Battlefield 3 multiplayer review, because no one cares about single player.  I’m sure there must be someone, somewhere who cares about single player. If you’re that solitary person then skipping this game would be advisable. Battlefield has been and most likely will always be about multiplayer. This review will focus on the multiplayer mechanics.

Battlefield 3 Multiplayer Review – PC

What most PC players worry about is Origin and the web browser game launcher. For the most part it works, there’s issues and hang ups here and there but most can be fixed by closing the browser and reopening. It’s pretty clear the game was rushed it still feels betaish. the main culprit for this feeling is how often the game crashes. Many times the game will crash when first trying to load, then work on the second launch. Battle log was clearly wasn’t ready for release in a $60 game.

Battle log does have some interesting features, one of them being the party system. You can create a party of up to 8 people before joining a server. This makes getting all your friends into one server easier. You would think it could keep the party on one team but that isn’t always the case. The bigger parties are almost always broken up, which is understandable with an 8 man party. It would be nice if the game could shuffle teams to keep parties together. So like all things battle log related it kinda works.

Battlefield 3 Multiplayer Review – Leveling

Once I got in-game the first thing I realized was how little there was to work with equipment wise. Starting off as a level 0 soldier you have nothing but a basic rifle and pistol to start off with. I mean sure, leveling up and unlocking shit is cool to a point. I think BF3 takes it way too far. Vehicles are bare bones until you start unlocking their features. Your tank starts off with only its main cannon. You have to unlock its coaxial gun and equipment slot. Playing an APC is a huge pain in the ass untill you unlock the TOW(anti-tank rocket), good luck playing against some one who has it already.

Air vehicles are no different. Jets and choppers start off with one basic weapon and every thing else has to be unlocked. Chopper gunners start off with only a cannon and must unlock guided rockets. You don’t even get flares for free they must also be unlocked. I thought BF2 and BF2142 did the unlock system best. Give people the basic shit they need to compete and unlock customization’s and niche weapons. Having to unlock every little gadget on a vehicle is annoying.

I dig infantry in BF3, and I must say I do enjoy it. Just felt like that should be stated before I continue my leveling rant. Leveling infantry is much easier than vehicles. Again you start out with almost nothing and have to earn every thread on your uniform. The medic doesn’t even start out with his defibrillator. Luckily  most of the starting guns are good. Many professional players favor the M16A3 which is the standard assault rifle.

My biggest complaint about leveling is speed. Climbing through ranks takes tons of playing. Every new rank is painstakingly slow and gets slower each time. I tend to have higher scores and more time to play then the average player and it took me about a week to get every thing for my favorite kits. I can’t imagine what it would be like for a beginner. Each kit levels individually. Which is a pain in the ass for sniper since you don’t start off with the good bolt action rifles. So you have to inadvertently level shitty guns then start over and relevel the good ones. BF3 is a good game but the leveling is a grind.

Battlefield 3 Multiplayer Review – Guns

The guns in BF3 are powerful and accurate. They don’t feel as powerful as they were hyped up to be, most kill in about 4 bullets which is fairly reasonable. Head shots are more important in BF3 then they were in past Battlefield games. Spraying and bursting is incredibly accurate so aiming for the head actually matters.

Medics have it best when it comes to guns. They have 2 very solid starting guns the M16A3, and AK-74M. Snipers have it worst with two shitty semi auto rifles. Engineers have seen the biggest upgrade. They have anti-tank rockets, mines, and improved SMGs/carbines. Engineer carbines can hang with assault rifles at close range. Going engineer in BF3 doesn’t really feel like a chore, that wasn’t always the case in BF games.

The guns are definitely more effective then past games. If you aren’t going crazy full auto on everything that moves its easy to get 2-3 kills a clip. Iron sights are a must for 99% of guns in this game. You can hip-fire the shotguns and a few SMGs but thats it. It would be nice to see a game come out that doesn’t rely on iron sights for every confrontation.

Each kit has specific guns that can only be unlocked by playing with that kit. Furthermore each individual gun levels up its own attachments. Some of the attachments like heavy barrel and grip can make or break a gun. Which is a pain in the ass because you can start out with a gun and have it be shit but want to unlock the grip and barrel to see if it gets any better. That can take a long ass time and bear no fruit.

Battlefield 3 Multiplayer Review – Maps

BF3 comes with 9 maps. For conquest each map has 2 sizes, 32 man, and 64 man. In TDM and rush you play small sections of those maps. Some of the maps are fun, others not so much. Most people enjoy the smaller urban maps and avoid the large vehicle maps. Infantry is fun but I don’t think that’s the reason people shy away from those maps. Most of the vehicle maps just aren’t that good.

Caspian Border is the best vehicle based map because of the distance between flags. There’s plenty of action going on in the middle and all the flags are approachable on foot. Then you have maps like Operation Firestorm that are marathon simulators. Each flag is 200-300 meters apart and there are no vehicles anywhere except in the main base. So what happens is you take a jeep from your main to a flag and fight it out. Then your jeep explodes because they last seconds without being occupied before returning to the main. So now you’re stuck in the middle of the map with a 250 meter sprint to reach anything in both directions. Hope you don’t get sniped because that’s a long way to restart from.

Out of 9 maps 4-5 are fun to play. The bad one’s are so shitty that I can’t believe they never thought to tweak them. Some of the problems with these maps are so glaringly obvious I can’t understand why they weren’t fixed. How hard is it add jeep spawns to a few flags? On the other hand there are also maps like Seine Crossing that are done really well. Maps that have cover and lots of sneaky back routes are tons of fun. They also make leveling kits less painful.

Battlefield 3 Multiplayer Review – Features

Origin and Battlelog were 2 big issues for many PC players. Neither one is perfect by a long shot but they don’t ruin the game. I would hope that over time the crashing and party issues will be resolved. Once the Battlelog problems are fixed it could turn out to be a great tool for Battlefield players. I’ve put Battlelogs built in friends list to work countless times. It shows you where your friends are and their party. It’s also fun to check out your friends stats.

This list is just a few of the things you’ll find in Battlelog stats.

Kills

Deaths

Accuracy

Top Weapons

Score/Minute

Longest headshot

longest Kill Streak

Wins/Losses

One of my favorite features in BF3 is the scaled back map destruction. Full destruction was a good idea in theory but having tanks be able to blow the shit out of every reasonable place for cover was dumb. The knifing animations are also a good addition. Granted I don’t see many from the desired end. Guess I’m weird for playing FPS games to shoot at people. Anything that opens up a knifing bastard to gun fire for a few seconds is fine in my book. Scope glint is another interesting feature. Snipers with long range scopes will flash and give you a heads up to get your head down.

Battlefield 3 PC

Battlefield 3 Xbox 360

Battlefield 3 PS3
 

Battlefield 3 Multiplayer Review – BF3 Hub