Nothing new. Awful campaign, forgettable multiplayer.
Campaign:
Yeah it's got pretty decent graphics, but it's nowhere near what I expected. There are serious texture pop-in issues, even though the environments can be noticeably bare. I understand that most people enjoy the multiplayer enough where they're willing to overlook the campaign, but I still love a single player mode (but perhaps should know better by now). The story is very linear, highly predictable and just blends together military themes from nearly every other shooter out there giving and overwhelming feeling of "haven't I been here before?" I basically kept waiting for it to end so I could say I gave it a chance and move on. It's also a strange combination of hand-holding and harshness. By that I mean you walk around 90% of the time with someone who has a "Follow" beacon over their head. They lead you down a seemingly endless shooting gallery until you finish the level. If you try to go a different path you get 15 seconds to rejoin the group or you fail. On the other hand there are numerous parts in the game where you have some unknown event you have to trigger with no way of knowing what to do. You basically have to fail numerous times starting back from some earlier spot, redoing the same path again and again until you finally complete said unknown event. Sometimes the game saves in a spot where you'll fail immediately as your game reloads, sending you into this infinite fail-reload loop until you restart from an earlier area. With that there are spots where you simply can't see who's shooting at you due to flashlights, fog, smoke, or even just pure darkness, but it ends up the same...you dead on the floor, reloading the check point and repeating the same part until you memorize where you keep getting hit from. Additionally, the AI NEVER pursues you unless you walk right up on them. They'll stay in their cover waiting for you because there's only one way to go, so you will eventually have to deal with them and from a head-on direction. If you see someone in front of you a distance away, you can remain behind your cover nearly indefinitely reloading, having a picnic or whatever because they'll never try to flank or anything.
The real gripe here is it's just not that interesting. It reminded me of that old "Lethal Enforcers" arcade game where you simply are brought from one place to another, clear the room and continue. They don't try to go another way, and you can't either, there is no choice, no tactics...just shoot or be shot. The overall feeling here is it's too difficult and too easy in all the wrong places.
I am completely aware that these games are not designed around their single player modes, but Battlefield 3 makes me wonder why they don't just admit their stories are sub-par and do away with the campaign entirely to put focus on what most people buy it for anyway.
Multiplayer:
I can see the draw here; the action can be pretty intense and you can build a character's weapons, unlocks etc, but frankly to me it was just not that fun. I'm not going to claim to be the best at multiplayer FPS's by any means so perhaps that is part of it. I didn't care for the insanely large areas where I'd run through an entire field to get scoped by someone and have to do it all again. Spawning on other players is a nice way to keep the squads together and cut down on the running. The class gadgets are also pretty interesting but not unique to BF3. But as it eventually comes down to playing the same matches again and again rinsing and repeating, I'd rather spend my gaming time playing something else that doesn't feel like a skin over a previous game without the fun.
All in all, I didn't HATE the game, but it didn't do much to stand on its own against the cluttered FPS field.
To each their own I suppose.