These moments make the experience.Īll nine maps that ship with Battlefield 3 are fantastic regardless of mode, and unlike Bad Company 2, you can play each map in any mode right out of the gate. I watched it crash about 100 feet in front of me, then hopped down to join the battle for the flag. As my teammates battled for flag control a couple of stories below me, I pulled out a stinger, locked onto my airborne attacker, and took the plane down with a homing rocket. Once my plane took too much punishment, I ejected and parachuted down to a nearby rooftop. After the opposing team lost a couple of vehicles, they sent their own fighter into the sky to hunt me down. During a match on the Operation Firestorm map, I was taking out enemy tanks by performing sweeping runs with my jet. The size of the maps, variety of vehicles, and overall scale make for some fantastic moments that couldn’t be recreated if you tried. Rush, Conquest, Team Deathmatch, and the squad variants are all solid modes.
It’s as annoying as ever to get picked off by camping recon players, but the kill cam and scope glint should tip observant players off to their locations. In a move that should please snipers and potentially annoy sniping victims, the ability to go prone returns. I loved both classes in Bad Company 2, so the ability to throw medkits and revive teammates while blasting away with assault weaponry is ideal. As with Bad Company 2, players can choose from four classes, but the assault and medic classes are now merged (with the now-open fourth slot dedicated to the LMG-toting, ammo-dropping support class). Rather than delivering sweeping changes to the series’ multiplayer format, DICE chose more subtle tweaks for Battlefield 3.
Battlefield 3 active players Pc#
Console multiplayer may not operate on as big of a scale as the PC version, but at least it doesn’t require you to deal with Battlelog every time you want to play the game or switch modes. Even with the lower player count, I noticed occasional lag during console multiplayer bouts that I never ran into on PC. Maps are scaled down to accommodate this lower limit, so PC players will be playing on giant versions of maps that console players will never see. These 24-player matches are great fun, but they don’t have the impact that massive 64-player PC battles do. While the slight step down in terms of graphical quality might irk some, the only significant gameplay difference is the 24-player limit on consoles. That said, character animations are smooth and realistic, explosions have significant weight to them, and environments get torn apart in showers of concrete and debris. During an intense firefight on a bridge, I noticed a helicopter chugging along at a drastically reduced framerate at one point. The framerate tops out at 30, but occasional dips will occur if there is a lot of concentrated activity or several incoming vehicles at the same time. The game looks gorgeous no matter what system you’re playing on, but you’ll notice more pop-in and framerate drops on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Playing Battlefield 3 on consoles is mostly the same experience as the PC version, but it’s not identical.
Whether you’re playing through the tense campaign or spending countless hours in multiplayer, Battlefield 3 greatly benefits from the stunning Frostbite 2 engine. With dozens of players battling across nine massive maps in tanks, jeeps, helicopters, jets, and on foot, multiplayer matches feel like a genuine war rather than a small-scale skirmish. While the Battlefield 3 campaign isn’t devoid of this feeling, its multiplayer offers a much more natural (and rewarding) sense of large-scale action. Being shuttled from one explosive set piece moment to another can be thrilling, but when this formula is overused it feels you’ve boarded an on-rails Disneyland ride. Modern first-person shooters have started to resemble big-budget Hollywood blockbusters in recent years, a trend that has received both praise and criticism from gaming audiences.