Developed by DICE
Published by Electronic Arts
Released for Xbox 360 (10/25/2011)
Also on PC/PS3
Backwards Compatible on Xbox One
Battlefield 3 is the follow-up to the highly successful PC multiplayer first-person shooter Battlefield 2. After developing two Bad Company games that were specifically designed with consoles in mind, Battlefield 3 was a return to the series PC roots and the version released for consoles is a vastly inferior port when compared to its PC counterpart. That's not to say it's a bad game at all though as the console game can still be very enjoyable, so without further ado let's get into the 360 console port of Battlefield 3.
While the game does have a single-player campaign, it's more of an afterthought and you wouldn't want to buy the game just for the campaign alone. It's pretty much your standard fare for military FPS games, very similar to the Call of Duty campaigns with lots of action-packed scenarios and a couple standout segments, but ultimately quite forgettable. I played through the campaign back when the game was released and have only a few vague memories of it, but it was enjoyable enough for me to go through and earn all the achievements. The game also features six co-op missions, where you can team up with a friend and take on a number of different scenarios. These are good fun for a few plays and are something I wish the Battlefield games that followed would have expanded on.
The real meat and bones of any Battlefield title lies in the competitive online portion of the game. As stated before, this port had to make a lot of sacrifices in order to run on the consoles of the era. While the PC version of the game offers 64-players in a game, the console was only able to handle a maximum of 24-players. On a high-end PC the game runs at 60 fps, while on console the game aims to run at 30, though it will dip occasionally when the action or destruction is intense. The graphical fidelity took a pretty big hit as well when compared to the PC version, with textures looking ugly and low-res from a distance. The player count is the biggest downside of the console ports, considering that most of these maps were designed for a much higher player count. While DICE did modify the maps by having fewer capture points and keeping the action confined to a smaller area by changing the boundaries, some of the more open maps still feel a bit dull compared to others.
Battlefield 3 features four different classes to select from in online play: assault, engineer, support and recon. Each have their own specialty gadgets and a squad properly utilizing all four classes can dominate the playfield. There's a nice variety of weapons you'll unlock as you level up, and each gun can be customized using items unlocked by getting kills with that weapon. You'll get an assortment of scopes and attachments like suppressors to change up your weapons performance a bit. It's a decent system and makes the player progression feel somewhat meaningful. Overall the class system is mostly well balanced and it's fun using their various gadgets in different scenarios. Another feature introduced in Battlefield 3 are the squad specs. As you level up, you'll unlock perks that can be assigned to your soldier. These range from a slightly faster sprint, heavier suppression from gunfire and flak for increased resistance to explosions. Each squad member, of which you can have a squad of four, can equip a different perk and each player will receive the bonus. These don't stack so make sure you and your squadmates don't have duplicate specs equipped!
In addition to infantry combat, one of Battlefield's most distinguishing features are the vehicles. You'll be able to drive tanks, jeeps, hummers and LAV's on land. There are also scout and attack choppers as well as bomber and fighter jets for air combat. Select stages also feature boats you can use. With the size of many of the maps, utilizing vehicles is key to getting around quick. Certain vehicles like tanks and choppers can drastically change the tide of the battle in skilled hands. A knowledgeable squad on foot can make quick work of vehicles if they work together, so the vehicles are not terribly over-powered in the grand scheme of things.
The vanilla maps contain a decent variety of environments and for the most part are a solid bunch. Operation Metro has always been a fan-favorite, a map with no vehicles and lots of close quarter combat set in a subway station. Seine Crossing has always been one of my personal favorites, despite some very cramped areas and terrible spawn points. The map features tanks in close-quarter urban combat in downtown Paris. Grand Bazaar features the center capture point in the middle of an alley, providing for some pretty intense firefights. Caspian Border is easily one of the best maps in the game with a more wide-open classic Battlefield style, while the larger maps like Operation Firestorm and Kharg Island tend to be the maps where the low-player count hurts the most as they are quite huge and as a result feel a bit vacant. Noshar Canals is an awesome map set on some industrial docks, featuring one team spawning on an aircraft carrier and the other on land. This map gives both teams scout choppers leading to some fun action in the sky. Damavand Peak features a giant mountain with tunnels passing through it and scout choppers in the sky. Tehran Highway is easily the least favorite map, featuring a rather boring layout with very little destruction in the environment.
