Hello there. It's been a VERY long time since I've posted anything, but I wanted to give you my thoughts on Battlefield 3 for PS3.
First let's talk about the single player. While it may not be the most compelling storyline out there, with your typical Russians vs Americans in the Middle East, the game takes advantage of good-looking cutscenes where the main character (you) is being questioned for some sort of illegal act that he committed in the military. The very first mission starts you off running away from the police and jumping onto a New York subway train, and once you start actually playing, you find yourself shooting Russian dudes and stealing their Ak74u's. The missions themselves are fairly straight forward, and they don't seem quite as linear as something like Medal of Honor was doing. So there weren't any invisible walls that I encountered, but there were a numerous amount of bugs. For example, I would be playing a mission in the Middle East and going prone to not get shot, but as I was about to grab the LMG on the bridge, all the sudden there's an explosion and I immediately die, even though I was never seen. While this was on hard mode, and while hard mode is supposed to be a good challenge, this was beyond challenging: more like nearly impossible. Eventually I was able to get through it, but I couldn't keep playing the campaign when I would be shot in two seconds as soon as I wasn't prone. So I played the game from the start on EASY and turned off the aim assist. The missions were pretty cool, but it felt like there could have been a tiny bit more variety. I wish there could have been a proper stealth mission where you could choose to sneak past some Russian guards or engage in some firefights.
The game itself looks fairly nice on the PS3, and takes full advantage of the lighting effects, but I thought it started to become too much when many of the missions took place outside in the dark to show off the lighting from the street lights. I'm sorry, but the last time I checked street lights aren't supposed to be so bright that they blind you, even in the Middle East. That being said, the graphics look a tiny bit better than Bad Company 2, although it's very hard to compare the two games since they run on two different engines.
With regards to the multiplayer, it's definitely the highlight of the show. The conquest mode is better than ever, and the maps are large enough to include helicopters and fighter jets, but also small enough to keep the 24 players in a nice contained area. It's a bit frustrating that two people can't be in one jet (as in one person flys the jet the other one controls the weapons, just like in the campaign mission). Also, it takes way to long to unlock equipment for the jets, unless you know how to chase an enemy in the skies down very well. The other modes such as rush and squad deathmatch are back, and now there's a team deathmatch mode too. With regards to the Team Deathmatch mode, there are a couple of points for improvement. First, the spawn points need to be farther away from the enemy, and secondly, the broken buildings need to be solid, so that people aren't literally shooting through the rubble and preventing their gun's flash from being seen. The rubber banding/lag has been fixed which is great, but the issue of spawn points needs to be fixed in order for people to enjoy the game to it's fullest. Also, I would like to see a few more game modes to play besides just the ones that are available, just for more variety.
Stay tuned for the Co-Op review for this game.
