Battlefield 3

I've been slightly stuck in a bit of a rut when it comes to keeping up with the times recently. Apart from indulging in nostalgia with San Andreas and MGS HD Collection, the only other videogame I've purchased recently has been COD-Beater Battlefield 3. After my stunning praise of Modern Warfare 3 back on release, it's hard to see how BF3 can beat such a consistently perfect masterpiece. My sarcasm reserves are evidently bottomless.

Lets get one thing clear - this review isn't going to touch the single player. Buying Battlefield 3 for the single player game is like buying a workhorse to be your maid, it isn't what it was made for. If you want to know what BF3's single player is like, then do the following. 1) Open Microsoft Word and the Wikipedia page for each game in the Modern Warfare series. 2) Copy and paste a couple of sentences at random into Word and arrange for approximate legibility. 3) Sit back and feel accomplished at the fact you've written the plot to the next Battlefield or Modern Warfare game. Seriously try it, it's a fun way to kill five minutes. Here's what I came up with...

In Afghanistan in 2016, U.S. Army Ranger Private First Class Joseph Allen assists in taking a city from insurgents. Impressed by Allen's combat abilities, Lieutenant General Shepherd recruits him into the Task Force 141, an elite, multi-national counter-terrorist unit under Shepherd's command. Back in the present day, a joint operation is conducted by Price's SAS unit, a USMC Force Recon unit led by Staff Sgt. Griggs, and Loyalist Russian forces led by Kamarov, to stop Zakhaev. Makarov kidnaps the President, and plans to capture and torture his daughter Alena, to force the President to give Makarov the launch codes for the Russian nuclear arsenal. Makarov attempts to escape on a helicopter on the roof, but Price kills the two pilots and crashes the helicopter back onto the roof. They then escape the facility in military trucks with Zakhaev's forces in hot pursuit.

Job done, can I have a million quid please? Okay I'm just joking, but you understand my point. Single player is not what is important here. Predictably, this means the multiplayer has to be something remarkably special in order to satisfy the gulf left, and it's to my delight to confirm that it pretty much does this without a flaw.

Whilst comparing BF3 to MW3 feels slightly unfair, like trying to compare a McLaren MP4-27 to one of those red and yellow Playmobil buggies, the way the two games were marketed and released in direct competition means that their makers clearly want me to do so. Were it up to me, I would label the games as chalk and cheese, The Sun and The Independent, Robbie and Gary. But as EA and Activision attempted to pursue a course of action as ironically akin to warfare as videogame sales go, I'm going to do as they wish.

Where MW3 went wrong is that it contracted a heavy case of bloatedness. Activision never quite understood that the magic of the original Modern Warfare came from it's simplicity. There were a small but balanced number of customisation options and the gameplay was focused on tense snapshots and fast-paced action. Then, as the series grew and it's developers attempted to inject more content to keep things fresh, it just diluted what was already a great multiplayer experience. EA, however, never took their eyes off the prize. They know the type of people that play Battlefield- as someone on Youtube eloquently put it, "people that are too clever for COD but too thick for Counter Strike" - and they know that those players don't need or want rigorous change.

So what we end up with is a Battlefield game that doesn't surprise. If you've played and disliked the series before, there is absolutely nothing within that will change your mind. Sure, there are a couple of minute changes, additions and subtractions to the formula - the classes have been slightly fiddled with, the ability to go prone is in and the customisation system is slightly more robust - but there's an air of familiarity about it all that will instantly appeal to fans of the series.

If you haven't played Battlefield before, then in a nutshell it's the Guardian-readers' COD. The games are longer, require greater teamwork and focus more on preventing your own death rather than getting as many kills as you can. That said, there are still plenty of people playing it who clearly don't read the Guardian, and who will run into battle screaming for blood, seemingly oblivious that they're not helping anyone, least of all themselves. It's a glib truism that PC gaming is better, and I say this as a console gamer, but I expect such fools are probably less present on the PC version.

It's not a multiplayer experience without issues. The game's comparatively steep learning curve means that the general quality of most players online are either less useful than a dead frog, or better than Andy McNab on charlie. As with COD, if you get in a party of three or four friends who have a generally good skill-level and a mic, every match becomes a massacre,. and new players and high-level players have such a disparity in available equipment that attempting to get to level 2 is something of a culture shock for your average console gamer. However, break the tackle and you'll find a deep, immersive, fair shooter inside that isn't rivalled by anything made in the last half a decade.

Written by Ashley Chittock. Read more http://ashleychittock.blogspot.co.uk

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PART TWO: SINGLE PLAYER HELL (written some time after the first piece, when I simply couldn't stand by and not insult the horrendous solo experience this game provides).

So last time I spoke about Battlefield 3 I refused to mention the single-player mode in any detail, as purchasing BF3 and focusing on the single-player is like paying for a prostitute and focusing on the salty taste in her mouth. However, I've been trying to play it lately and it's wound me up so much that I simply have to use this blog as a means to vent my frustrations with it.

BF3's single player mode is possibly the worst game I've played this generation (and I playedCabela's Trophy Bucks). In fact, it barely even qualifies as a game. It's more like a long series of interactive cutscenes in which you have to occasionally manipulate the controller in order to advance the story. You won't be able to keep yourself from messing your pants in excitement as you press A to not die over and over and over again. Everything from dodging earthquakes to thirty second fistfights are either left completely out of the player's control or handled using a single, unfailable quick time event.

Although standing there whilst an attacker repeatedly wails on you, infinitely, until you press the prompted button is funny for about forty seconds, eventually you begin to wonder why it was put into the game at all. What is the purpose of making an obstruction to progress that has absolutely no challenge? If there's no challenge, there's no drama, and if there's no drama we have no reason to care or get involved with the game. It's like making a romantic drama where every scene of 'will they-won't they' dialogue is subtitled with [these characters will never break up no matter how hard they argue].

The gameplay opportunities you're actually given are poor, too. Instead of attempting to erase the damage done by repeated Call Of Duty-inspired scripted corridor shooters, BF3 sells out harder than Kings Of Leon circa 2008. If Modern Warfare 2 was a corridor, Battlefield 3 is the Yorkshire Cheese Press. All the explosions and shouting and loud noises feel so out of your control that once again it has the effect that you feel completely disconnected from the game, to the point that unless you play on hard mode you find yourself casually jogging through the field of battle, convinced you're invulnerable and that any bullet that hits you must have been scripted.

This is not a good thing in a game that is supposed to be the semi-realistic alternative to COD. Actually, it's downright abominable. I've tried cutting this game a bit of slack by looking at it as a movie and not a game, but even as a film the story sucks. Wholeheartedly ignoring substance in favour of recycling as many old wary-shooty-guny tropes as it can in the name of stylish set pieces, it's a ragged mess of cliché and things that we've seen before in war FPS's this generation already. Save yourself four excruciating hours and snap disc one of BF3 as soon as you unbox it, it's less of a game and more like anti-free will propaganda.

Written by Ashley Chittock. Read more http://ashleychittock.blogspot.co.uk