode, there are only 12 maps, all of which are dull and more like corridors. It remains a mystery why it was difficult to create colorful decorations and spice them up with a bit of destructibility. The game itself is completed fairly quickly and does not evoke the desire to play through it again.

Firstly, it's unclear what the developers of Frostbite 2.0 were doing — graphically, not much has changed. Yes, the textures and shadows have become a bit better. But overall, the visuals are no better than those of Bad Company 2. The promised destructibility is not evident... literally anywhere. Game scripts sometimes glitch to the point where it's impossible to complete a mission. It feels like the single-player mode was either not tested or not fully tested. A regrettable oversight by DICE!

Secondly, the unbalanced game balance is astonishing, with almost no weapon recoil when shooting, yet the sniper rifle shakes like a machine gun with every shot. Of course, all this will be fine-tuned on the go, while simultaneously updating piracy protection and checking license codes. The endless spawning of enemies in some places and the weak AI spoil the impression. The enemies themselves are surprising — they can jump 2-3 meters towards the protagonist, stab him, and immediately return (or rather teleport) back to their position. Grenades are almost useless, as they take too long to explode — you could easily have a smoke break.

Chaos reigns in the control settings: there are both duplicate commands (I personally counted about 5) and the ability to assign one button to all actions. The simple "hold" function in the game causes so much trouble that it's hard to imagine. Why complicate the controls so much when there was a perfect option in Bad Company 2?

For example, to pick up another weapon, you need to hold the key and go have a coffee, waiting two to three seconds plus the animation time — it takes a very long time. Cutscenes (scenes where the main character fights face-to-face with an enemy, using different moves, i.e., pressing different keys) are poorly implemented. Not only are they drawn out, but you also need to keep five different keys under control! Completing them on the first try is an impossible task...

The imbalance is also evident in the number of enemies: if at the beginning of the game we faced groups of 5-7 people, by the end there will be several hundred. If you're too lazy to mow down platoons of Russian paratroopers charging headlong, you can lie down somewhere and wait for our allies to take out all the enemies.

***

After everything mentioned above, one could easily call it the failure of the year, but it just becomes clear that Battlefield 3 was developed for multiplayer online battles, and the single-player was added just for show. Considering that pre-orders for the game exceeded 2,000,000 copies, EA should learn from other publishers how to release games.

*This article focuses on the single-player campaign of Battlefield 3, as the multiplayer mode requires separate consideration.