Is it realistic? Maybe, but not really fun. The Battlefield series has made a name for itself as “the most realistic shooters on the market”. Who wants real? Apparently a lot of people do, because even with the return of the Call of Duty Modern Warfare series with its third installment, Battlefield 3 has generated a lot of buzz.The buzz included a lot of things like a particularly nasty attack at Modern Warfare 3. “Above and beyond the call.” This is like a freshman going up to the senior homecoming king and punching him in the face. Can Battlefield back this up though?
Battlefield 3 is not a sequel to Battlefield 2. Battlefield 2 was the lighthearted, yet realistic shooter by EA with a cast of misfits called Bad Company. Battlefield 3 has absolutely nothing to do with Bad Company or Battlefield 2. Battlefield 3 has it’s own unique story independent of Battlefield 2. This story was different. Now if you want to be one of the few people to actually play the campaign and to find out about it on your own stop, and go play because I’m spoiling the plot to prove a point. If you don’t want to know watch this Battlefield 3 Trailer.
I say different in order to say stupid nicely. It is confusing, not very believable, and really short. You start off jumping on a subway train hijacked by terrorist. You fight your way to the front of the train where you are gun whipped and have a large pistol pushed in your face by a man in a suit named Soloman. You then flash back 8 hours to an interrogation room where you are sitting with 2 CIA agents. Then you talk about your assignments over seas in Afghanistan and Iran. While there, your squad finds a nuke case with only 1 of the 3 slots in use. Then the time line moves forward but not to where you are in the interrogation.
You switch characters to a Russian secret agent who is hunting one of the nukes in Paris. You fail and the nuke goes off on a train. Then you go back to your American character who is in Northern Iran looking for the arms dealer who sold the nukes to Soloman. Then the time line shifts again backwards from both Paris and your American character to the Russian secret agent who is about to skydive into the dealers Villa. You go through his army of mercenaries and get to him and beat the snot out of him until he tells you about Soloman. Then you jump back to you American character who enters the Villa to fins the dealers beaten body and the Russian secret agent. This is where it gets weird. The Russian tells you that there will be an attack on America and that your American character can stop it but only if you shoot your Sargent who is walking down stairs behind the Russian so he can get away and try to stop the attack in Paris. Which we know is a failure.
Anyway, you shoot your Sargent and are court marshaled in New York. Now you are in the Interrogation room where you are insisting that Soloman is going to set the nuke off in New York. The CIA guys say buddy you are wrong Soloman is our asset and they leave. Then you and your buddy bust out of the room and you run to a bridge conveniently located a around the corner and this just so happens to be the track with the train that has the nuke on it. Really realistic?
You re-fight your way through the train to where you u have the large pistol in your face. This time you knock the gun away and grab a terrorist with the detonator for the explosives on the train that haven’t been hooked up to the nuke. So to stop the train you set off the explosives which are all around you but don’t kill you or Soloman. Soloman then runs away and you chase him through the sewers and up a man whole where conveniently your buddy is waiting with a car. You both crash in Time Square. You get in a fist fight and beat Soloman to death with a brick as not a single New Yorker helps. Most realistic part of the entire game. Then it finishes with the Russian in a apartment with a gun talking about the sacrifice of a soldier and how you should make your life count. The screen goes black and you hear a door open and then a single gunshot.
Now other than the lame jet mission where you point out targets and the dumb story line, the game play and the engine is very good. It isn’t the best engine out there but it does little things that make the experience feel better. That’s great, so when your head is not spinning from the crazy plot you can enjoy the fact that when you hurtle things you see your feet kick over the object you are hurtling.
Now my main beef with this game is the campaign. Battlefield is weird though because the game is based around the multiplayer. The campaign is the bonus. It is a crappy bonus but it is kind of supposed to be. I don’t like that though because it feels like EA didn’t try to make a game to compete with Modern Warfare. They made a multiplayer to beat The entire Modern Warfare game. They tried but did not succeed. It is a great game with a great engine. It is just NOT a complete game like Modern Warfare 3.