The main game modes are rush and conquest. Conquest mode will have several capture points spread about and whichever team holds more control points the longest wins. It's a simple game mode but helps keep the action focused and objective oriented, so you're never really stuck wondering what you need to do next. Rush mode will have players on either the attacker or defender team. The attackers attempt to arm and detonate two stations while the defenders try to stop them. Once both stations are destroyed a new set will spawn further down the map. If the attackers advance through several rounds of this they win, but if they run out of deployment tickets the defenders win. Some maps work better in conquest and others in rush. Damavand Peak has the central capture point located within the mountain in conquest while in rush mode the map plays drastically different with a section where you base-jump off the top of the mountain. In rush mode Tehran Highway is actually a pretty fun map while the conquest variant is a bit weak.
In addition to conquest and rush, Battlefield 3 also features team deathmatch, squad deathmatch and squad rush. In the deathmatch game modes, the maps are sectioned off into small areas so you never have to walk to far before you die (or if you're better than me, maybe you'll shoot some people first). While I feel like an above-average player at the conquest mode, many of the skills that work well in that mode don't transfer over into deathmatch style gameplay. I personally never liked this mode in any of the Battlefield titles as it takes out all of the vehicles and sprawling maps the series is known for, but I understand why DICE felt the need to include it due to the massive success of the Call of Duty games at the time. The gunplay and controls aren't quite as tight as the Call of Duty titles so if you're really into deathmatch modes I'd suggest just sticking with Activision's titles.
Getting into an online match is simple as is getting into a squad with your friends. There's an option to just join in the first available match or there is a server browser where you can pick the game you'd like to join. It's great to have this option and it'd be nice if more console games would give you options like this. One thing to note about the Battlefield 3 servers, later on in the game's life span EA decided to start renting out servers to players, allowing them to create their own map playlist and also moderate the match to an extent. Unfortunately you'll be team-switched or killed by a server moderator if you do something they don't approve of and being at the will of these control-freaks can sometimes prove a frustrating experience. I've been killed and switched teams for shooting a server owner too many times among many other silly shenanigans. For this reason I tend to always look for official Dice or EA servers as you won't have anybody kicking or switching your team on you.
The sound design in the Battlefield series has a track record for being fantastic and Battlefield 3 is no exception. The explosions and gunfire all sound great, and the attention to detail in the sound department really shines through all the way down to the bullets that miss whizzing by your ear. This is one of those games where you will suffer if you play without the sound on loud and clear. For the best results play it on a surround sound speaker setup or some high-quality headphones. You can't always rely on teammates to spot out the enemies for you, so it's best to actively listen as you'll hear the footsteps of an approaching enemy often before you see them.
Another feature new to the Battlefield franchise are the blocked off sectors in the enemy deployment areas. You can no longer wait right behind spawn points and shoot players as soon as they spawn in, at least not in their main base. It's still something that can and will happen on regular flag spawns or spawning on your squad-mate, but this does at least somewhat help a little with spawn camping which was a huge problem in the Bad Company games. There's nothing like dying as soon as you spawn in to motivate one to do something other than play video games!
Battlefield 3 is far from perfect and over its existence has a been a host to numerous bugs and glitches. The map Operation Metro has a glitch where you can hop into the ceiling and fire down on players all while they can't even see what shot them. This is an incredibly annoying glitch that some of the nastier online folks love to pull and shame on DICE for never fixing this in one of numerous updates to the game. Tehran Highway also had a well-known exploit where players could get on top of the highway and fire down on players. The only way to access the highway was to stand on top of an MAV and fly yourself up there as there were no air vehicles on this map. This issue was later resolved by DICE in a later patch. Another big change to the game was the nerfing of the attack helicopters. Initially, both the pilot and the gunner had their own set of flares, and a coordinated chopper team working together was damn near impossible to take down. Pretty early on the game's life-span the developers removed this from the gunner seat, making it much easier to take down helicopters with lock-on rockets if you just simply spam them.
