Battlefield 3


Battlefield 3 is a game based on strategy. It was released on October 25, 2011. It has been rated M for blood, intense violence, and intense language. This wonderful game was published by Electronic Arts. It is out for PS3, Xbox 360, and PC. The minimal requirements for the PC version are 4 gigabytes of RAM, 32 bit system, a quad core processor, windows vista and further, and internet connection.

Battlefield 3 is a first person shooter. You are a US marine and are in the Middle East most of the time in the campaign. In the multiplayer you are either on US side, or Russian side and have to play the objectives, follow assignments, and get kills to level up.

It is a well innovated and heart pounding game and has influenced all video games in general. Battlefield 3’s graphics are just astounding and has set a new bar for video games. The frostbite 2 engine has made developers rethink how the video game should be made. Frostbite 2 allows all of the vehicles, environmental interactions, and huge maps to exist in battlefield 3. Most people can agree that the Xbox control is very comfortable and has no problem playing Battlefield 3, Battlefield 3 on the PS3 controller has no flaws although I would like to point out that sometimes I like that the thumb sticks are evenly placed, and help me mentally prepare my next moves that I am about to commit. The game on PC is a little hard to master all of the controls, but when you do it is very simple. The campaign is well timed, it doesn’t seem as if it is too long or too short, the multiplayer has endless possibilities.

The campaign has a very well thought out story, very emotional characters, and of course a lot of different varieties of action. The Battlefield 3 campaign is centered on Sargent Henry Blackburn recalling his earlier military actions in Iran and Iraq. It takes place in 2014 and is about a five man US marine squad that discovers in an underground vault in Tehran, Iran the PLR (People's Liberation & Resistance. an Iranian paramilitary insurgent group) have acquired Russian nuclear bombs. They find one of them, but there was room in the crate for two more. The squad later gains the PLR leader Al-Bashir and finds out that the nuclear bombs would be targeted at Paris and New York. While Blackburn is in New York telling CIA agents what is going to happen, a Spetsnaz squad tries to prevent PLR personnel from blowing up the nuclear bomb in Paris. They unfortunately fail and alarm the CIA agents in New York. They then leave Blackburn unattended. Next he decides to stop the terrorists from blowing up New York, breaks free and sets off. (I won’t spoil the rest). In the campaign you also play a variation of different kinds of military personnel including SSgt. Henry "Black" Blackburn, a member of the U.S. Marine Corps 1st Recon Battalion and main protagonist; Sgt. Jonathan "Jono" Miller, a M1 Abrams tank operator deployed in Tehran; Lt. Jennifer "Wedge" Colby Hawkins, an F/A-18F Super Hornet Weapon Systems Officer; Dimitri "Dima" Mayakovsky, a Russian GRUoperative. All in all the campaign has a lot of action, keeps the players hooked, and is just as dramatic as understanding the story.

The multiplayer is what makes Battlefield 3 such a spectacular game. In the multiplayer you are either the US team, or the Russian’s. You get rewarded with new guns, vehicle upgrades, and dog tags by getting kills, playing the objective (capturing the flag, arming an M-COM), being a team player. You are always spawning as an assault solider, engineer, support solider or recon solider. The assault kit focuses on assault guns and being a field medic. The engineer kit focuses on supporting and destroying vehicles as well as sub-machine guns. The support class emphases light machine guns, ammo, and C4 (explosives). Finally the recon class beholds sniping and giving recon or spotting and giving “eyes in the sky” for your squad mates. A really cool realistic thing about the snipers in Battlefield 3 is that gravity is taken into account, so if the enemy is too far away you would have to aim up higher. The multiplayer is all about giving the most realistic look of the battlefield as possible. These efforts include huge maps, vehicles; bullets are affected by gravity, amazing graphics and sounds, and the amazing frostbite 2 engine. What the frostbite 2 engine does is realistically portray the destruction of buildings and scenery. It pretty much allows the players to do a lot of environmental interaction. So if an enemy is hiding behind a wall, you are able to shoot through that wall with a tank or C4 or whatever floats your boat, it is also what generates the massive maps and explosions, sounds and amazing graphics. Because it is such an extreme battlefield, is what makes it so amazing. The player count can go up to 64 players (32 on each team). There are many different ways to play each individual game mode. On a conquest match (conquest is a game mode that pitches two teams together for the fight of the control of different objectives/positions/bases) I can choose to straight out take a jeep to the closest objective and capture as many as I can, or I can take a jet and get in a dogfight with enemy air units and help ground units by taking out enemy artillery, I can also drive a tank to a position and capture it then defend for a while, then after that flank enemy infantry to the left of their base. The list goes on and on. The variety of play styles is so big that you usually never get bored. A lot of people think that there isn’t close combat at all. This is not true; there is team death match (a game mode that pitches to teams against each other in close quarters). There is also a whole map pack dedicated to close combat. The great thing about Battlefield 3 is that it promotes teamwork. When you join a game, you have the option of joining or creating a squad. Squads in Battlefield 3 go up to 4 people that you have the option to talk to (with a headset), and you can also spawn at your squad mates, so if your squad mate needs help, you can spawn at him/her. The last thing I would like to talk about the multiplayer of Battlefield 3 is the gun customization. When you join a game or die you are brought to a screen showing the map of the different places you can spawn as, as well as a gun customization gadget at the bottom of the screen. Right there before you spawn you can choose a primary weapon, a sidearm, a squad bonus, and much more. You also have the option to go into another screen to deeply customize your gun loudout. You can do things like pick a scope for the weapon, or camouflage and much more. This is very simple and helpful. In conclusion the multiplayer is very action packed, heart pounding, eye widening, and fun.

