I really don't know what to make of this game. I've played it a small amount since release and i'm not really a massive fan. For a few reasons:
- Origin is a terrible program.
- Battlelog. What was so wrong with an in-game server browser? I'd really love to see the market research behind that move. Although I doubt that would be possible as it quite likely doesn't exist. Battlelog is a terrible platform that breaks constantly. There is no need for it in any way, shape or form.
- Some of the guns have a ridiculously small amount of recoil, like the MG36, or pretty much any assault rifle apart from the AN94. A foregrip with stock sights or the Kobra sight on any rifle and the game just becomes so easy.
- The fact that with the use of certain ammo, the USAS12 becomes a portable canon.
- Sniping is just stupid. You can shoot roughly a cm (on your screen not in-game) to the left or right of someone's head and it will register as a hit, which takes me to my next point:
- Roughly 100% of the time I hit people in the head with a sniper rifle, they just shrug it off. And no, i'm not missing. I don't really understand it myself, and i'm aware it happens to other people, it just seems to happen to me a lot more.
- The amount of damage that explosives do are beyond words. Shooting an RPG at someones feet i'm pretty confident would reduce them to a red mist, NOT ON BATTLEFIELD 3. Grenades are the same, although this can be a blessing, especially when playing Metro.
- The entire game just feels clumsy. The movement, the actions, everything just feels heavy and clunky. You can't clip objects effectively because the broken game engine makes your gun shudder as if you've got Parkinsons every time you change stance.
- The game is actually called Bad Company 3, but silly old EA forgot the Bad Company part on the box.
- The recreation of Karkand makes me desperately sad. They've taken a great map and made it horrible. The fact that you can go in almost any building means that as soon as you move from cover, you're shot by about 17 different people prone on a roof with a PKP or something similar.
- The fact that 100% of support players are completely retarded. It is not a hard class to play, you can point farm like no other kit because so few people use it. A well placed ammo bag is 800-1000 points easily. Plus people who actually have hands can stay alive for more than 4 kills and will need ammo rather than running around with an MP443.
- Anybody who has ever used a mortar needs to be banned from the game, and every subsequent Battlefield game.
- The game has such a large amount of things to customise and change, like sights, camos, gadgets etc. This is on one hand a good thing, as you can tailor the class you want to play to suit you specifically. On the other hand, I can't help but feel the game is over-complicated. The last FPS game I truly enjoyed online was CoD4, a relatively simple game if you compare it to the later incarnations of the same series. The same is true with BF2, it was simple. 7 classes, 1 default gun and 2 unlocks in each. Less is more.
- I shall end my bullet points on a positive note. The maps are actually pretty good. They've fucked Karkand up, but it's still a well designed and playable map if you play it intelligently. Sharqi is good, Oman is average but it was never anything more. The stock maps are good too, apart from the utterly hateful Seine Crossing, most of them are actually quite enjoyable. The CoD series hasn't managed to produce a decent map since 2007, so EA/Dice at least have an advantage on that one.
I just don't think the game works properly. It doesn't deserve to be the sequel to BF2. Yes BF2 had a whole other set of problems, but they were problems that weren't so major. The game was playable, and I found myself actively wanting to play the game. I have never really wanted to play BF3, I only ever play when my uni housemates or some friends from CoD4 want to play.
So to summarise my early morning result of not being able to sleep rant, and for those who need a TL;DR, the point is this. The game doesn't do anything catastrophically wrong, but in my opinion there is nothing remarkable about it either. I can't help but feel that Dice missed the mark on this one.