Battlefield 3 has a single-player campaign... unfortunately

[nsane.forums]

The Battlefield series isn't just another war game franchise that's trying to compete with the first-person shooter Call of Duty; it's a series that offers an experience that's utterly distinct from Activision's testosterone-drenched celebration of war. The multiplayer in Battlefield places an emphasis on teamwork, communication, and vehicles, and this combination has appealed to those who don't care for the alpha-male play of Call of Duty.

The single-player campaign in a Battlefield title would ideally focus on what the game does differently from its main competitor, but DICE seemed content to simply steal everything it could from the Call of Duty series, placing it all in an engine that will take advantage of every bit of power your PC can throw at it. It may be pretty to look at, but it's an utterly hollow experience.

Hit the space bar to kill that dude

DICE seemed to forget everything that made the Battlefield games successful as it crafted the single-player campaign. The missions are linear, and the action is often broken up with lame quick-time events in order to show you something cinematic. Serious men say serious things in serious voices during the cutscenes, and there is none of the goofy humor and personality from the Bad Company 2 campaign. This is a deadly serious look at war—if war is a roller coaster that gave you no control over anything.

The choices you can make boil down to in what order should you kill the guys in front of you. Even playing the game on the Normal difficulty setting I died way too often, usually due to breaking the expected order of the scripted events. You can't pop your head up out of cover until the game says you should, or it's instant death. Don't try to find a bad guy until you're handed a weapon and told exactly where to fire it. The strings that keep all these scripted events running smoothly are visible the entire time, so nothing ever feels natural or organic.

The game expects you do to things a certain way, and will often kill you for trying to deviate from that path. There is no way to quick-save, with the result that some sections feel like lengthy experiments in trial-and error-gameplay. There were sections where I was killed during one attempt and made it through without a scratch on the second—and I'm not sure what I did differently to survive.

By the time the game introduces jets, you're ready for something interesting, but the game doesn't let you fly. You just aim and fire. If you want to actually become a pilot, you need to play the multiplayer portion of the game. It would have been interesting if DICE used the single-player portion of the game to introduce you to the concepts and vehicles of the multiplayer game, but that idea must have been thrown out in favor of stripping control from the player in order to ape Call of Duty and create something that tries to remind you over and over how important it is.

Even the large-scale destruction is scripted; the game gives you the weapon, and then tells you exactly where to aim it.

All these shortcomings add up to create an experience that may be amazing visually, but offers very little in terms of fun. Everything is heavily scripted, and you need to follow that script if you'd like to make it to the next section. The multiplayer sections of the game reward quick thinking and improvisation, but the single-player campaign doesn't want you thinking for yourself; your job is to show up, hit the buttons when the game tells you, and marvel at the scenery.

We'll be playing the multiplayer over the next few days to prepare for a larger review that deals with that aspect of the game, but no one should be buying BF3 in order to play the single-player game. It's okay that it's there, and there are a few exciting moments, but I walked away from the game three hours into the six-hour or so campaign because I was getting tired of being told what to do. I'm not sure why DICE got rid of everything that made their game so special in order to try to one-up Call of Duty, but the result is a joyless (but pretty) game of "me too" that's best avoided.

<div class="news-item-figure ImageRight"><table class="specifications"> <tbody><tr class="odd"> <td colspan="2"><a href="http://www.velocitymicro.com/">Our Velocity Micro gaming rig</a></td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <th>OS</th> <td>Microsoft® Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-bit</td> </tr> <tr class="odd"> <th>CPU</th> <td>Intel® Core i7 2600k processor, Hyperclocked</td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <th>RAM</th> <td>Patriot 8GB 1600Mhz PXD38G1600LLK Memory</td> </tr> <tr class="odd"> <th>Video</th> <td>EVGA GTX 580 1536 MB 015-P3-1580-AR</td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <th>Motherboard</th> <td>Asus P8Z68-V Pro Motherboard</td> </tr> <tr class="odd"> <th>Storage</th> <td>Patriot 2 x 120GB Wildfire SATAIII SSD PW120GS25SSDR in RAID 0</td> </tr> <tr class="even"> <th>Optical drive</th> <td>LG UH12LS28 BDROM/DVDRW</td> </tr> </tbody></table></div>

The graphics are, to put it bluntly, amazing. I was able to run the game with the Ultra settings on our review rig at between 50 and 60 frames per second, and there's nothing on the market that can touch the Frostbite 2 engine right now in terms of sheer visual spectacle. If you're a graphics nut—and there's no shame in that—it may be worth playing through the campaign just to see how good modern video games can look. Our suggestion in that case would be to keep the difficulty on "easy" so you can avoid the firefights as much as possible... which isn't advice we're used to giving when it comes to war games.

Still, this review should only deter those who won't play the game online; Battlefield 3 having a poor single-player campaign is like going to the world's best steak house and complaining that the glass of water the waiter just poured you was warm. The single-player doesn't take away from the amazing multiplayer game—and we'll have more on that in the coming days as we play. Until then, don't buy this game for the single-player, or play it if your Internet connection is down. We thought it was worthwhile to get the warning out.

Battlefield 3 is available now on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC. We played on the PC.

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[nitrus]

Im so looking forward to this!

[centserick2]

me too..still in the process of getting it...can't wait to play it..