General Battlefield Tips & Tactics | X-Box Overview

General Battlefield Tips & Tactics
X-Box Overview

I have a confession to make: I've spent an enormous amount of time playing the Battlefield games over the years and I'm pretty sure I have an addiction. I play a ton of other games, but these shooters always seem to bring me back for a fix of the chaos these titles offer up. I've heard many players rag on the Battlefield games saying that they don't feel like they're improving as they continue to play, then they promptly give up on the game and go right back to the simplicity of the Call of Duty games. While the games do have a higher learning curve than your average FPS, once you get the hang of it there are few shooters that can compare. Veterans of the series will already know this stuff, but for newer players I'll provide some general tips & tactics from somebody who typically plays with random people that should help minimize your frustrations with the games.

Squad
The first thing you should do upon entering a round is make sure you're in a squad. If necessary, go into the squad menu and select the squad with the most players. If your squadmates aren't sticking together, I'd suggest switching to another squad that runs in a pack. You'll always be more effective when you function as a group in these games so try to work with your teammates.

Class
Take note of what classes the players in your squad are using. If there's nobody using the medic kit go ahead and switch over to that class as it's arguably one of the most important in the game. There's never any need for a squad full of the same class and each one serves an important purpose in the game. Everybody will likely find their favorite class to play, but try to get a good feel for each one and change them up as needed by your squad.

Vehicles
If you're having a bad round shooting enemies while on foot, consider using a vehicle. Tanks, AA vehicles, LAVs, choppers and jets can all help the team immensely when used properly. Try not to get too greedy and spend the majority of the round waiting for vehicles to spawn in though as you'd be much more helpful out on the battlefield helping the team out. If you're having trouble spotting the enemies while in the ground vehicles, equip the thermal optics and/or proximity scan to make it tougher for enemies to get the drop on you.

Check Your Fire-Rate Frequently
Thanks to the 360 controller's crappy d-pad, it's very easy to accidentally hit down on the d-pad while switching to gadgets, which in many of the games will change your rate of fire between single, auto and burst. I can't even tell you how many times I've engaged an enemy only to die thanks to the fact I didn't realize my fire-rate was on single shot. This is extremely frustrating when it happens so try to make it a habit to check it every now and then to avoid unnecessary deaths.

Use the Spot Button!
Make a habit of spotting any enemy in your line of sight. Chances are, even if you can't manage to shoot them, a teammate will notice the enemy resulting in an easy kill. This is very valuable to the team and I've witnessed a large number of players that just don't make use of it. Spot the enemy always!

Know When to Quit
If the game becomes more frustrating than fun, and trust me it will if you play it enough, recognize that maybe your anger is preventing you from playing at your best. Sometimes it's best to just turn the game off or back out and find another server. The game is not worth boiling your blood pressure over or smashing your controller/screen as this will only piss you off even further.

Flank Your Enemy
If you see a bunch of fellow teammates running straight into a bottleneck and dying in large numbers, it's time to consider flanking your enemy. Pretty much every map in the game has more than one way to get to each capture point and getting the drop on your enemy from behind is an excellent way to open that choke point up for your team. You'll want to make sure you have a suppressor on your gun when doing this, otherwise the enemy will be immediately alerted to your presence as soon as you open fire which almost always results in a quick death.

Utilize Those Gadgets!
The Battlefield games provide a wealthy amount of options for each kit when it comes to gadgets, and all of them can be very useful when in the right situation. If the vehicles are tearing your team up, throw down some tank mines in commonly traversed spots. If the helicopter is devastating everybody, use your AA mine or laser paint the target. If enemies keep getting the drop on you use one of the numerous spotting devices that the recon soldiers possess. Mess around with the gadgets and know when to switch them up to get the best use out of them.

Don't Be That Guy...
Don't be that guy who plugs his mic in just to complain about everything the entire time. The type of dude who blames every death on "lag" or blames the team for their shortcomings. You're going to die in Battlefield, nobody really thinks any less of you because of it. I seriously doubt anybody is ever going to look at your stats so don't make a big deal about nothing. Luckily the game offers an option via the scoreboard that allows you to mute players, though for whatever reason sometimes it fails to function properly. You also have the option to just create a party or just turn down the chat volume using the dashboard menu. The other type of annoyance with mic users are the ones who blast the game volume on a loud system which gets picked up by their mic and results in the players on the other end hearing garbled echoes of the in-game sound. If you're going to blast the game on your system, please do us all a favor and don't use your headset. I'll be honest with everybody and admit that I usually curse up a storm something fierce when playing these games, but I don't use my headset mic and I'm generous enough to spare everybody else from having to hear it.

