Battlefield 3 (PC)

Today I'm taking a quick look at relatively recent Modern Warfare clone Battlefield 3, though considering the length of military shooters these days I may accidentally finish the whole thing. So there's a non-zero chance that I'll end up spoiling the entire game's plot here, consider yourself warned.

I've heard a few rumours around that the game's multiplayer mode is fantastic, far better than the single player campaign, so I'm of course going to ignore it entirely. Not that I've got anything against multiplayer, it's just not really what I do here.

(Click the images to view them at 1280x720 res. Not exactly mindblowing I know but it's the best I can do with my ancient relic of a PC).

Well thanks for taking me the official site and showing off your Battlelog system Origin, but do you think you could load the game now? No?

Wait... oh no. Oh fuck no, you have to be shitting me. This isn't the actual menu for Battlefield 3 is it? I have to download a plug-in and launch my single player campaign through a web browser? Seriously? Well it's innovative, I'll give it that.

Hilariously my internet actually cut out for hours just when I wanted to load up the game, but this did give me an opportunity to test its offline functionality. Thankfully I can confirm that Battlefield 3's campaign mode bypasses the browser entirely when you run Origin in offline mode, so the game has no online requirement. Of course I'm the only person on Earth who actually wants to play it for the single player mode, but still it's good to know.

Oh damn this game is pretty, in a drab and murky kind of way. I have no idea what I'm doing on a train or why these people are about to shoot me, but it seems like a crime to fire back and blow a hole through polygons so well crafted and rendered. Not that it's going to stop me.

I don't know what I'm more surprised about right now: the fact that I'm fighting a QTE battle 30 seconds into a military shooter, or that they actually bothered to draw a mouse icon for the PC version.

After successfully clicking the left mouse button, my character gets the courage to punch his assailant in the face, grab his AK, shoot out the window behind him, and kick the guy right out of the speeding train. Man, that's good value for one click. The moment was kind of ruined though when I looked out of the window and discovered that his dead body was floating alongside the train as if the ground wasn't flying by at 30mph.

After getting into a second situation he couldn't QTE his way out of (yet), our hero flashes back to eight hours ago when he was held for questioning by a couple of CIA agents who remind him that he exists in a world of shit right now, but answering their questions may improve his situation.

This is Gideon Emery as Sgt. Blackburn by the way, known for playing roles such as Fenris in Dragon Age II and Balthier in Final Fantasy XII. I don't just mean that it's his voice, this is actually what the guy looks like, and these graphics are so impressive (to me) that I can't tell if this cutscene is real time or prerendered.

Oh shit it's Agent Pierce from 24! The voice acting here is excellent by the way, even though the characters are being annoyingly vague about everything. No one's allowed to explain why Blackburn's being questioned or why he's in a world of shit, as it'd give away all the twists, so we have to go into another flashback to start filling in the gaps. You know, I'm no expert when it comes to storytelling, but having the framing story be a flashback itself seems a little off to me somehow.

First up Agent Pierce wants to know about the first time that Blackburn heard about 'Solomon and the PLR', so we're jumping back 9 months to Operation Swordbreaker in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq.


LEVEL 2: OPERATION SWORDBREAKER.

Alright Blackburn's team is here to rescue another squad who dropped out of contact while investigating a possible IED in a bad part of town, and our CO believes that the PLR may be involved. So there we go, we've heard of the PLR now, mystery solved, can we end this flashback now? No?

After jogging down a few blocks we were suddenly ambushed by enemies using the glare as cover, and returned fire. I'd love to run over to the left and shoot them all as they appear, but it turns out it doesn't take much to make those cars explode so I'm keeping my distance for the time being.

The combat in this seems fairly typical for a post-Modern Warfare military shooter, with an emphasis on using my weapon's sights and shooting barely visible figures in the distance before they shoot me. I should probably be hiding behind cover as well, but I figure that if I shoot them before they shoot me then that shouldn't be necessary.

Well, fuck. Two second later I get sniped by an RPG from that guy on the right side of the balcony and instantly blown to pieces. Guess that finding cover wouldn't have done much much good anyway. Oh, you can't see the guy on the right? Me neither, but then I can barely even see the one that I'm aiming at.

Back to the last checkpoint then. Though I gotta say, the checkpoints seem to be very reasonably spaced out in this, so kudos to DICE for that.


SOON.

After getting bored of getting blown up in a car park, my squad decided to take a shortcut through the buildings (all entirely scripted of course) and we soon found the IED. I was sent off alone down an air vent to follow the cable and disconnect the detonator, and to my utter shock it didn't lead me straight into an ambush. Yet.

