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So it was with trepidation that I purchased COD:MW2 in 2009. I’ll admit it – the hype machine got me good. By launch I slipped my Morrisons-employee friend 25 notes like some shady crack dealer and hours later I had ‘the goods’ in my sweaty, shaky hands. Except it was a plastic case, rather than freebase cocaine.
It was a revelation! Bombastic scenes, storming city streets, sniping my way through snow-covered bases – I felt I had been missing out my whole gaming life! Don’t get me wrong, it was over the top and silly, but for a guy more accustomed to the ‘BABA BA BABA BAA!’ of Mario’s galaxies it was savage, brutal madness. Soon after came my first foray into multiplayer, full of levelling and targets and ‘did you see that?!’ moments. I was hooked.
With all this in mind, and my immense susceptibility to gaming’s PR antics, I purchased Battlefield 3. Good god, the launch trailer had me reeling. THERE IS A JET GUYS. THEN THERE IS A NIGHT SCENE CHARGING SOME BUILDING. OH GOD THERE ARE TANKS.
After several discs’ worth of installs I was finally in. A subway train, armed with a pistol, and we’re going! Bam! Bam bam bam! Dead guy! Rifle! Bam bam bam bam!
But as I played on, something was nagging me. I’m dying… a lot. And I don’t really care about what’s going on. Here are some bad guys. Here is a corridor. Here is a QTE. Here are more bad guys. Pop out of cover – ratatatatatat! – back into cover. Was aiming at a wall. Still loads of bad guys. Eugh.
Where am I going with this? Let’s take it one remark at a time. The plot is pretty balls, but I can accept that. It’s a Jerry Bruckheimer Michael Bay explosion-ma gawd-a-thon, and if I’m being really honest that’s part of the attraction. But it carries no weight, no gravitas, and most critically it doesn’t feel real. Not real as in ‘going on outside my window’, but so unreal I can’t even suspend disbelief. For all the legit military phrasing and paraphernalia I’m just not at all involved.
What about the bad guys? Well - they have some aim. Following my movements around cover, lighting me up from hundreds of metres away with what can only be described as dead eye aim. But then I am atrocious at aiming, so maybe it’s all relative. Maybe unbeknownst to me my avatar is wearing some kind of sparkly glittered fluorescent flak jacket, with a sandwich board spelling out ‘Kill Me’ in flashing fairy lights. Maybe.
The corridors though… they’re much harder to sweep under the carpet. The majority of levels are a relentless push forward with little scope for exploration, strategy or tactics. Worse still, in what seems to be a recurring theme in recent shooters, you follow rather than lead. Even if I scoot off to a door without listening to whatever inconsequential narrative prattle DICE wants me to hear, I’m left waiting until the rest of my team arrive - who, of course, then push me out of the way once they finally catch up because I’m in their ‘spot’. This happens both between firefights and during, leading to yells of frustration as I riddle my squad with bullets, whilst simultaneously being told ‘FRIENDLY FIRE WILL NOT BE TOLERATED’. Then why did you run in front of me, push me out of cover, then stand up DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF MY GUN?. If the terrorists don’t kill you, a volley of lead into your compatriot’s back will.
I’d call it an interactive movie, but then even some of the interactive bits aren’t all that interactive. Take an early scene walking from inside an aircraft carrier to your jet. You don’t control the character’s movement at all, and then you don’t get to control the jet. Boo! Hiss! Absurdly, even QTEs are affected by this – a 30 second brawl might have 2 button prompts. Heavy Rain, this is not. For those that watched HBO’s fantastic Generation Kill it will be hard to miss the obvious influence it has had, with some characters even repeating a line or two near enough verbatim from the show.
Don’t get me wrong – this is a jolly through some of the most beautiful environments ever pressed to plastic. Pushing what’s possible on the current generation, Battlefield 3 is a graphical masterpiece, where levels are a breath-taking rush of action, tattered, dynamic destruction and gritty realism. The much-vaunted Frostbite 2 engine fills the screen with the horror of war like none before. A particular highlight early on in the game features a raging sea of battleships, with jets taking off and missiles screaming overhead. It’s just a shame that for all its beauty you seldom get a chance to stop and get involved before you’re herded to the next area.
