5/5 ★ – RawMetal's review of Battlefield 3.

System: Xbox 360 Started: November 2011 Ended: April 6, 2013 Flashback Review After my full wrap-up of the Bad Company games, the long-awaited announcement for Battlefield 3 got me excited. Based on the gameplay footage from what I've seen at the time, I could tell this is a different type of Battlefield game. I preordered Battlefield 3 on the Xbox 360, played Battlefield 3 with a friend of mine with the same console and participated in LAN parties on separate consoles and monitors and play multiplayer. Battlefield 3 is still one of my favorite military shooters, despite the minor downgrades that did not improve much from the underrated Bad Company 2 and even Battlefield 2. Battlefield 3 made changes from its predecessors as it was aimed for more "realism". At the time, Call of Duty and Halo were all about blockbuster-style movies about nuclear warfare and space shooters. Battlefield 3's take on its realism is adding style and substance. Such as adding the JJ Abrams Lens Flares so that you may get epilepsy, dust particles that almost every indoor building doesn't have an air filter, blue shaders for light effects, and a Dubstep music score since this is what the hip kids are listening to at the time. The early 2010s were a time when highly obnoxious dubstep music was a new trend in electronic music. With the style and substance I mentioned, you got yourself Battlefield 3. At least it was something different at the time. The single-player campaigns of Bad Company's 1 and 2 were so well-received that DICE would eventually push this mode to Battlefield 3. The story is set in modern day as you play a few soldiers and stop an organized Russian terrorist from blowing up Times Square. The whole story became flashback sequences before jumping into present time by the end of the game. The single-player campaign was good, but not great. I could not remember anything about the story other than the subway train, which is at the beginning and end of the story. Personally, I think Battlefield 3 doesn't need a single-player mode. Don’t get me wrong, though. It's still a welcoming feature if you want more Battlefield, but I keep it traditional of what Battlefield was originally supposed to be, and the spin-off games like Bad Company should only include the story mode. This game even adds co-op missions, so you can grab a friend, complete a couple missions, and earn unlockable weapons and attachments for multiplayer, which is underrated. I played and completed all of them with a friend. Multiplayer mode is the main reason to play Battlefield 3, and I have played this game the most compared with 1942 and Battlefield 2. Most of the maps for this game are well-known, especially Operation Metro and Kharg Island. Modes include Team Deathmatch, Rush, and Domination. The progression system was way more in-depth as you could unlock attachments, camos, and new weapons depending on the class you were in and the more you used the weapon of your choice. I play mostly Support and Medic since I revive and drop health, drop ammo, and even be a pocket medic with friends and I get into a tank and we just goof around. I think Battlefield got the edge with multiplayer for its party-coordinated playstyle that requires teamwork to win matches. It's not like in Halo and Call of Duty, where you can take out an entire team by yourself without any help. Battlefield 3 was a huge improvement with the latest Frostbite engine, as there are even more destruction features, such as blowing up buildings, debris and dirt flying everywhere when taking enemy fire, and even falling buildings that can kill you. In Multiplayer mode, you can have the freedom to play seriously or just roam around in the map and goof off by coming up with ways to eliminate an enemy player, such as arming an ATV vehicle with C4. Players would record these special moments and share them on YouTube just for the sake of trolling and griefing players. You can even steal their customized dog tags when you stealth kill enemy players. As ridiculous as this is, it sort of breaks the "realism" part of the game. Aside from the dubstep soundtrack and overused lens flare, Battlefield 3’s single player was short and easily forgettable since I can barely remember what happened. Multiplayer can be frustratingly good or bad, depending on how well you play. This is always a thing in every first-person shooter game. If you keep getting killed, the game is not fun. But, if you are on a hot streak of kills and victories, the game just did a 180, and it's fun now. There are moments that I get killed mostly by sniping, being bombed by Claymores and C4, or some drunken kamikaze nosediving a plane where I’m at. What really gets me in Multiplayer mode is that Battlefield 3 has fewer classes than Battlefield 2, and every class feels jumbled up. Classes contain Assault, Engineer, Recon and Support. Compared with Battlefield 2, it had a total of seven classes. The very same classes I listed from 3, with the addition of Spec-Ops, Medic and Anti-Tank. I still couldn’t fathom why the Assault class contained medpacks and a defibrillator as a way of saying I'm an attacker and a medic. Lastly, the console versions were honestly not up to par with the PC versions. I did not have a gaming PC rig at the time, so I had to use the Xbox 360 version. The graphics were obviously not up to par, and you have even less player capacity for matchmaking. I still love Battlefield 3, regardless of its flaws. I spent countless hours playing this over 1942 and 2, and I have very fun memories with friends playing it. Because of my nostalgia for this game, I still consider this to be my favorite Battlefield game to this very day. You can try to play this game, but Multiplayer seems kind of dead in 2024, and PC is the way to go instead of seventh-generation consoles. Most likely, players would jump to Battlefield 4 and stay there, currently playing the notably bad 2042, or just move on to play other FPS games. If you are curious, you can try to play it for the first time, but you missed out when it became its prime.