Though I did find a pair of exploding pink teddy bears, which is kinda fucked up. Man, now I'm imagining Blackburn sitting in that office back in the (near) present day explaining all this to the CIA guys in detail.

So then I was sent down to follow the cable through some vents and... are you sure this is all relevant? Shouldn't I be skipping ahead to the part which involves the terror plot threatening New York?

If at some point I want you to skip ahead Sergeant, I will make that desire readily apparent. Now then, you were describing how you were in the process of finding and disarming a bomb 9 months ago. Please continue.

Agh, that face! It shall haunt my nightmares forever. Man, I do a lot of typing on keyboards (as you've probably noticed), but it's funny how long it took me to find the 'E' key when I was in the middle of being jumped by a grinning lunatic eager to perform some unarmed dentistry. Yeah I know it's right next to the WASD keys, but I redefined my movement keys so my hands were elsewhere at the time. Looks like the QTE didn't get the memo.

By the way I should probably mention here that I think that QTE sequences are a irredeemable blight on gaming and should all be destroyed. Not that they entirely ruin everything they touch, Tomb Raider and Saints Row IV are infected with them and they're still two of my favourite games this year; but stick them in an already frustrating game and they do nothing but piss me off.

I mean it's not even like it's a challenge. 'Can you find the 'E' key? You can? Well you get to continue then!' How about games start following Mass Effect 2's lead and add a cutscene interrupt button or two instead? Wouldn't giving players the ability to make a choice and set a cutscene down an alternate path be far a more entertaining use of all this time in the mocap studio? Different versions of success rather than success/failure.

I came back out to rejoin my team only to find them under attack by enemies down the street. So they yell at me to run out across the open walkway and man a machine gun. Yeaaaaaahhhhh... no.

I may have regenerating health in this, but it only takes around four hits in a row before I'm out. Right now I'm behind as much cover as there is up here right now and they still managed to knock my regenerating health down into the red before I even made it halfway across. The rest of the bridge is even more exposed as they shot the metal panels to pieces right in front of my eyes.

Man, you seriously do not want to poke your head out into the open when there's enemies around in this game, they'll destroy you.

Well I can't say I saw this twist coming. Well on the bright side, those enemies down the street suddenly have something other than me to focus on. Like digging themselves out from under tons of rubble.

So I completed my objective, but ended up caught in a massive earthquake. Anyway that's basically the story of my first encounter with the PLR. So about that impending terror attack...

You and I both know that I'm not letting you leave this story hanging on a cliffhanger. Continue Sergeant, or I'll bury you somewhere you can't dig yourself back out of.

LEVEL 3: UPRISING.

Well there's nothing much to say really, I woke up in the debris a few hours later to find that my sidearm and rifle had both gone mysteriously missing and PLR troops were searching the area for survivors.

How long were you unconscious? Were you out for six hours? Eight? It's important. Actually it's not important at all, I'm just going to say shit during the cutscenes between each level to make them seem like they have some kind of relevance to the larger narrative.

I was still shaky as hell when I pulled myself out so I don't know. It was dark. Hey is that a train outside?

Oh okay fine, I crawled around in the dark for a bit armed with a knife, trying to stay out of sight. Fortunately besides a QTE battle with a rat I was able to avoid the surrounding hostiles until I was able to secure a replacement weapon. Then I backtracked through the same areas as in the last level, except in the dark.

Hold on, a QTE rat battle? Do I look amused Sergeant?

No seriously, I had an actual QTE battle with a rat, in a modern military shooter that otherwise takes itself painfully seriously.

Anyway the rest of the level only served to reinforce my theory that shooting hard to see enemies in the dark isn't any fun when they have no problems at all seeing you. After backtracking through the ruins of the previous level and taking part in another 'kill everyone you see down the street' turret section I hopped onboard an Osprey and that was that.

I'm not a huge fan of forced turret sequences, but I like Ospreys so it all evens out in the end I suppose.

Tell me about your interaction with Lieutenant Colby Hawkins? She was an F-18 pilot.

She? Don't know her.

Seven months after the earthquake your squad was carrying out BDA after airstrikes in the northern quarter of Tehran. She took part in one of those airstrikes.

Oh! Well in that case: her story begins in the Persian Gulf aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, as she steps into a hallway to meet up with her co-pilot...

LEVEL 4: GOING HUNTING.