So the single player – a pretty but shallow piece of military movie fodder. What of the multiplayer? Having played the open beta I was immediately sceptical. What is this health bar? Why isn’t it recharging? Where are my killstreaks? It’s the Forza to Modern Warfare’s Mario Kart. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Give up preconceptions of how shooters (in my case, arcade shooters) work and BF3’s multiplayer is a slice of genius.
Always dying? Be better. Pick a gun and sight that suits your playstyle, and then use it all the time. Battlefield rewards persistence, and as you progress through the intricate ranking system you’ll end up racking more kills than you thought you could. With 4 classes available to deploy as, each with specialist gadgetry and configurable peripherals, BF3’s multiplayer simultaneously provides variety and strategy. Your team losing? Get in there as a medic. Stuck fighting in a choke point? Get a sniper in.
Battlefield 3 also rewards care. If, like me, you’re a fan of simply sprinting towards someone and stabbing them during deathmatches then it’s time to adapt. It seldom works, and steady bursts of precision fire are ultimately the far superior method. Guns feel weighty and solid, even if the kills don’t, and seldom is a death undeserved. The addition of stats after each death (so you can see how close you were to killing that guy) makes respawn less painful, and the health system (that is, 100 points of health which regenerate slowly whilst moving a short time after taking damage) makes streaks much more intense and rewarding.
It’s fast. It’s violent. It’s unrelenting. For hardcore shooter fans, BF3 multiplayer is impeccable. For mere mortals such as me, it’s a baptism of fire. Get past the initial shock, though, and you’ll find a balanced multiplayer experience which inflicts the deepest lows of disappointment but also instils a feeling of total victory.
Regardless of SP it's a magic MP experience. And both modes are totally stunning to look at (bar the 'horrible war stuff', which is, appropriately, horrible).
That was a great read. Really enjoying the game myself, even 'that' single player mode.
And for an added 'bonus' you have a Co-Op mode that is in fact a 'third' game within a game. Excellent stuff :¬)
So it was with trepidation that I purchased COD:MW2 in 2009. I’ll admit it – the hype machine got me good. By launch I slipped my Morrisons-employee friend 25 notes like some shady crack dealer and hours later I had ‘the goods’ in my sweaty, shaky hands. Except it was a plastic case, rather than freebase cocaine.
It was a revelation! Bombastic scenes, storming city streets, sniping my way through snow-covered bases – I felt I had been missing out my whole gaming life! Don’t get me wrong, it was over the top and silly, but for a guy more accustomed to the ‘BABA BA BABA BAA!’ of Mario’s galaxies it was savage, brutal madness. Soon after came my first foray into multiplayer, full of levelling and targets and ‘did you see that?!’ moments. I was hooked.
With all this in mind, and my immense susceptibility to gaming’s PR antics, I purchased Battlefield 3. Good god, the launch trailer had me reeling. THERE IS A JET GUYS. THEN THERE IS A NIGHT SCENE CHARGING SOME BUILDING. OH GOD THERE ARE TANKS.
After several discs’ worth of installs I was finally in. A subway train, armed with a pistol, and we’re going! Bam! Bam bam bam! Dead guy! Rifle! Bam bam bam bam!
But as I played on, something was nagging me. I’m dying… a lot. And I don’t really care about what’s going on. Here are some bad guys. Here is a corridor. Here is a QTE. Here are more bad guys. Pop out of cover – ratatatatatat! – back into cover. Was aiming at a wall. Still loads of bad guys. Eugh.
Where am I going with this? Let’s take it one remark at a time. The plot is pretty balls, but I can accept that. It’s a Jerry Bruckheimer Michael Bay explosion-ma gawd-a-thon, and if I’m being really honest that’s part of the attraction. But it carries no weight, no gravitas, and most critically it doesn’t feel real. Not real as in ‘going on outside my window’, but so unreal I can’t even suspend disbelief. For all the legit military phrasing and paraphernalia I’m just not at all involved.
