Battlefield 3 finally became available to the public shortly after midnight today, and our BF3 Beta reviewer has sent us his impressions of the game after spending a few hours with it on the PC.
Right off the mark, he proclaimed that playing BF3 on the computer earns a solid ‘Triple A’ rating and concluded by describing it as “bloody brilliant”.
The graphics are reportedly even better than in the Beta – substantially better – and on his (admitted very powerful) PC, it runs fairly smooth even at its highest “Ultra-Quality” setting. As a long-time FPS game player, he described the lighting effects, textures, particles, models, and essentially every other aspect of its graphics to be the best he’s seen with none of the glitches found in the beta evident in the time he’s played.
He also deemed the environmental and personal physics to be especially fantastic, with players able to smash apart the world even more thoroughly than in the Beta: buildings crumble and fall apart, walls are no longer safe-havens, and soldier animations are both fluid and true to life.
The reviewer mentioned that it was particularly enjoyable to jump into a tank and just smash through the level – literally leveling the level. Also a fun encounter while inside a tank, is to spot an enemy soldier running into a building and then take out both him and the building with a blast from your cannon.
As listed above, soldier models behave realistically too, with a real weight and substance to those characters.
Enemy combatants get knocked back up against a wall with a shotgun blast, slumping down with a splatter of blood on the wall behind them. And a well-placed grenade can blow up a car – hurling anyone hiding behind it high into the air.
Although our reviewer hasn’t played all of the many maps included with the game, he has been very impressed with the ones he’s seen so far and already experienced a number of memorable “war stories” to share with fellow gamers.
One of his favorite moments was stumbling across a sniper nest where three snipers were engrossed in taking potshots at his teammates. He admitted to experiencing great satisfaction while machine gunning two of the enemy snipers while knifing the third.
He also enjoyed an action-movie type experience while racing across a map in a jeep – chased by a helicopter gunship and swerving down a dirt road, with earth and trees exploding and falling around him as the helicopter pilot tried to blast him to pieces. With clammy hands he finally smashed through a chainlink fence and into a ditch, giving him a straight shot towards one of his team’s flags.. where there were also some surface-to-air weapon toting friends who were able to fend off the chopper.
Flying and fighting with jets is also a thrill and if a player can slog through the early levels (and stay alive), earning upgrades should reward them with a strong killing machine. The speed and gracefulness of the jets were particularly impressive, and anyone able to successfully pull off a dog fight maneuver to blast their foe will feel like they’ve been channeling Tom Cruise in Top Gun.
When he was able to jump in the cockpit of a helicopter – instead of being hunted by one – the reviewer found them to be very responsive and excellent for strafing. Hugging the ground at top speed is an exhilarating experience for pilot and copilot alike, and having someone to man the cannon makes them as lethal as anything else on the battlefield.
The variety of choppers available in the game each require special tactics to get the most out of them, and both jets and ground-based anti-aircraft fire are a big threat. The scout helicopters are great at spotting enemies and players score points while using them to spot enemy units for their team.
Contrary to many other reviews, our gamer quite enjoyed the single-player mode as well. The quick time events were brief and enjoyable without distracting him from the in-game play at all.
Next up, he’s looking forward to fighting through the campaign missions in coop with a friend. But in summing up his experience with Battlefield 3 – since waking up at 4am to get started – he says:
“Battlefield 3 is my new favorite game. I haven’t been this excited about a title in years!”