The graphics and sounds make up about 50% of why the game is so marvelous. The sounds are so precise and well thought out, that if you just listen you can imagine everything that is happening. These sounds range from the clip going into your gun, to the sound of starting up a jet. It even has the most realistic things like a squad mate calling out that there are enemies ahead. When you are looking at an enemy solider and you press a certain button, then that “spots” the enemy meaning their red gamer tag hovers above their head and they show up on the mini map. When a squad mate is near you when you spot someone, you can hear things like “enemy tank spotted over” or when you are in a vehicle “Enemy AT solider in your AO over” (AT solider-=anti-tank solider, AO= area of operations). The graphics are one of the best, and still beats new games today. The graphics show the smallest things like the shells coming out of the gun, and the sunlight reflecting off the window glass in a helicopter. These are just the default graphics. If you are playing on a console, you can enhance the graphics by purchasing an HDMI cord; this just makes everything look better and crisper. If you are playing on PC, you change the video graphic settings to ultra. Both of these have the same effect.

EA has done a lot to keep this game fresh. There have been many patches to the game. What has really kept it new are the expansion packs. These expansion packs, or map packs give a few new maps, guns, vehicles, and assignments every release. But each one is unique; each one has its own exclusive theme. One example is the map pack Close Quarters. This map pack was obviously about close quarters combat. It featured new sub machine guns, as well as smaller maps. Another one is armored kill. This expansion pack introduced more tank warfare, and even bigger maps, although Battlefield 3 already had this. All of these expansion packs gave something new to the game, and kept players hooked. There was also a must have deal called battlefield premium. This automatically gave players the expansion packs once they came out, and other stuff like a new knife, cameo for exclusive guns, and exclusive battlefield 4 beta (this is yet to come). For some people this game has gotten old, mostly because after a certain level you don’t unlock anything else. But for people like me, the heart pounding action of the game and the expansion packs have kept us hooked.

Compared to other games such as Call of duty, Halo, and Grand theft auto; Battlefield 3 is very advanced, realistic, and more sophisticated. Battlefield 3 has very big maps, vehicles like jets, tanks, and jeeps, has a large amount of players and makes the battlefield feel as realistic as possible. Players from games like COD get frustrated easily. They would say that Battlefield 3 doesn't have a lot of close combat and the maps are too big. They fail to see that there are close combat game modes, as well as the “big maps” tragedy. There are vehicles, simply to take you to other parts of the map. This game is quite similar to Halo, but this game takes place in the present world, with modern warfare. Battlefield 3 is cross platform, while halo is only for the Xbox.

This is a well drawn up, innovated game with few flaws. Everything about it is perfect and enjoyable. I can’t imagine any reason to dislike it and I hope it has really influenced other games. This game in my opinion deserves a 9.7. This game is just too excellent that I can envision that loyalists of COD will be the considering Battlefield 3. I believe anyone should at least try the game.