Despite the game's issues and obvious downgrade from the PC original, Battlefield 3 is still an excellent shooter and still stands as a fun game to play today. Major credit to EA for keeping the servers up after all these years, and it goes to show that if the fans support and actually play a game enough then there is a chance that the servers can be kept up and running well beyond the game's shelf life. I've never had trouble finding a game on Battlefield 3, and that's really kind of amazing considering the game was released seven years ago! A Wii U port of this game was also planned, but was cancelled before it ever hit retail shelves.
Final Verdict: Battlefield 3 is an excellent online competitive first-person shooter. Though the game has a fair share of bugs/glitches and is a big downgrade from the PC version, even on consoles the ambitious Frostbite engine separates this game from the majority of its competition.
Battlefield 3 Premium Pass
The Battlefield 3 Premium Pass will grant you access to all of the DLC maps. It can be purchased digitally or in a physical copy if you pick up the Premium edition, though if you buy it second-hand the codes will likely have been used. The game received a decent amount of additional content, including five different map packs each with four maps. There was Back to Karkand, Close Quarters, Armored Kill, Aftermath and Endgame.
Before going into the content I would like to state that there are two glaring issues with Season Passes, particularly in regards to online-only content such as this. First of all is the obvious fact that you have to pay almost full retail ($50!) price in order to get all of the maps released for the game. The second issue is that it fractures the game base, as obviously not everybody is going to get the extra maps therefore it goes without saying that there will be fewer players in the servers for the DLC maps at any given time. I'd almost rather they just charge $100 upfront for the game and give everybody access to all the maps, ensuring a decent player-base for the added content.
As of today I haven't been able to find any active servers running any of the DLC maps with the exception of the occasional Gulf of Oman, which is a shame as there were some really fun maps tucked away in some of these map packs. Back to Karkand, the frist batch of maps released for Battlefield 3, was a tribute to fan favorite maps from the PC classic Battlefield 2. The four featured maps were Strike at Karkand, Gulf of Oman, Sharqi Peninsula and Wake Island. This was an excellent group of maps and a great fan-service on behalf of DICE. The maps were all faithfully recreated but added in some perks of the Frostbite 2 engine.
The second map pack was Close Quarters, and this one ditched the normal vehicular combat for all infantry battles taking place in tight areas. DICE likely did this one both due to the overwhelming success of the Call of Duty games and the popularity of the vanilla Battlefield 3 map Operation Metro, which played out similarly being a map with no vehicles. These maps were all good fun and introduced a lot of destructibility on a smaller scale. Close quarters would also introduce the gun master mode, which played a lot like gun game from Counterstrike.
The third and fourth DLC for Battlefield 3 were Armored Kill and Aftermath. Armored Kill featured four gigantic maps, with Bandar Desert being billed as the biggest map ever seen in the Battlefield franchise. These were great fun on PC on a full 64-player server, but with the small player count seen on the console version these maps felt too vacant. Aftermath had four maps set right after an earthquake hit and had some pretty cool maps that I haven't seen in rotation in years. The final map pack was Endgame, which featured four more maps and introduced the capture the flag mode. Endgame wasn't bad but I think most fans were ready for a new Battlefield game by this point.
Final Verdict: The Battlefield 3 Premium Edition grants you access to some solid maps, but unfortunately due to the age of the game you'll rarely ever see any of them in the server rotation. Don't stress yourself getting the premium upgrade and just get the base game instead.
Purchase Links:
Buy Battlefield 3 Premium Edition (Digital) - Xbox Marketplace
Buy Battlefield 3 (Digital) - Xbox Marketplace
Buy Battlefield 3 (Disc) - eBay
Related Links:
DICE - Official Site
Electronic Arts - Official Site
Battlefield 3 - Metacritic
Battlefield 3 - GameFAQs
Battlefield 3 Achievement Guide - Xbox Achievements
Battlefield 3 - True Achievements
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