Battlefield 3 is utter garbage. As much as I was looking to forward to this is as much as it sucks. And that is a lot. I know that people are going to argue with me about how it's the greatest game this year or this century or whatever and that I just suck at games. That's your right and I fought for you to keep so by all means utilize it. All I ask is that you have the courtesy to try and understand my points before you do so.
First, the campaign. It took me a little over 7 hours to beat it on the hardest difficulty and barely held my interest that long. It was a little interesting at first and slightly interesting at the end, but I barely cared about any thing between those points. The tank mission was very generic and had little to do with the actual story. I don't want to give anything for those haven't been there and might stand a chance of enjoying it, but those who have should know what I'm talking about. Yet the tank mission was a fun as I would imagine driving a tank through an urban area would be when compared to the jet mission for which I can find no relation to the actual story and is basically a very crappy rail shooter involving popping flares, shooting your guns because they avoid every missile, and then dropping bombs. I'm certain this was only here because people wanted planes back so much.
Next, Coop. I'll admit I have only played two of the coop missions so far. The first is essentially just a coop version of one part of one of the earlier missions. Shoot bad guys here. Move here, shoot bad guys, repeat. No objective really. Very bland. The other is a helicopter mission which had some potential except that the helo is hard to control and my buddy sucked at piloting it. Although I had better luck at it we, played it a dozen times and I was only pilot once because there appears to be no way to choose pilot/gunner, including who was hosting. If somebody knows a way to fix this please let me know. Because we haven't been able to beat the second mission I can not say anything about the following missions.
Finally, Multiplayer. Although easily the best part of the game based on my thoughts of the other aspects, that isn't a very impressive feat. Although I have always preferred CoD, I also genuinely enjoyed most of the previous Battlefields. I am not a CoD fanboy trying to belittle Battlefield. I am simply a gamer with an opinion. The biggest problem with multiplayer is one that most of us are familiar with from previous titles, simply joining a game. I only manage to actually connect to about one in four games and then get connected after three or four. A very irritating and inexcusable problem. So game types worked, while others I couldn't get into regardless of how many times I tried. This is on XBOX. I can't speak for PC or PS3 connectivity. The multiplayer experience when played is good, with my biggest complaint here being the same thing for most games I play online, people. While most people are fun to play with I get so sick of getting killed by some douche sitting around launching RPG/SMAW/203 rounds, etc. from a corner or window completely ignorant of his team mates or the objectives.The graphics are sub par, the maps I have played have very little of the destructible environments that DICE has been harping on, and the over all gameplay is basically the same as their previous incarnations. On top of that the biggest problem with Battlefield 3 is the same I have with almost every shooter every put on the market gun physics. Although they do a good job by actually incorporating bullet drop and travel time, that is where it ends. The fact that a 9x19 parabellum round has virtually the same flight trajectory as a .50 BMG is ludicrous. The fact that you fire three 7.62 rounds into a persons head in a second at 200 yards is ludicrous. Oh. And the knifing mechanic blows.
I'm sick of companies making games and just throwing a campaign together as an apparent afterthought. I'm also sick of these "coop" modes that are just mini missions that suck. I applaud games like MAG that tell people exactly what they are getting, a multiplayer only game.
I hope you enjoyed my rant on why Battlefield 3 deserves at best a 3 out of 10. If you didn't, hopefully it helped you in some with your decision to purchase or not purchase. If neither of these is true, oh well. You'll never get the time you spent reading it back. Sucks to be you. Now I'm going back to Gamestop to see if I can get my money back. So long Battelfield 3. It's been... boring.
