This story does appear elsewhere in a somewhat different form. What you will read here is a feature article and not a review. So if you want the review head over here.
For months now, probably before E3 2011, going back all the way to E3 2010; Electronic Arts has been touting the superiority of Battlefield 3 over Modern Warfare 3. Neither game was done. EA wasn't able to play MW3 but still, they felt it was superior. Perhaps it was their way of trying to carve out their piece of the modern military shooter that they couldn't grab with Medal of Honor.
Which as history has shown is a multibillion dollar genre and virtually completely the territory of Activision, Infinity Ward, and Treyarch. But as with so many other things that Activsion has stumbled upon: World of Warcraft, Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk, etc...Everyone is waiting for Activision to misstep or just beat people over the head with the genre one too many times. But so far, the modern military shooter has a hallowed place in the halls of gamers everywhere.
Everyone from high school kids to thirty year olds can be found on the XBOX LIVE or Playstation Network all most every day of the week playing either Call of Duty Black Ops or Modern Warfare 2. Of course, this is a proving year for Activision after a significant loss of staff at Infinity Ward it was necessary to call on the talents of Sledgehammer Games to work on part of the current release. It's hard to say beyond broad strokes what the involvement of each studio was and there is certainly some speculation that more than the two studios were involved in the development this time. Appearing from a spectators vantage point that this game was an, “all hands on deck.” affair where things had to be done right and properly if they were going to make their ship date.
So EA, after creating a mediocre at best shooter with Medal of Honor. Decided to get Battlefield 3 out there to take on Modern Warfare 3. Which is great on a bullet point or a PR board. But in practice it is a little more complicated.
Battlefield 3 is an excellent first person shooter. Battlefield does multiplayer better than anyone else. Mostly because the game allows the player to not only shoot their opponents, unlock weapons and gadgets, and of course level up. But because the player can pilot a jet, tank, helicopter, or just hop into an Anti-Aircraft gun and shoot a tank with it. Yes, players can shoot tanks with an Anti-Aircraft gun, not that I would recommend doing so. The scale of warfare is much broader than running around in an arena and shooting people. This is similar to the difference between Quake and Unreal Tournament. The field of battle is much larger and the sense of being with a battle zone is much greater.
Modern Warfare usually feels more like Football. There is no pretense, it is just a group of players against another group of players. Not that there is a lot of pretense in Battlefield but rarely does the player feel like they are just running around shooting each other. There are stories that come out of Battlefield 3 that aren't going to come out of an infantry shooter. The pace is slower, the game requires the player to have more than fast reflexes. There are tactics, practices to remember, and definitely a learning curve steeper than Modern Warfare, Doom, or anything similar. Where all of this falls apart is that the single player is absolute garbage.
While garbage is a bit harsh. I have to explain where this is coming from. The beginning of the campaign contains no less than 3 quicktime events. Which having quicktime events in a FPS smacks of at best laziness. The second scene of the game which features flashbacks prominently which leads directly to a group of soldiers the player isn't introduced to and couldn't care less about. The main character isn't given any prologue or back story; so what difference does all this make? None... In fact, for the first few minutes of the game the player isn't really assigned a particular character at all.
Then we are rushed into a mission that involves the beginning of sets of wonderfully inept non-quicktime, quicktime events where if the player doesn't perform EXACTLY as the game requires they will simply be shot and die. No variation, no deviation, just do what we say or die! Which wouldn't necessarily be that bad for the beginning of a game. But it never gets any better. The designer perhaps, had a vision for the game. But they have a very inelegant, heavy handed way of implementing that vision. Just to make sure the player is further separated from getting their bearings, the game then changes everything with an earthquake. I won't go through the whole process blow by blow. But of all the things they copied from Medal of Honor and Call of Duty they SHOULD have copied the small amount of freedom the player to is given so they don't feel like they are being bolted to a rail and thrown down a straight line.
Of course, there is also the matter of this game obviously a PC port to consoles. Where the PC version is graphically so much better than the console version that no matter how much work the developers put in, they can't get them to look the same. This is, of course, a technical issue on the part of the console. Not so much a problem of the developers skills or abilities. After all, it's not DICE's fault that XBOX 360 and PS3 can't render in DIRECTX11. This is cold comfort to console players, of course, that paid the same $60 that their PC counterparts did. Which will, in the end effect sales. Because no matter how much everyone wants to deny it these days. The PC market for AAA titles only exists for Blizzard. Not even Call of Duty is usually very concerned about their PC numbers.
Why? Not because the medium is dead. Just not quite the same as the console market. The console market, no matter how much we want to say otherwise is a more causal market than the PC market. Console players may spend $600 every 5-10 years. But PC players can spend that same $600 every other year for a new graphics card or even a whole new computer which can cost upwards of $1,000. These guys are the same folks that bought flight sticks to fly helicopters and jets in past Battlefield games. But there are probably, far fewer of them than the millions who buy and XBOX or Playstation. This is the reason why console development is usually so important and PC development is usually an after thought.
This is a case of DICE and EA overreaching. There was no need to have a single player campaign in a Battlefield game. Most fans of the series rolled their eyes when this was announced. The only reason to include a single player campaign, is to compete with Modern Warfare 3. Which if the game shipped with a large amazing multiplayer, much like it did. Would have been enough to get the game a large amount of sales. But Battlefield 3 is a much more hardcore, complicated game than Modern Warfare 3 and this is evident to anyone who plays it. But that's not what Modern Warfare fans want. They want more of the same. The people who love Battlefield will either play both or play Battlefield over Modern Warfare. There won't be a huge land rush, there won't be paradigm shift. Because that's not what makes Call of Duty games popular.
Battlefield 3's numbers wouldn't be any smaller today without the calling out of Modern Warfare 3. Without that calling out of Modern Warfare 3; would there be the single player? It's hard to say, but I think losing both would probably have worked much better for all involved.
