BF3 falls well short of the high expectations, but it can still be a fun multi-player experience.
Now, enter BF3.....the game can be marred by random lag, horribly unbalanced teams, weird gameplay & graphic glitches, & some level 100 guy in a tank that has killed you 10 times and just won't seem to die.
The Battlefield series is certainly not for everyone. Other than the 'Bad Company' spin-off games, the series usually has awful single-player. Unfortunately, BF3 is no exception. The campaign is a crappy 'Modern Warfare' knock-off that fails to live up to even the weakest expectations I had for it. It's boring, cliched, & just a waste of time. Why DICE can't seem to give a consistently fun single-player experience is beyond me. I know most people don't purchase this game for the campaign, it is still worth noting. I was one of the people who actually enjoyed the light-hearted feel and humor of the 'Bad Company' campaigns & characters, so it was a disappointment to have to slog through an awful COD wanna-be.
Like I said earlier, however, most will purchase this game for the online multi-player. And that's where BF3 really shines.....sometimes. If you have played any other game in the series, then you will feel right at home with this new game. Does it revolutionize the genre? No, not at all. It's fun, but it's disappointing that the game has actually gotten worse in some areas.
Things like lag, grossly unbalanced teams, no tutorial (which the campaign should, at minimum, accomplish......but fails), no indication on how each weapon stacks up against each other, clunky interface when dealing with your kits mid-game, gigantic maps & lack of transport vehicles, an over-reliance on squad based gameplay when most people play like idiots, and my #1 pet-peeve with this series.......overpowered vehicles......all still try to ruin your enjoyment.
About that last point, as it's been my pet-peeve with this series for years. And BF3 takes it to a new level......overpowered vehicles. Now I am, obviously, aware that a tank should be something that is very difficult to kill. And if BF3's vaunted "team play" actually worked, then taking down a tank with a squad should be very possible. The problem is that hardly anyone plays as a team and trying to take down vehicles alone is almost certain death. It takes several rockets to even disable a tank. You could hit it with the 'Javelin', which is nice at a distance. But if you are up close, it is worthless. And even if you do hit it, it sometimes just "disables" the tank. At this point the driver can still shoot you, hop out, and then repair the tank. If the tank is "disabled", why can it still move and shoot? This is ridiculous.
Another problem with trying to take down vehicles is the unlimited smoke/flare ammo that they have. When trying to hit a helicopter or jet with a 'Stinger', the aircraft can let out flares to make your shots miss. And by the time you reload the weapon, the flares have already reloaded and you can't hit them. This usually results in death. It's the same thing with the tanks and their 'Smoke' option. This is added to the fact that only 2 classes in the game can even damage vehicles in the first place. While in past BF games, the Recon class could laser designate a vehicle for a bomb drop, here that ability has been taken away. Recon can still designate, which does enable an Engineer to hit air vehicles with a 'Javelin' (which is ridiculous that you can't do it anyways), but you are still relying on someone else to kill the vehicle for you.
Also, I thought DICE making the sniping in the game much more difficult was a good thing at first. I never snipe and barely did in past BF games. I am just not very good at it. And it was frustrating to get sniped all the time, but snipers were a key component in taking out vehicles in the old games. In BF3, they have been nerfed to the point that hardly anyone uses the Recon class correctly. Which leads to more vehicles staying on the battlefield and more people whoring the tanks......and more frustration for the rest of us. I would estimate well over HALF my deaths are due to tanks, choppers, or jets.
Another major problem is the inconsistent hit detection of the weapons. I admit that this sometimes probably saves my life and gets me a kill, since everyone has to deal with it. But how can I unload a clip right in front of someone and not hit them at least a few times? And then they hit me doing the same thing?
Great example of this......some lvl 100 guy was owning the server in a tank. It was getting ridiculous and beyond boring/annoying. So a squad member and me finally destroyed his tank (after many deaths). He hops out of the tank (of course, costing us a kill), right in front of me and my squadmate. He proceeds to hop around like a rabbit and kills my teammate while we are both unloading on him RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM. Then after he kills my teammate, he hops behind me in about a sec., and knifes me in the back. Both of us dead. That is insane and ridiculous. And that is just an example of what you may run into online.
My main gripe I have with this game, & I am sure we could all agree on this, is how frustrating unbalanced teams can be in an online FPS. BF3 takes it to new lows & DICE seems intent on doing nothing about it. Most matches I join are some slaughter of one team while the other is sitting outside of their spawn with tanks, vehicles, snipers, and rocket launchers. Sure it REALLY sucks to be on the losing side of this, but it just isn't much fun to be on the winning side either. How do you fix this? Well, force balance the teams. I have lost track of how many times I have entered some 12 v 8 massacre that could have been fixed if DICE would just put some sort of team auto-balance in play. Part of the problem is the players' attitudes themselves, as most would rather give up their left nut than switch over to help the losing team. I get that & don't blame DICE for that. But in that case, you have to FORCE people to do it. If it's 12 v 6 for more than a set amount of time, force switch a couple players over.
This can't and will not happen due to DICE insisting on emphasizing the squad gameplay mechanic. Do you switch entire squads? Do you piss people off by breaking up their squads so they can't play with their friends for a little while? I can understand some people would get upset if they got switched, but a HUGE key to any online FPS is competitive balance. So if the whiners don't like it, tell them to switch on their own. Either way, you are pissing people off, so why not at least give the game competitive balance?
The problem with all of this is that DICE wants & says their game is more realistic than other shooters. That is the biggest load of crap I have ever heard. I have long since lost track of all the times I have dropped my controller out of disbelief (and yelling obscenities) that I just got killed or didn't get a kill when I clearly should have. And I have been playing online shooters for MANY years (including previous BF games) and BF3 really is frustrating in this area.
And sure, all of these things don't pop up every game, but they do frequently enough to frustrate. The problem is that these things could be easily fixed, but apparently DICE has better things to do? And with the hype and all of the years that this series has had to refine it's craft, you think that we wouldn't be dealing with this crap anymore. I guess that's too much to ask.
While the overall experience with this game could be a very fun one depending on your tastes, BF3 has a lot of love/hate it features about it that may not be for everyone. Some of the problems I have with the game (the "overpowered" vehicles, for ex.) are more personal issues that others may not mind or may actually enjoy. I would recommend trying this game to any fan of the series, but if you are new, you may have a very steep learning curve to climb. And the game doesn't offer much help along the way.
While I may continue to try to enjoy the game online, I am very disappointed that this game didn't move the 'online shooter' genre forward like I was hoping it would & it even added some new problems. This is just the same old BF with a prettier new graphic engine & some problems that should have been worked out by now.
I did like the 'Bad Company' games better and would recommend those to anyone who wants a great BF experience on the cheap. For the rest of you, BF3 is a good game. Just don't go expecting anything more than that.