What about the bad guys? Well - they have some aim. Following my movements around cover, lighting me up from hundreds of metres away with what can only be described as dead eye aim. But then I am atrocious at aiming, so maybe it’s all relative. Maybe unbeknownst to me my avatar is wearing some kind of sparkly glittered fluorescent flak jacket, with a sandwich board spelling out ‘Kill Me’ in flashing fairy lights. Maybe.
The corridors though… they’re much harder to sweep under the carpet. The majority of levels are a relentless push forward with little scope for exploration, strategy or tactics. Worse still, in what seems to be a recurring theme in recent shooters, you follow rather than lead. Even if I scoot off to a door without listening to whatever inconsequential narrative prattle DICE wants me to hear, I’m left waiting until the rest of my team arrive - who, of course, then push me out of the way once they finally catch up because I’m in their ‘spot’. This happens both between firefights and during, leading to yells of frustration as I riddle my squad with bullets, whilst simultaneously being told ‘FRIENDLY FIRE WILL NOT BE TOLERATED’. Then why did you run in front of me, push me out of cover, then stand up DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF MY GUN?. If the terrorists don’t kill you, a volley of lead into your compatriot’s back will.
I’d call it an interactive movie, but then even some of the interactive bits aren’t all that interactive. Take an early scene walking from inside an aircraft carrier to your jet. You don’t control the character’s movement at all, and then you don’t get to control the jet. Boo! Hiss! Absurdly, even QTEs are affected by this – a 30 second brawl might have 2 button prompts. Heavy Rain, this is not. For those that watched HBO’s fantastic Generation Kill it will be hard to miss the obvious influence it has had, with some characters even repeating a line or two near enough verbatim from the show.
Don’t get me wrong – this is a jolly through some of the most beautiful environments ever pressed to plastic. Pushing what’s possible on the current generation, Battlefield 3 is a graphical masterpiece, where levels are a breath-taking rush of action, tattered, dynamic destruction and gritty realism. The much-vaunted Frostbite 2 engine fills the screen with the horror of war like none before. A particular highlight early on in the game features a raging sea of battleships, with jets taking off and missiles screaming overhead. It’s just a shame that for all its beauty you seldom get a chance to stop and get involved before you’re herded to the next area.
So the single player – a pretty but shallow piece of military movie fodder. What of the multiplayer? Having played the open beta I was immediately sceptical. What is this health bar? Why isn’t it recharging? Where are my killstreaks? It’s the Forza to Modern Warfare’s Mario Kart. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Give up preconceptions of how shooters (in my case, arcade shooters) work and BF3’s multiplayer is a slice of genius.
Always dying? Be better. Pick a gun and sight that suits your playstyle, and then use it all the time. Battlefield rewards persistence, and as you progress through the intricate ranking system you’ll end up racking more kills than you thought you could. With 4 classes available to deploy as, each with specialist gadgetry and configurable peripherals, BF3’s multiplayer simultaneously provides variety and strategy. Your team losing? Get in there as a medic. Stuck fighting in a choke point? Get a sniper in.
Battlefield 3 also rewards care. If, like me, you’re a fan of simply sprinting towards someone and stabbing them during deathmatches then it’s time to adapt. It seldom works, and steady bursts of precision fire are ultimately the far superior method. Guns feel weighty and solid, even if the kills don’t, and seldom is a death undeserved. The addition of stats after each death (so you can see how close you were to killing that guy) makes respawn less painful, and the health system (that is, 100 points of health which regenerate slowly whilst moving a short time after taking damage) makes streaks much more intense and rewarding.
It’s fast. It’s violent. It’s unrelenting. For hardcore shooter fans, BF3 multiplayer is impeccable. For mere mortals such as me, it’s a baptism of fire. Get past the initial shock, though, and you’ll find a balanced multiplayer experience which inflicts the deepest lows of disappointment but also instils a feeling of total victory.