The newest addition to EA’s FPS war game series, Battlefield 3, has been on shelves for a week now.  Already the sales are racking up at 10 million units; making the game EA’s fastest selling game to date. I’ve not been a religious follower of the series, but I do own Battlefield 1943 and Battlefield Bad Company 2. As soon as I saw the news of the record sales I was excited to find out exactly what sets out Battlefield 3 from the crowd.

The campaign is set in the not too distant future of 2014, six soldiers are on a rescue mission to find lost US troops who were on mission to investigate a suspicious location of chemical weaponry. The story continues as the characters, led by your character Staff Sergeant Blackburn, venture into Tehran where they discover the hint of an evil plot – organised by the ominously named PLR. The PLR are, in a nutshell, very evil and are also suspected of having an involvement in the disappearing act of the aforementioned US troops. You discover that they have acquired some nuclear weapons from the Russians, and the action ensues. How original.

Overall the storyline isn’t remotely complex or interesting: a simple introduction and then chain of events usually found in any generic war orientated game.  But how much more can we expect from the campaign of a game called Battlefield. If the writers put in more twists, or less predictable ones, yes it would be a better story but that’s not what we expect from this game. Simplicity is key.

Generally the campaign isn’t a great representation of the quality of the game. There are some nice set pieces and the action can get ramped up at times,  but the entire thing feels like an introduction to the controls for the multiplayer. The setting is all quite atmospheric, for what it is, and the characters aren’t dislikeable. If you still want to pursue the single-player I just want to leave you with one thought: it feels so redundant that the last few paragraphs may as well have been the British national anthem, in Welsh, backwards.

Before we get to the multiplayer there are just a couple of technical details I’d like to mention. It is the first game to be using the newly updated Frostbite 2 engine, created by DICE. This creates even more realistic building destruction that helps to add to the war-torn atmosphere. And who doesn’t love more realistic building destruction? I didn’t even notice the simplicity of the scenery destruction in previous Battlefield games before I witnessed the new Frostbite engine in action.

Also new to Battlefield 3 is ANT – a character animation engine that improves animations in the movements of soldiers. Both of these features help to create a far more immersive game. For example knifing an enemy isn’t a simple backstab, instead you can lift your opponent and slit his throat. This is all depending on the context of how you and your opponent are situated.

There are some fun new additions to the game like co-op play, you can even now, “drag fallen comrades into safety,” which is a great new feature to the game as well. If you’ve been reading this review so far you know what I think of fighting against enemy AI though, so I’ll move on.

And now we have moved past the necessary evils, let’s talk about what we’re all here for, and what we all bought the game to experience: online multiplayer. So far, with 9 maps to choose from we can see how the designers are moving onto something very different with Battlefield 3. Some of them are still mainly grey, war-torn backdrops that are lacking any real interest. However, I did enjoy the ‘Operation Metro’ map as the different places you can go within the map add more variety and realism so you don’t feel like copy and paste method has been relied upon heavily by the designers. By any means, I’ve always preferred the maps on Battlefield to those on Call of Duty.

Other additions have changed the multiplayer modes new attachments for guns (e.g sights, grenade launchers) and bipods which can be placed on any surface are all welcome additions. Add to that the ability to go prone, a new points system that encourages team play and the new jet vehicle and Battlefield’s multiplayer is looking better than ever.

I’m sure I was not the only one who was pleased to see the return of the Team Deathmatch on the list of game modes. This game mode hadn’t been seen since 1943 and I had always wondered why. It isn’t because the objective games aren’t good to play because they are; they certainly give the game more depth. Nevertheless, EA were trying to push an FPS game forward that competed with Call of Duty; a game played simply for the satisfaction of gaining high kill-streaks and kill/death ratios. Call of Duty’s objective-based game modes fall short of the quality of Battlefield’s, but without a mindless killing game mode; it can’t be seen as top-notch competition.

I know that I’m a sucker for details but these improvements do make a game more enjoyable and also more realistic. However, I did focus on the bigger picture, the overall fluency of gameplay is better with the game being fun to play. Unlike other Battlefield games, Battlefield 3 allows more close-encounter fighting than previous games which  created a war zone across long distances. This makes matches more exciting and less time-consuming.

I said at the beginning of this review that I wanted to find out what set out Battlefield 3 from the crowd and while a lot of it sticks to generic modern warfare (no pun intended) it is the best mainstream strategic FPS war game. If you don’t have an interest in any of this, don’t bother buying Battlefield 3, as the game isn’t a massive change from its predecessors.

Thus we are left with Call of Duty, a franchise which is almost bound to knock Battlefield 3 off the UK #1 at the release of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. This is because Battlefield attracts gamers who put more thinking time into their killing rather than COD’s quick-fire, arcade reactions. This doesn’t make Call of Duty a bad game, and if you think that it’s the best FPS out there then Battlefield 3 probably won’t disprove that. The games are in a different vein from one another, but personally I would recommend this game to fans of the FPS genre.

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