Tea-Bagging Is For Tools
There are several types of gamers, one which takes genuine pleasure in maximizing the saltiness of their opponents. In FPS games, one way that many players like to celebrate a kill is to crouch and stand repeatedly and quickly, signifying that they are "tea-bagging" you. Speaking for myself, when a player does this to me they overtake all other priorities within the game and shoot right to the top of my hit-list. More often than not I'm successful in taking down these guys, which should prove that maybe it's not in your best interest to tea-bag everybody you kill. I once used to play with a gentleman that went by the name of Capt Crunch who said it best, "Act like you been there, bruh!" I can't tell you how many players I've shot down while they're attempting to tea-bag their victims, where if they would have been paying attention they likely could have gotten me. To top it all off it's just bad sportsmanship and unless you're really dominating the player on the receiving end (which is rarely the case) then you just look like a bad sport. This is all my opinion of course, and as long as there are competitive video games there will be taunts like the tea-bag, but if you must use it then save it for special occasions and don't do it every kill to avoid looking like a complete ass.

Battlefield 4 (Xbox 360/One, 2013)

Battlefield 4
Developed by DICE
Published by Electronic Arts
Released for Xbox 360 (10/2013) & Xbox One (11/2013)
Also on PC/PS3/PS4

It's no understatement to say that Battlefield 4 had one of the worst video game launches in recent years. Early on, there were issues even getting into a match and there were numerous bugs. Many people passed up this title completely due to this, which is a shame because as years went by DICE did a great job repairing the game and crafting another excellent shooter. We'll start off talking about the Xbox One version of the game, but the 360 version will also be addressed at the end of this review.

The look and feel of Battlefield 4 is very similar to the third installment, though if you've been playing these games on consoles up to this point then this game is going to be a major upgrade. The player count on conquest has been expanded to 32v32 rather than the 12v12 you'd find on the old consoles. The frame-rate is much smoother when compared to the 360 Battlefield games but the One still struggles to hold a steady 60 fps. Overall the game is much closer to its PC counterpart this time around, at least on the PS4 and the One.

While Battlefield 4 does feature a single-player campaign, it's basically the same old stuff you usually find in military shooter campaigns, following the same routine of shooting waves of enemies before moving to the next checkpoint and doing more of the same. It's not bad, but it doesn't really do much to stand out. I encountered some issues with the game losing my progress in this mode, but I played it back when the game came out and these issues have likely been patched by now. DICE did not include the co-op missions that were featured in Battlefield 3, which is a bummer as I would have liked to see those expanded on. Don't let the so-so single player deter you from trying the game, as the multiplayer is always the main attraction in any Battlefield title.

For some reason DICE feels the need to slightly change up the control scheme with every Battlefield game with quite minimal configuration options, which can make going back and forth between games a bit more of a pain than it should be. The sprint, knife, spot and crouch have all been re-mapped and to players of Battlefield 3 it will take some getting used to. They also felt the need to change up the progression system a bit with the introduction of "battlepacks" to the series. As you level up you'll earn battlepacks which will contain random accessories for your guns and XP boosts. Using a particular weapon will also unlock battlepacks for that specific gun. When an XP boost is used, they only grant the bonus experience to the individual player that activated rather than your entire squad. There is also the option to pay real world money to unlock battlepacks, but don't fall for it as you'll unlock plenty of these through regular play and they mostly just give you the worthless XP boosts anyways..

The squad perk system has changed up quite a bit in this entry as well. In Battlefield 3, you could equip your chosen spec and receive the perks the whole time you play. In Battlefield 4 you now have a meter that is filled by completing "squad actions" such as healing, spotting, reviving, etc. The spec meter has four tiers and each time you fill the bar to a tier you'll receive one of the perks. When all squad members are dead simultaneously the bar will deplete. I never cared for this system since I often play with random people who love running straight into death.