No seriously why am I playing as Lt. Jennifer Coleby Hawkins in Blackburn's flashback when he clearly knows nothing about the woman? Also why can't I control my legs or turn my head?

I have to say though that they really have put an impressive amount of effort into this corridor considering that it's basically just the backdrop for a single cutscene. Also this other pilot is eerily realistic looking as well, like he's had the photograph of someone's face mapped onto his model.

Oh oh, I've just figured out what this reminds me of. A man carrying on a one-sided conversation with the camera (representing the player's point of view) while the two of them walk around on autopilot... it's basically an FMV cutscene from some ancient 3DO game rendered in real time! How far video games have come.

I... wow.

Well, I suppose I could complain about the fact that there's smudgy camera glare on screen before she's put her helmet on, but Blackburn has that problem too. People in the Battlefield 3 universe just have really dirty eyes I guess.

You know, I don't usually have time for games that try to put story and atmosphere ahead of gameplay to the point where all the player has left to do is press the occasional button when it flashes up on screen, but honestly at this point they didn't even need to give me a button to press. They've got my undivided attention.

The graphics, the muffled voices over the radio, the scratches across the canopy catching the light, everything here is dead on perfect at selling the idea that this is what it's like to climb inside an F-18, and I kinda want to climb into an F-18.

So we're really going to run through all the pre-flight checks before take off then? Checking the flaps on each wing, testing the weapons and countermeasures... hey wait a minute, they're trying to sneak a stealth tutorial on me! Not that I'm complaining, it all helps to set up the atmosphere.

In fact I'm mostly just hypnotised by those waves right now.

'Wow, yet another screenshot from inside the F-18?', wonders everyone reading this.

Screw you guys, I've been wanting to fly one of these ever since I first watched Independence Day, so I'm sharing as many screenshots as I feel like! They've made me the gunner so I don't actually get to do any flying, but hey they've let me sit in the back so I'm not complaining.

Handling weapons turns out to mostly involve turning my head to keep the enemy fighters in view, while the planes carry out their dogfighting routine. It's funny, this is basically just another turret level, as simple as they come, but it's brought to life by the presentation.

'Point the green circle at the orange diamond' becomes a lot more fun when you do it at a few thousand feet above Tehran with people yelling in your ear I guess. It's definitely a whole lot more entertaining than those tedious black and white fuzzy video screen 'paint the target for the airstrike' levels that other modern military shooters love to include.


60 SECONDS LATER.

Oh.

Well as these levels go it's not so bad I guess. I sure took care of all those tiny plane shaped silhouettes!

That's a nice story. I don't see how it connects.

Do I have to draw you a map?

That would actually be awesome, thanks.

Well... I'm not going to do that.

Let's quickly change the subject. Tell us how you found the nuke in Tehran.

Whoa, hold on there sir, you're getting dangerously close to asking me about something actually relevant to the plot.

The mission took place in October, seven months after my epic rat battle. I was sent in with a team to Iraq to locate the leader of the PLR and cut the problem off at the head. But what I found in there was something very different (it was a nuke).

LEVEL 5: OPERATION GUILLOTINE.

Oh cool, another smoky night time level with lights shining right in my eyes, because lens flares never get old.

"Enemy footmobiles on the hill!" yells someone in my squad, like I know what that means.
"Suppress those MG positions so we can move up!" they plead. "Come on, frag them!"

They repeat this as I run up to the wall, they repeat it I run along in front of the guns from cover to cover, they repeat it I sneak right up to the MG nests and just shoot everyone in them. They even repeat it as I leave the area entirely, joining the rest of my troops as they enter the buildings in the background. I'm half tempted to go back and throw a grenade to see if it shuts them up, but then backtracking is strictly forbidden in this.

Plus the way the grenade indicator works in this I'd likely end up throwing it at my own feet and not realise it until my own feet were sent flying across the rooftops.

Oh, it seems that going anywhere is forbidden actually. No invisible wall or impassable pile of trash here, the game just straight forbids me from straying from the chosen path. I don't actually mind this kind of thing in open world games where they have to stop you from straying beyond the borders of reality, but in this it's just another reminder that the game owns me and that my independent thought and curiosity must be suppressed.


SOON.

Well events took place, but it was dark so I couldn't really see them clearly. All that's important is that I hid behind a lot of walls, shot a lot of dudes in the distance, and I ended up in a bank vault somehow. Apparently intel suggested that the leader of the PLR would be here, but all my squad found was a three nuke box with two nukes missing and a table full of schemes.

