I had about 4-5 hours of play time with Battlefield 3 last night so I figured I’d give a quick run through of my first impressions of the game. It’s not a full review as I haven’t finished the single player campaign and I haven’t played through every map and every game mode in multiplayer, but I think I got enough time with the game to form some impressions.
First off, if you read this site you know that I’m a big fan of the Call of Duty series, but I’m in noway close minded towards other entries in the FPS genre. I’ve been posting about Battlefield 3 on here just as much as I have Modern Warfare 3. Now, do I prefer the Call of Duty games to the Battlefield games… yes. But there’s nothing saying that, that won’t change. So now that you know a little about my viewpoint on these games let’s jump right in.
When I first opened the game case I was a little surprised to see that the Single Player Campaign is on one disk and the Multiplayer/co-op is on a second disk. It’s not a huge deal, I just didn’t realize it was going to be split. Upon inserting the Campaign disk I was greeted with the option to install the HD Texture Pack which weighs in at a hefty 1.5 gb. Obviously I installed it since the videos I posted earlier show that there is a huge difference with and without it. The install only takes a few minutes as it’s included on the disk. So once that was done I dove straight into the Campaign on hard. I tend to always do the campaigns on the hardest difficulty since I don’t want the game to be over in 4-5 hours. So I clicked to start the campaign and started watching the opening cut scene when it suddenly stopped and said it was loading the first level… seemed like an odd cut, but ok. However, once the loading screen finished it just played the cut scene again… and again… and again, it was caught in an endless loop. A quick twitter search made me aware that I wasn’t the only one, but I was able to figure out how to get past it by just going back to the dashboard, relaunching the game and resuming campaign.
The opening level was actually a lot of fun. Running through the train with just a pistol at first, climbing around on top of the train, all of it was really fun and looked really good. The environments in the game are top notch and I was extremely impressed with some of the lighting techniques used. I’d be lying if I said this game didn’t look incredible. As for the gameplay, coming off of Black Ops and the Call of Duty series it took me a bit to get used to the sensitivity of the controls and the way things move, but after about 30 minutes of playing I felt pretty comfortable with it. The fighter plane level near the beginning was a nice change of scenery and played extremely well. I actually felt like I was in the cockpit of the plane and I kept thinking how cool it would be to actually fly one of those things. After that level I played for a little while longer until I got frustrated at the fact that I kept dying and then decided it was time to give the multiplayer a shot.
First off let me say that EA can go f— itself with it’s Online Pass. I actually intended to keep the online pass intact so that when I sold the game to get MW3, the next person would be lucky enough to be able to play online without having to pay an extra $10. It’s a bullshit way for EA to milk more money out of the game when they really don’t need to. Grow up and find another way to supplement the “lost sales” from used games, but I don’t want to get too into that, I’ll save it for another post. I decided to redeem the Online Pass and give the multiplayer a shot as a friend wanted to play some Co-op and I did really want to see how much better the final game was compared to the beta.
If you read my impressions of the beta you would know that I wasn’t a huge fan… and the beta actually turned me off to even buying the game right now, but something changed my mind. I’m not sure if it was the videos released over the last week or what. And when I jumped into multiplayer I actually really really enjoyed myself. I’ve always enjoyed the closer, more “run-n-gun” aspect of the Call of Duty games and I didn’t really care for Bad Company 2’s multiplayer, but I actually found myself having a lot of fun playing Battlefield 3 online. I only got to play a couple maps, but they are huge! The vehicles are a necessity on some of them and it makes for a totally different experience than playing Call of Duty. I’m still not a big fan of the menu system and classes, but I can get used to it. Now I don’t know if I’ll convert over to Battlefield entirely for my multiplayer experience once MW3 comes out, but I will say that it’s a lot of fun and I am definitely looking forward to getting home tonight and playing it some more. I haven’t gotten to play around in any of the vehicles outside of a truck, but I can only imagine how much fun it is to fly one of the planes.
So bottom line is, don’t write this one off just cause you claim to be a Call of Duty fanboy. This is a solid game and the multiplayer is a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to playing in a squad with actual friends and seeing how all of that works, but either way I’m just excited to get home and play some more.
So what are your first impressions of the game? Do you like the multiplayer? Campaign? Co-op? I’m curious as to what other people, mainly Call of Duty fans, have to say about this game…
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