Despite all the numerous issues with Battlefield 4 (especially in the game's first year), there are several aspects of the game that were improved from the previous versions. You are now allowed up to five members per squad where the previous titles would allow only four. Commander mode has made it's return to the series, which has been missing in action since Battlefield 2142 from 2006. The commander is able to issue squad orders and when certain objectives are held they are able to assist the team with supply drops, vehicle drops, UAV scans, radar jams and even drop a missile down.

Soldier classes feature some interesting new gadgets to mess around with. This time around there are some excellent vehicle additions, including the powerful heavy boats and mobile artillery launchers. The LAV and tanks don't seem quite as effective as in the previous game but are still a force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately the tanks can no longer seat three players like in Battlefield 3, now allowing only a driver and gunner (the third seat allowed a player to spot and laser paint targets). The helicopters and jets are still extremely deadly in capable hands. There's a great variety of vehicles to use and it really helps keep the game fresh so you're not always doing the same thing. There's a new feature that allows you to counter-attack while being knifed and is one of my biggest gripes about this game. It's not very reliable and it really sucks to sneak up behind a guy and have him dead to rights yet you end up getting knifed thanks to this stupid counter-attack.

Battlefield 4 included ten maps in the base game and in many respects these maps were more of a return to form for the series, featuring sprawling maps as opposed to the somewhat cluttered maps of Battlefield 3. Zavod 311 is a tank graveyard of sorts, with a warehouse in the center of the maps for some intense firefights. Lancang Dam is one of the less enjoyable maps with a rather boring layout featuring a dam, an island and a few buildings. The scout choppers and boats do help salvage the map a little bit though. Flood Zone is an interesting map that takes place in a shantytown where a dam can be blown open to flood the map. Golmud Railway is a large map with one of the capture points on a moving train. Paracel Storm is an excellent naval focused map featuring boats and scout helicopters (in my opinion one of the best maps in the game). Operation Locker is the "meat-grinder" map of the bunch with infantry only and tons of choke points for lots of kills. Hainan Resort takes place on the shores of Hainan and features a large hotel in the center for teams to battle over control of. Seige of Shanghai takes place in downtown Shanghai and contains a large skyscraper in the center. Rogue Transmission has a very large radio telescope in the center and has some excellent tank/helicopter/jet warfare. Dawnbreaker is set in downtown Hong Kong right in the middle of a sprawling city. Dawnbreaker is definitely one of my least favorite maps, due a large part to a lack of destructible environments. None of the buildings can be taken down and you can barely even damage the walls on a majority of them. Overall this is a solid map lineup in the core game.

In addition to the the standard conquest mode, Battlefield 4 features several other modes of play, but these days the only ones besides conquest that you're likely to find a game on are rush and team deathmatch. Rush is still a fun objective-based mode, with one team attacking while the other defends. The firefights are bit more confined than conquest and it can get pretty intense at times (player count is reduced to 32). Team deathmatch can a good time if you don't feel like having to mind any objectives and want to just shoot at people. Personally, I don't play much other than conquest but I know there are players out there that enjoy these three particular modes.

Battlefield 4 uses DICE's Frostbite 3 engine, and one of the big new features here is the "levolution" events that can be triggered within the maps. When key events are triggered (usually blowing up a certain support spot) there will be some sort of event that drastically change up areas of the map. For instance, on the Siege of Shanghai map typically the skyscraper has a capture point on the rooftops. If you blow out the support columns at the base of the building it will topple over and the capture point will now be in the rubble. These are all admittedly pretty cool the first couple of times you experience them. The main problem with "levolution" is that these are all predetermined, so if you've seen that skyscraper topple over once it'll be exactly the same every time after. Hopefully in future Frostbite engine updates the games will have more dynamic destruction physics. DICE did a good job adding in some interactivity in the maps, featuring elevators that can be used, doors that can be open/closed and bollards that can be activated to block vehicle entry.

I must say, the Battlefield games in general (and many online competitive games for that matter) can be either incredibly rewarding or frustrating, and much of that depends on your squadmates. If you can function as a unit it can be a grand ol' time, but if everybody wanders off just trying to do their own thing the game can become a miserable experience at times. I give DICE credit for stabilizing everything after the game's rocky launch, providing multiple updates to the title pretty much up until Battlefield 1 launched. They were even kind enough to offer a few new maps outside of the DLC so all players would have access regardless of whether they've purchased the season pass.

