HomePlatformPCBattlefield 3 PC Review

Battlefield 3 PC Review

Conquest, and it’s variants, are a staple in the Battlefield series. Players are tasked with capturing and holding flags placed on the map in order to increase their own ticket count and to bleed their opponents to zero. The maps are quite large and are incredibly fun to play, especially with an incredibly large player count. In conquest, the positioning of vehicles is incredibly important over the course of the battle. It is quite useless to have a tank in a compromising position for longer than it needs to be, placing it further back and bombing from a distance is one of the most effective ways of using the mobile artillery. Moreso, rushing an APC full of troops into an enemy’s control point and using a flash strike to take them out will yield favorable results. In this game type, it is also important to utilise all of your classes in a skillful manner. Is a tank in your control point, switch to engineer and blow it to bits. Your soldiers being gunned down in a choke point? Switch to assault and lay down the health kits. A team with incredible teamwork makes this fun for everyone.

Team Deathmatch and it’s variants are played on smaller sections of most of the maps available within the game. These are an incredibly fun experience as they capture the feel of Deathmatch quite well. It’s just you, your skill, and your opponents skill in tandem with the amount of teamwork your team possesses. In a fully Co-Operative environment this can create an amazingly fun experience for players. In this gametype, the goal is to kill a set amount of enemies to win. There are no vehicles which makes it much more tactical or fast-paced, depending on your play style.

Lastly, we have the Rush gametypes. In Rush, players are tasked with either attacking M-Com stations by attaching explosives to them, or defending the M-Com stations by killing the attacking team. What makes this gametype unique is that the defending team has unlimited troops, whereas the attacking team have only a limited amount. This means that the defending team needs to be less focused on strategy and just need to focus on the defence, while the attacking team must play smart in order to keep their troop count high enough to finish the map. Everytime a pair of M-Com stations are destroyed, the map moves up and the defenders will be tasked with defending the new station. This happens a few times until the attackers have successfully rushed the defending team right to the end and won; or the defenders have wiped out the attackers army. This is probably my favorite gametype as it involves speed, cunning and tactics to complete. The maps also feature vehicles, which can be instrumental to winning the match.

In addition to running and gunning across the various gametypes, players are also able to rank up their soldier and their respective kits. This adds incentive to the player to not only play the way they want to within each kit (and unlocking various attachments for each weapon) but to also mix up their strategies in order to suit the situation. Each promotion is a step-up in terms of upgrades to your overall loadout, with each rank up yielding a new weapon or upgrade. However, ranking up kits will yield class specific weaponry and attachments, making it pivotal to play every role as it is needed. However, if you find yourself lacking in a particular class (like sniping), you can swap the rifle for a shotgun and rank it up that way. This adds replayability and and increasing challenge to the game, as you’ll run out of weapons that you’re proficient with and you’ll likely want to fully upgrade every weapon. So while you can always play with your favorites, completionists will have to use weapons that they are unproficient in, thus adding challenge.

In addition to competitve multiplayer, the game features a pretty decent co-operative campaign. The Co-Op mode is built for two players but it would feel more complete if it had been open to four players.

In the Co-operative mode, players work together to complete common objectives in a pre-built environment. This means that the objectives and levels are always the same, and this can make them predictable. It does score you on how well you do, so having this pre-built scripted gameplay makes it more competitve, while retaining the co-operative element. Co-Op also features unique unlocks for you to use in the competitive environment. So you may want to tackle this content with some friends just to unlock the content if co-op isn’t your cup of tea. In my opinion, the co-op is a welcome change of pace from the competitve multiplayer and the not as good single player components; even if you’re going to play it for 5-10mins at a time.

Overall:
Battlefield 3 is an amazing package that all PC gamers should be picking up at some point. One of the only flaws with the game is the single player component, but even that isn’t so bad. The game is a must have for all players who are fans of the series, as well as players who would like a highly tactical, yet competitve, shooter that brings out the best in their machines. Playing war with big vehicles, an array of weaponry and having that co-operation with other players is what truly makes playing this game worthwhile. So if you like teamwork, this is the game for you.

9-5-capsules-out-of-10

Benjamin Webb
Benjamin Webbhttp://www.facebook.com/linkageax
Gaming for as long as my memory serves me, probably longer.