Battlefield 3 gave all of us hope that it would be the first real competition that the Call of Duty franchise has had since its inception. Sure, there have been a few other shooters that have came along: Medal of Honor, Battlefield Bad Company 1 and 2, and some of the later Halo games come to mind, but none of them have been able to challenge the juggernaut for an extended period of time. Each of the aforementioned games had their moments, and its niche audiences, but none of them really completed in the multiplayer arena which now completely dominates the first person shooter market. Would this storied franchise be able to compete with Call of Duty or would it be another game to take a shot at the champ and get knocked out in the first round?
Let’s start with the engine. The only word I can use to describe it is wow. Call of Duty has looked the same, since, well, forever. Go back and put in Call of Duty 2, the game has always had the same style of graphics and this is especially noticeable with the Modern Warfare series. The sound and graphics in this game are absolutely amazing. The single player campaign, which I’ll get into more soon, often feels like an excuse to show off what this engine can do. There are some cool levels, namely the fighter jet mission, that doesn’t add much to the story but it allows EA to show off. The controls are tight and the game play and physics are solid. There were some glitches that I came across during the game, but nothing that detracted too much from the experience.
Ok on to the story, you start off in a subway shooting some bad guys and when you meet the final boss the flashback sequence begins. You find yourself being interrogated by a couple government types and the story starts from there. As I mentioned above there are some holes in the story telling, namely how does the soldier that you play know the stories of other “main” characters when he wasn’t there? For example, the fighter pilot had little or nothing to do with the game but it was a fun mission. Also the missions where you played as the Russians were a fun ride (and my personal favorite), but there wasn’t much explanation for how those stories were told.
The story itself revolves around you finding some WMD’s and trying to locate where they are going and who is going to blow them up. There are some fun missions and cool moments throughout the game. If you can get past the forgettable story there is a lot of fun to be had in almost every level. I think a few more cut scenes showing some news reels or something would have helped tie this all together. Also the ending cut scene ends the game with a whimper even though the final mission is fun.
All that being said the only way that Battlefield was going to knock out the champ was to make an amazing multiplayer experience and from what I played they succeeded. Multiplayer (despite the launch match making problems that plague every single game that comes out these days) is awesome. The hit detection is solid, maps are well designed and fun. Vehicles are both fun and challenging to drive, ask Regen, and overall I think that this has a real opportunity to compete with the Call of Duty.
I personally love the style of the Rush game mode. The map changes and moves as the objectives are taken. This allows for multiple types of environments in on game. For example, on the beta map you started out in an open area which could be a sniper haven and eventually moved into a subway which gave those of us who like shot guns an advantage. I enjoy this style of game play and I wish it could be looked into more. It gives the feeling of an evolving battle instead of the standard play on type of map for about 10 minutes and then move on to something else formula that is prevalent in FPS games.
I haven’t gotten around to the co-op section yet but I don’t expect it to be too much different than the rest of the game.
Overall I give this game 4.25 INUS out of 5. Its solid, the engine is great and I have no real complaints. That being said it’s not particularly memorable. As this goes down in price and we have played MW3 for months I can see us moving on to this game for a time. EA will fix the multiplayer problems and I look forward to playing this more. Call of Duty wasn’t going to go down in one punch, but Battlefield 3 delivered a few body blows and probably softened up the competition. For those of us who are Call of Duty loyalists this is good news, without a challenger the game was going to get stagnant. Call of Duty is in danger of becoming the next Guitar Hero, with a game coming out every year it needs some competition and gamers need variety. I hope that a challenger can stick around and push both franchises to new heights. The way our clan is now, we need Call of Duty, without it there probably isn’t much of an SWS. Bring on the next challenger.
No comments:
Post a Comment