But my boss tells us to leave the intel as there's no time. There's no time for a squad of highly trained soldiers wearing backpacks to stash the stuff lying on this desk. Two nukes missing, notes mentioning Paris and New York... nah there's nothing here that could really be that important. Idiots.

How many portable devices did you see in the bank vault?

Just one, with spaces for three.

Just because I see a couple of lights at night doesn't mean I saw a goddamn UFO. I believe Elvis is still alive too. But I'm not buying tickets for any fucking shows.

Sorry, I'll shut up now.

So Sergeant Blackburn, I take it that you don't know about Paris.

Tell me what happened in Paris.

We don't know any more than you do.

But you just implied that... oh fine, let's play through a Paris level that apparently no one in this room knows about then.

Though considering the context of this conversation, don't expect me to be shocked if the city ends up as a smoking radioactive crater by the end of this story.

LEVEL 6: COMRADES.

This time I'm playing as a trio of Russian GRU operatives who have broken into this building to stop the Paris nuke. The vague response by Agent Pierce in the last cutscene when pressed on what happened here, plus the fact that these three have only just been introduced to the story has me worried about their chances though. I mean the laws of storytelling clearly state that demonstrating that devastating failure and the death of a leading character can happen midway through the story dramatically raises the tension in the third act as it indicates that anything can happen.

Also you wouldn't believe how many times I've seen that friendly fire message pop up. It's kind of an inevitable side effect of having barely visible enemies that are barely dressed differently to my crew unfortunately. But on the plus side it's always been tolerated, so no big crisis so far.

Damn, just as I was about to compliment the bold colourful Mirror's Edge style art design on this level they went and messed up my vision so I can't see it anymore.

There's two enemies dead ahead by the way, in case you can't see me cutting them down with gunfire. Yes I do have to fight terrorists with the screen like this, no it's not making any appreciable difference to my ability to spot targets. I was crap at it before, I'm crap at it now.

Am I supposed to chase the guy carrying the nuke or wait for him here then? Are those police down there or terrorists? Do I open fire on them? How is it that I'm looking down an open street on a clear sunny day and I still can't see a bloody thing?

Fuck it, I'm going back inside to look through some postcards I saw on a stand. It's only fair to the art team that I take in all of the details after all.


A SHORT RACE THROUGH THE STREETS LATER.

Team GRU actually caught up to the guy with the nuke bag in the end! QTE'd that bastard right onto the tracks in front of a speeding train. Turns out that he was only a decoy though, as these cunning terrorists think of everything.

And Paris goes boom.

Hey, do you think Blackburn's team should have spent the time to get that intel from the room we found the nuke in earlier? You know, the papers explaining when and where this attack would happen. Might have helped change the outcome here maybe... just saying.


LEVEL 7: THUNDER RUN.

Now we're playing as a guy called Miller, first seen playing with a toy dinosaur belonging to his son. That basically counts as a spoiler as now there's no way he's making it out of this alive. He might as well have announced he was two days from retirement.

Anyway I'm driving a tank on this level. Actually driving it this time, not just firing the guns! Don't ask how any of this relates to the search for the final nuke though.

Now I get to try to hit moving targets with cannon shells, yay.

Eventually after driving through a desert, through a base, down a highway, past suicide cars and RPGs, I eventually reached Tehran itself and approached the bank where Blackburn and the others were still trapped with the nuke. Then I covered their escape with machine gun fire for 20 seconds before coming to an inevitable tragic end live on Terrorist TV at the hands of the main antagonist.

So after all that, it turns out that Miller's sole relevance to the storyline was that he eventually turned up outside a bank our hero was at and helped out a bit. Well worth an entire flashback that was.


LEVEL 9: NIGHT SHIFT.

Hey, you know what would be cool right about now? A level set in smoky darkness with lights shining in my eyes!

I'm supposed to be covering my team from up here as they raid two apartments below looking for the PLR leader. My first instinct was to shoot out the lights, because it'd make my dudes harder for the enemy to see and because my first mission on this level was to shoot out some other lights in a similar looking location for similar reasons, but nope, doesn't work.

Fortunately I've got a night vision scope, which is basically awesome as it give me a clear view of the enemies for once. Or maybe this guy is on my side, I honestly can't tell. Maybe I should shoot him once and see if I get whined at.


SOME GREEN-TINTED SNIPING LATER.

The battle soon took us inside a beat up mall, where I have to hold off waves of invaders using only my wits and a very large gun. Oh also claymores, but I haven't gotten much use out of them yet. Not even sure how to use them to be honest.

