Battlefield 3 -- All-In-One.

Here I am again with another late entry. This time it's for Battlefield 3, produced by Digital Illusions CE and published by Electronic Arts. I played the Xbox 360 version. Battlefield 3 is a team based multiplayer first person shooter that aims to deliver the chaos of war. The Battlefield series has always excelled at delivering said chaos. Problem is, the battlefield itself has changed in this post Call of Duty world, and DICE and EA have positioned themselves and the game to take on the behemoth. The resulting single player campaign and co-op missions are less than special. They share the same faults as their Call of Duty counterparts. They're filled with that Tom Clancy peppery military banter and minutia and that oh my god go go go sense of action. And just like Call of Duty it's awful and is the very definition of hollow. It's a good thing you don't play these games for the single player aspects. Battlefield 3 delivers on the multiplayer side offering up numerous modes of play. Conquest remains the same as it was in Battlefield 1942 and is one of the best online modes ever created and it's still the heart and soul of Battlefield. They're also offering up Rush, Squad Rush, Team Deathmatch, and Squad Deathmatch for those looking for a change of pace. Battlefield 3 runs on the Frostbite 2 engine and offers up a mostly impressive destructible environment. You'll get stuck on a bit of rubble from what used to be a building too often for my tastes and it always seems to happen when you're being fired upon. The buildings come apart in amazing detail, but the physics of the character movement can't seem to cope as well as they need to. Battlefield 3 is a great looking game. It's graphically impressive. The music is minimally used to great effect and the sounds of battle are crisp and clean and boom through the speakers. The series tradition of planes and helicopters controlling like alien contraptions continues. Outside of the air vehicles the game controls beautifully. The unlock system is greatly successful in keeping you playing as you're never far away from the next new gun or gadget. The flaws in Battlefield are inherent to the genre whenever playing with the public. Especially in playing Conquest. Having to depend on teamwork from the public means you're going to be behind the eight ball a lot of the time. The great thing about Battlefield though is sometimes all it takes is one squad that knows what they're doing to turn the tide. In the eighty some hours I spent getting the thousand achievement points in Battlefield 3 I would say fifty of those were spent having fun, and thirty of those were spent being frustrated. Battlefield comes with a clear cost, and for me the good still outweighs the bad. I'm giving Battlefield 3 an 8.