NOTE: This is NOT a review, but my first thoughts upon playing.
First of all, I know that Battlefield 3 is basically a multiplayer game. But DICE has managed to push in what they call a single player campaign with it as well. But how does that campaign fare? Can it stand on its own? Facing a lack of good single player games on my platform of choice, PC, these days, I decided to take Battlefield 3's SP campaign out for a spin.
(It might be noteworthy that I prefer Rush to Conquest in terms of MP. I pretty much game by myself, and working with a team of strangers online for a Conquest match or other team-heavy type of game never works out. Just my preference. Hence why I prefer SP gaming in general. Playing with unknown people over the net never seems pleasurable to me.)
On with the show. Starting up the campaign, and I'm presented with a difficulty selection. I'm no FPS expert or masochist, so Normal it is.
Our story begins with the player character, later identified as a Sergeant Blackburn, somehow crashing through a window into a moving train, for some reason equipped only with a pistol. The actual introduction to the story starts a little while later when you come across what looks like a bomb in the train, and then the story moves to several hours earlier in the timeline, and Sergeant Blackburn is in some deep shit. The story is like that in Black Ops, only without the whole messing with the player's mind part. Blackburn is being questioned, and the missions he describes are what we play in the game. Simple enough, and serves the purpose of stringing a variety of missions together.
The first thing I noticed was that this campaign is really Quick Time Event (QTE) happy. Melee combat? What melee combat? Press SPACE when it tells you to, press LMB when it tells you to, yawn while you do, and your enemy is down. Sure, it works well with many other games, but with BF3, they seem out of place, and the fact that you almost can't fail these QTEs are also a contributory factor to my negativity about them.
The first mission (after the "prologue-ish" train section), Operation Swordbreaker is the only mission I completed so far. Went half way into the next mission, and then stopped for now. Main reason is that the game is boring. There's no incentive to move forward. And when you attempt to move forward despite that fact, you come across silly annoyances such as the game wanting to hold your hand through the simplest of things.
Eg1: You are crawling through a sewer with only a knife in hand. Suddenly, a rat pops up. You're ready to knife it, but you realize that you no longer have control of your character. The game takes over, aims the knife at the rat for you, and gives a too convenient button press prompt, and you just need to click the mouse and be done with the rat. I mean it's a simple thing. But why was that QTE necessary? Why did they want to focus on that rat so much? Sure, having a rat in a sewer brings up realism, but IMO, it's not necessary to focus so much on stabbing that rat, and it's not necessary at all for the game to do the bulk of such a simple task. The player should have been able to finish the rat off with a simple melee attack and be on his way. I know, just a small issue, but read on.
Eg2: You're in the midst of a heavy firefight, and a squad member gets shot. The others instruct you to move the injured soldier to cover. Should be simple enough. But once again, when you go near him, you lose control, and the game takes over. Keep pressing SPACE every two seconds, and the game carries the soldier for you. WTF? Why was a QTE needed there at all?
Keep in mind, these aren't the only ridiculous QTEs that you come across. Simply put, QTEs that add nothing to the gameplay, and weren't necessary at all. But they added those.
Now moving up to the next issue I faced. Ridiculous objectives. At one point in Operation Swordbreaker, the game instructs the player to pick up an LMG and mow down an oncoming wave of enemies. The LMG is at the middle of a metal bridge over a road. Go there, crouch behind a metal section, and start shooting. But in a little while, you're getting shot. Oopsie! Forgot that this is Frostbite 2 with realistic environment damage. That's okay. Time to run to a different cover point. Wait, WHAT? The game tells you to go back to the old spot. But why on Earth would anyone want to go back there and get shot? The game wants you to mow down the enemies while being shot. The game hates you and doesn't want you in the safety of cover while taking down enemies. The enemies aren't challenging, though, so passing that point (at least under Normal difficulty) was not a problem.
Moving on to the next mission, I faced the biggest problem yet. In the dark, I was moving below about three enemy soldiers, and decided to see if I could sneak past. I failed, and was shot in the back. Okay, time to respawn. But wait? What is this? I'm being respawned at the exact same point with those three guys BEHIND ME??
So, well, more to come, I guess, though I'm not sure. But one thing, I can say. If the rest of the game is like this, CoD4, CoDMW2 and CoDBO have much better campaigns than BF3. If you're a single player gamer looking to have few hours of military shooter fun, MW3 will most probably be the better choice. After all, it has to be. Because if it isn't, it's better to stay off both SP campaigns.
No comments:
Post a Comment