It is clear the campaign isn't the main attraction here since the single-player is actually on disc 2 and the multiplayer is on disc 1. If that doesn't tell you what is more important, I don't know what could make it more obvious. At any rate, there is a full story driven campaign here similar to the Bad Company games (minus the fun banter among the squad, BF3 is super serious) rather than the bot-driven training modes in the other Battlefield games.
The campaign itself is completely derivative, though. It is like it takes the best parts of the last few Call of Duty games and mashes them all together. It is hard not to get a sense of serious deja-vu when the first mission ends with a gun pointed at your head (a COD trademark) and the meat of the story is told through flashbacks while the main character is being interrogated (hello Black Ops). The six-hour campaign features missions you'd expect - a sniper mission, lots of turret sections, lots of urban combat, even a mark targets on the ground from a plane mission we've seen somewhere else before.
The fact that we've seen a lot of this before isn't necessarily the problem, though. I honestly like the campaigns in these types of games, and there is only so much you can do before it stops being realistic, so seeing similar missions between games isn't that big of a deal. The problem with Battlefield 3's campaign is the way it is presented. It is more like a guided tour of modern combat where your indestructible squad mates take you by the hand and lead you through the fights than you actually really having the freedom to do anything. You just sort of follow your squad around, or follow mission markers (and you don't want to break from the mission path, the game throws up a "leaving the battle area" warning if you do even if a different path might lead to a better flanking position or something), from one scripted sequence to the next. Your A.I. squad mates are surprisingly skilled too, as aside from set pieces where you absolutely have to be the one to pull the trigger, they do a pretty good job of killing all the bad guys for you.
The worst part is that you spend a somewhat ridiculous amount of time just watching stuff happen. In these sections your character automatically walks along and focuses on stuff the developer wanted you to see and you just sit back and watch. Fun movie, boring videogame. Also troubling about the campaign is the incredible overuse of Quick-Time-Events. Seemingly every couple of minutes a QTE pops up where you press a button and then watch your character jump across a moving train, or fight an enemy in CQC, or stab a damn rat in a sewer.
The story about an uprising in Iran with the threat of nuclear weapons scattered about is definitely interesting. And there are a lot of neat set pieces and absolutely stunningly cool things to see. But the gameplay itself just isn't all that fun. If you were thinking of buying Battlefield 3 for the single-player, don't bother. It isn't awful or anything, but it fails to really stand up next to the campaigns in other shooters - not just modern combat - on the Xbox 360.
Co-OpThere are also a handful (6) co-op missions available. Co-op makes things more fun (always), but even these missions have their share of QTE's and heavy scripting that take you out of the fun more often than we'd like. You can only play on Xbox Live, no local multi options available at all in BF3, and we recommend playing with friends rather than randoms. Co-op is more fun than the campaign, but we wish there were more of it.
Multiplayer
All that out of the way, onto the real draw in Battlefield 3 - the multiplayer. Nine maps of varying sizes cover multiple terrain types from deserts to coastal roads to urban settings and more. Vehicles such as Humvee's and tanks dot the maps, and larger areas even offer helicopters and fighter jets. There are multiple classes of vehicles, with a few variations in each class, and in a neat touch you actually earn specific perks and bonus upgrades for the vehicles when you use them well. So now you level up not just your character and their loadout, but also the way they can use vehicles. Minor damage to vehicles repairs automatically as well, and you now have a few second window to bail out if your vehicle is on the verge of being destroyed. Very cool.
Up to twenty-four players duke it out in teamwork-focused multiplayer modes. Going lone wolf is never really advisable in games like this, but in Battlefield 3 sticking with your team and completing objectives together is the key to victory. Solidifying this fact is the new scoring system that rewards players for suppressing the enemy (suppressing fire makes the enemies have blurred vision and less accuracy). You suppress while your teammates actually get the kill, but you all get points for it. You score points for pretty much everything you do, which makes you a valuable member of the team no matter your skill level and lets you level up to more quickly reach better equipment (and having more fun) without necessarily needing to have the most kills.
There are a couple of other significant changes in BF3. First is the ability to go prone (lay flat on the ground). This lets you hid pretty much anywhere and pick off enemies and you'll be hard to find if you position yourself right. Suppression is the counter to this, though, so by suppressing an area you suspect an enemy to be hiding in, you mess up their accuracy and give teammates time to take them out. Also new is the fact that knives are no longer one-swipe kills. It takes two swipes, or one from behind, to take out an enemy now, which makes close quarters fights much more tense and interesting than before.
No Bots
One complaint we have about the multiplayer is the lack of A.I. bots. Some people don't like playing on Xbox Live with 12 year olds screaming at them and prefer to play with bots. Also, bots would offer a way to actually learn maps and learn to use the vehicles (jets and helicopters in particular have a steep learning curve) and being able to practice offline with bots would have been appreciated. Part of the reason why we liked Gears of War 3 so much is that every single game mode is playable offline with bots. CoDBlOps also had multiplayer bots. It would have made the overall Battlefield 3 package a lot better if 70% of the content wasn't locked away exclusively for online players.
PresentationGraphically, Battlefield 3 looks outstanding. The single-player campaign has an optional HD texture pack you can install, and we highly recommend that you do if you plan on playing the campaign. Without the HD textures it looks okay - the lighting is the same and other effects are the same, but objects and buildings and stuff look awful when you get close. With the HD texture pack, everything in the game world pops with detail and looks fantastic. Multiplayer maps take a bit of a hit in the graphics department, obviously, with 24 players running around, but they definitely look good. In a bit of a disappointing touch, the levels aren't as destructible as they were in Bad Company 1 and 2. You can still blow holes in some walls and stuff, but it isn't as crazy as it was in BC. Also, we don't love the dust on the camera lens, crazy light bloom lens flare effect that completely obscures your view way too often.
The sound is also very good overall. Solid music. Great sound effects that really put you on the battlefield. And solid voice work in the campaign.
Bottom Line
Ultimately, Battlefield 3 is an easy game to recommend depending on how you answer this question - Are you buying it for the multiplayer? If yes, buy it. You won't be disappointed and don't even have to bother with the mediocre campaign. If no, you don't care about playing multiplayer, you're better off skipping BF3 or just renting it if you enjoy these modern combat-type campaigns. The campaign is short and derivative and literally all of the other content is locked away only for online players. No use paying $60 for a game you can't really play. In the end, Battlefield 3 is among the best games on Xbox 360 in terms of multiplayer, but as a whole package it doesn't quite match up with other shooters. Keep that in mind before you purchase.
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