I was really dreading this bit at first, because siege levels generally made me want to curl up into a ball and cry, but the hardest part was actually spotting which entrance they were coming from each time. Once I knew where to point my scope I found that a single click was enough to end most of my problems as they arrived.

Now I have to escape out into the street again and cover my guys as they run for an Osprey.

Well I'm getting shot at so I know there must be terrorists in front of me somewhere but I can't... oh dear they got me. Never mind, back to the last checkpoint then, which was placed just before the last cutscene so I get to wait around and listen to the dialogue every time I fail.


LEVEL 10: ROCK AND A HARD PLACE.

Trees gently swaying in the breeze on a beautiful sunny day, probably the last thing I expected to see in this game to be honest. Well there's also explosions and gunfire and drama, but that's all happening way down the road. I'll leave my team to handle all that while I go for a peaceful walk in the woods.

I think it's the shadows that really sell it, the way they move back and forth across the ground as the branches bend in the wind.

Enough about the wind. Your team was sent to Azerbaijan to apprehend an arms dealer called Kafarrov after discovering his link to the PLR from a phone you recovered in the last level. Now help me fill in the blanks about what exactly happened there.

Well the Russians apparently had the same intel as we did and were dropping paratroopers in ahead of us, so I rushed ahead and started shooting them all as they appeared through the bushes. After all, we were chasing a stolen nuke and we couldn't let them get to it first. Even though it was stolen from them in the first place.

The Russians were easy targets in broad daylight, but for every man I shot another one immediately appeared out of the bushes to take his place. Eventually I ran out of ammo and began taking them on in hand to hand combat.

You expect me to believe that the enemies you had so much trouble with on the other levels were now so easy to take out that you were able to run out in the open and neutralise multiple opponents at close range without being gunned down?

It was like they were entirely focused on the rest of my squad, sir. Plus hitting enemies in broad daylight when they don't have the benefit of cover is like shooting fish in a barrel. Perhaps that's why the developers made made it so hard to even see them on the other levels.

I see. So am I assume that you fought your way back to your unit, collected a resupply from an ammo crate, and then carried on with the mission as scripted?

No sir, I got bored and wandered off across the grass. For whatever reason the 'Return to the combat area' message didn't trigger, so I was able to continue walking through parts of the scenery, across a river, until the trees were nothing more than two dimensional sprites.

So what happened when you eventually reached the edge of the map? Were you able to continue across low resolution mountains until you ran out of geometry entirely?

No sir, I dropped off the side of the world and I fell.

I fell forever in an infinite sky, until the land above me had vanished from sight entirely. For a few blissful minutes I was free of war, conflict and alert messages demanding that I return to the combat zone entirely. Then I loaded up the latest auto save and returned to the previous checkpoint.

By the way, I appreciate the developers giving my gun a free refill when I reappeared.

So let me get this straight. You're telling me that you somehow developed powers over time and space, giving you the ability to transcend the physical plane?

Not at this point sir. I didn't truly develop my control of reality until I reached Kafarrov's villa and approached the front entrance. There I found that I could fast forward and rewind the time of day merely by stepping back and forth across the driveway.

But of course like everything in your story so far, you have no hard evidence to back any of this up.

LEVEL 11: KAFARROV.

Actually I recorded it.

Also to be absolutely truthful, this wasn't captured from my own approach to the building. It's actually from the perspective of the Russian GRU agents that arrived before me, the same unit that would later get blown up in Paris by the nuke. By the time I arrived at the scene Kafkarrov's men were already dead.

So this was the point that you conspired with the Russian team to smuggle a nuke into Paris, and shot your commanding officer in the head when he stumbled across your meeting?

It didn't go down like that. The Russian agent told me that I had to kill my CO because otherwise... we wouldn't be able to stop the nukes for some reason. I wasn't entirely clear on that.

Also the Russian agent was disguised as a fire extinguisher at the time.

Do not attempt to change the subject. Did you or did you not execute your commanding officer under orders of a Russian GRU agent?

Well when you put it like that it sounds kinda bad.

Look, here's how the situation developed. My commander and I had split up to cover different parts of the villa and the Russian agent caught me alone. He explained that he could recover the nuke in Paris and I could stop the nuke in New York, but only if I let him escape the villa. He told me that I knew what I had to do, then put his hands up and waited for my commander to arrive.

My commander saw me with a gun pointed at a surrendering Russian agent and yelled at him to get down on the ground. I wasn't able to see if he complied however as my view was locked facing my CO at the doorway. A few seconds later I found myself shot dead by my CO for not complying.