The Xbox 360 Port
Battlefield 4 came out for the Xbox 360 a month before it would come out for the One, but it never felt very optimized to run on the aging hardware. The game was plagued with some pretty bad issues for the initial months after release and while some were fixed in patches there were many that stayed with the game. The Operation Dawnbreaker and Hainan Resort maps were a guaranteed system-freeze every time making the maps virtually unplayable, fortunately these were fixed in later patches and are now playable. Sometimes the game struggles to load the assets in at the start of rounds, not only with the graphics but also with the audio. Spawning in a tank at the beginning of the round will often be presented in low-res blocky polygons, taking around a minute before the proper graphics load in. While in low-res mode the tank also bobbles around for no apparent reason other than poor optimization. Another glitch happens upon spawning in there is a strange delay before your character pulls up their weapon. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've died spawning in and unable to defend myself because my gun hadn't loaded in yet!

The game's overall performance definitely feels like a step down from Battlefield 3 and even the Bad Company games. The frame-rate definitely doesn't keep up as well and your soldier at times has major issues jumping over objects in your path. It's another one of those cases where the company was more concerned with the newer consoles as far as development goes and the old console ports were more of an afterthought. The game is by all means still playable it's just not optimized as well as the Xbox One version of the game. I also want to mention that the game will take up a massive amount of hardware space compared to your typical 360 game. Once you've downloaded all of the patches and updates, the game will take around 22 GB without installing the disc, so make sure you have the required drive space if you intend on getting this game!

Final Verdict: Battlefield 4 is a solid squad-based online FPS on the One, but if you're still gaming on the 360 I'd suggest going with one of the older Battlefield titles for a better experience.

Battlefield 4 Premium Pass/DLC

Just like Battlefield 3 (and likely every entry after), Battlefield 4 featured a Premium Pass you could purchase to gain access to all DLC released for the game. These can be purchased individually but are priced so you get the best value just getting the pass. If you're looking to purchase a physical copy of the game there are Premium versions with the pass included. There were five different map packs released for Battlefield 4 and I'll go into each of them briefly.

Second Assualt gives you four maps that were all featured in Battlefield 3. These were all excellent additions and it was great seeing some of the Frostbite engine's new features implemented into them. The China Rising map pack features four more maps, several of which were quite large and allowed for some nice vehicular warfare. Naval Strike was the third map pack, featuring four naval-themed maps to set itself apart from the other packs. Next came Dragon's Teeth, featuring four China maps each with urban settings. The last map pack would be Final Stand, which had four large maps set in Russia with lots of snowy landscapes. These maps showcase some of the futuristic tech that was seen in Battlefield 2142. Overall DICE did an excellent job with the map packs, providing a nice variety to the map design and with only a few stinkers among the bunch (personally I didn't care for Final Stand but enjoyed all the others). Unfortunately it can be quite rare to find anybody playing the DLC maps so it's hard to really recommend the Premium Pass.

Late in the game's life span, DICE was nice enough to give players a few free maps. First was Zavod: Graveyard Shift. It's the same map as Zavod 311, but at night-time, giving you a good chance to finally use those thermal optics on your tank. The final map released for Battlefield 4 was Operation Outbreak. This map was developed by letting the community vote on the map layout, and the end result was a fun jungle map. The problem with these last two maps is that they were always placed in server rotations by themselves, and players quickly grew tired of playing the same map over and over.

Final Verdict: While the maps included in the Premium Pass are good fun for the most part, finding active servers for these is pretty rare these days. Worth it only if you can find it cheap.

Purchase Links:
Buy Battlefield 4 (Xbox One - Digital) - Microsoft Store
Buy Battlefield 4 (Xbox 360 - Digital) - Xbox Marketplace
Search Battlefield 4 (Xbox One - Disc) - eBay
Search Battlefield 4 (Xbox 360 - Disc) - eBay

Related Links:
General Battlefield Tips & Tactics - X-Box Overview 
Battlefield 4 - Official Site 
Buy Battlefield 4 on Xbox One - Microsoft Store 
Buy Battlefield 4 on Xbox 360 - Xbox Marketplace 

Battlefield 3 (Xbox 360, 2011)

Battlefield 3
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