I then had to replay the approach to the villa again and was given the same cutscene and the same ultimatum. This time I tried to go prone and put my gun away as ordered. He shot me.

So yes I did eventually murder my CO, but it was entirely in self defence I assure you. There was no 'Friendly fire will not be tolerated' message this time, so he was obviously unfriendly.

Also did I mention THAT I HAVE INFORMATION ABOUT THE NEW YORK ATTACK? I immediately surrendered to you guys and told you everything I knew so that we could prevent it in time!

Well that's a very nice story and you do actually have a witness to back up everything you'd said so far. But we're going to ignore all that, blame the Russians for nuking Paris, and beat the shit out of you instead.

Okay, fair enough. But could you just lean your head a little closer to the desk first?

LEVEL 12: THE GREAT DESTROYER.

QTE HEADSLAM! Let's see if he can believe that just happened.

Well it turns out that those eight hours of flashbacks solved nothing at all and most of them were irrelevant anyway. So now we're back to where we came into the story: Blackburn escaping the CIA building (which turns out to be next to the rail line in New York), jumping onto the roof of a moving train, and then swinging in through the rear door window.

So now I get to replay the entire first level again from the start, with one notable difference: I can't get this QTE to work. I press space, he leaps across to the other car just fine, but then he just dies for no reason.

After several more attempts I gave up and searched for a solution online. It turns out that the problem is... I redefined my controls. I apparently now have to press space and the jump button at the same time to get past this.

And once the business with the train is concluded, it all ends with a climatic drawn out first person QTE smack down with Blackburn fighting the main villain in the heart of New York to prevent him from detonating the bomb. You know, I still haven't the faintest idea why this guy wants to suicide nuke New York so badly, except to maybe trigger a war with Russia. You know, because he's evil.


Okay now that I've seen the game from start to finish, here's my opinion on Battlefield 3's single player campaign: it's a bit crap. I've been trying to work out in my head as I played through the levels exactly what about it frustrated me so much, and I think it basically comes down to the fact that fighting enemies you can't clearly see who seem to be able to see you just fine isn't much fun for me. Most engagements involved a lot of hiding behind walls and peeking around the corner to look for flashlights or muzzle flash. I spent a lot of the game watching my screen fill up with red without any clue who was shooting at me.

The game leads the player from area to area, giving them precise instructions about what to do next, and any form of initiative is strongly discouraged. You walk to the blue marker, you shoot the people it tells you to shoot, you run when it tells you to run, you snipe when it tells you to snipe and when it tells you to press 'E' you'd better do it soldier. Though you're free to run around each area, going backwards will lead to a locked door, going sideways will get you shouted at for leaving the mission area, and going too far forward will get you shot.

It seems to have multiple protagonists simply to mix up the gameplay and blow one of them up (because it wants to be Modern Warfare), despite the fact that two of them only have the most tenuous link to Blackburn's storyline. Though this only really matters because the game puts such a focus on the story and takes itself so seriously; it sets up a mystery for one character then sticks you in someone else's jet fighter instead. It's a shame really as I think they could've done something with multiple protagonists having a different perception of the same events.

Plus the QTEs intended to get me engaged in the scripted events only managed to put me off. I mean I've got nothing against unique animated sequences that let my character do something cool, but if it's not my choice to activate them then what's the point? It'd be nice if the game let me solve these problems with the regular game mechanics if I felt like it, or was too slow to hit the button.

But what (if anything) did I actually like about Battlefield 3? Well it looks and sounds amazing, that always helps. The actors really sell their dialogue and are good enough to make the story seem far better than it really is. The shooty mechanics appear to be rock solid, which makes sense if they're also the foundation of the critically acclaimed multiplayer mode. I'm guessing the multiplayer side of the game is also the reason why my character had a proper swimming animation when I escaped the level boundary that one time and jumped into a river, despite there being no reason to swim in the entire single player campaign. Plus I appreciated that my character has an actual presence in the world and I can see his feet as he walks around. It's a small thing but it makes a difference to me. Also maximum kudos for including a level select.

I should give the single player campaign a 'gold star for not being crap' badge really seeing as it's not that bad, but that seems wrong somehow. If I could think of just one level in the entire game I'd want to play through again to the end I'd give it the star, but I can't, so I won't.

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Anyway if I wrote any more words about this game I could get this published as a book, so I'll stop here and ask you what you think instead. Feel free to share your opinion on Battlefield 3, the things I typed about it, gritty grey military shooters, the state of the modern FPS, or anything else that seems halfway relevant.