Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Pros(+): Graphics and Detail Honestly they are pretty stellar. Sure you have to have a better video card but it is really nice to look out on an area and see such detail in all of the items. (+)Future weapons choices look pretty good. (+)You can spawn on more than just bases and squad leaders, but you can't click on the map like you could in BF2 to choose a spawn point. That seems like a move backwards. (+)Realism: Character movements are much less clumsy than BF2. The jumping is more realistic (more on that in cons), the side to side motions, the running, the spinning around while prone motions, all much more accurate. Sniper and aiming is more challenging (More movement when trying to aim). But the realism is also a con in some ways.You see a guy, you turn to shoot, he somehow shoots once and you're dead. Don't even get a chance. Much more realistic, but not as much fun. EDIT: Okay, I was just getting my butt kicked because my opponents were hiding in the multiple dark spots that I mention later. I've since gotten better. (+)Destruction engine is awesome. This has been around for 10 years but finally they added it to Battlefield. Get behind a wall for example thinking your safe. Well maybe for a while, but eventually you could be seeing concrete fly. Very cool! Additionally the sound effects are good, and varied. Cons(-): Nothing like Battlefield 2. This game should be called Battlefield: Bad Company 3. It is so similar to that game that I can't see how they justify calling it Battlefield 3. No commander, squad leaders have limited interaction, no artillery strikes, no jeeps or supplies being air dropped. Seems to really miss that element of overall strategy. For those that like to be the 'general' with a large table, moving the ships and troops around, you will be disappointed. It's just run and gun, and kind of childish/immature. It is lacking that adult element that BF2 had. (-)There isn't really a battlefield, as the name would imply. You are given sections of an area that you are allowed to play in at one time. The overall map may be huge, but the sections aren't that big, especially when comparing to BF2 and even BF1942. The game many times forces you to choose a certain pathway or bottleneck. Are you one of those soldiers that likes taking a jeep or apc or boat full of squad members and driving for a few minutes to a remote location to outflank your enemy? Then you will probably not enjoy this game. The realism of distance and traveling time and that type of strategy are lost. You can drive, just not very far or fast. Everything is so limited and constrained. This does depend on the type of map you play however. (-)Realism: In some ways it's less realistic. Glowing grenades for example. Aircraft realism? Well, at least for the helicopters it's gone. (-)Origin: What in the world were they thinking here? Why do I need a web browser to start up my game? BF2 uses the web to log me in, but I don't have to have a browser open, constantly running in the background as I play. Why do I need a 3rd party application to play a game? (-)Install: This may trip up some people who bought the hard copy; the origin screen shows you are 'downloading' the game, but in reality it is being 'uploaded' or installed from the game disc, so don't worry. As soon as I installed the game immediately needs a half-gig file to work. Slower broadband players will not enjoy this wait. Then BF3 says I need to update my video card drivers, although I just had 2 days earlier. So I click the message saying okay, but then it starts the game anyway. Downloaded the new drivers later from Nvidia. They came out one day before the game! Coincidence? Probably not. Glad that BF3 did give me that message though. (-)The mini map. What's going on here? It's almost useless. The larger map isn't much more helpful. Looks like it was designed in the '70s. Shows no terrain, doesn't really show roads (It does but looks like a 2 year-old drew them), etc. Just a tiny slab of grey with more grey slapped on top, with minuscule triangles on it. What a waste. Really hoping they were going to improve on the BF2 map by showing topo/elevation. (-)Can't select spawn points via map, it makes you select on left. (-)Single player: On earlier versions the single player was lame, but at least you got to check out the maps that you'd be playing in multiplayer and practice aiming etc. But this one it's all scripted and if you don't follow a specific, ordered path you die. Not only that but you have to press specific keys at specific times, such as SPACE bar repetitively to climb something. Huh? This is just not a BF2 replacement, and it's so enclosed and lacks any freedom. (-)Enemy colors. What in the world did they do here? Squad members are the right color, a bright green. Teammates are a light blue, not bad. But the enemies are like a bright orange. I know there aren't that many colorblind players out there, but for those that are, when you put a bright orange and a bright green on the same map in battle conditions something is going to go wrong. Please, please, please give us an option to change the colors. It's just a personalization issue, it won't affect other players. Seems like a no-brainer but it was not included. Doesn't help that the tiny map is just as useless with colors. (-)Crap is constantly blowing around in the 'wind'. What is this stuff? There is always some debris blowing around. It can't always be windy, and there can't always be pieces of paper everywhere, but somehow there are, even in a desert battlefield. (-)Language. Sorry, but something needs to be said here. I didn't see an option to turn off the swear words. They are not casual 'damn' or 'hell', they are full on swear words that will embarass you pretty quickly if your family is withing hearing range. I hear enough swearing in my real life, I don't really have a desire to hear it from a game. It doesn't add realism, it subtracts fun and makes it a lot less likely I can share this game with my friends since their wives will not enjoy the swearing. Sure you can get decent headphones these days, but they don't really cut it compared to a good speaker setup. Also they give audio to other players that didn't initiate it. For example the character that just shot you will be cussing up a storm and the player of that character will have no idea it's even happening. Just give us an option to turn it off. Speaking of audio options, where are they? Where can I turn down/up just SFX, or just voice, etc? Such limitations in the configuration are just another flaw in this game. (-)Overly contrasted graphics: Yes the details are great in this game, but they have added so much contrast (probably in an attempt to make it look pretty), that you can't see what you need to see. For example, all vehicles, buildings, crates, and darker spots on the map are so dark that you can't see what's going on unless you turn your brightness way up. No problem right? Wrong, because now you are looking at this huge washed-out sky, or mountain, or field. This is so incredibly unrealistic. It's like having to have your headlights on during the day so you can see other cars, but then not be able to see anything light colored. This isn't a video card issue, or a screen issue, it's how the game is designed. Guess what, it can't be adjusted in game either, like you could in BF2. Why not? (-)On a related note, the colors are so gray and boring. I know it's war, it's not supposed to be pretty, but that is ludicrous. Colors exist even in war. The whole battlefield and all players and objects look like they were done entirely in monochrome. (-)Sound effects: They have a larger expanse of sound effects than ever before, and some of them are very realistic. However, there are a few exceptions, mostly with vehicles. Remember that wonderful A-10 sound as it lumbered just overhead? Remember the incredible machine gun sounds it made? It sounds similar but has a much more generic sound and is not as imposing. (-)Along with that: Sound chaos. There are so many sounds/voices etc. going on that it's impossible to know how close something is, or where the enemy fire is really coming from. (-)Views from vehicles. Remember how when you flew a helicopter in BF2 you could cycle your camera view? BF3 has two choices; inside with full cockpit visible, and outside looking over from behind. Maybe BF2 had too many choices, but I can't even remove the cockpit from my view to see more. Frustrating. It's horrible inside of the humvee. Some might argue that's for realism's sake, but it's not! The FOV is much different than in real life, the periferal vision isn't there. That's why, in previous games, like BF2, you could change the angle so you could actually see where you are going! It's actually easier to drive the tank than the humvee because of this. (-)Chat screen overlay. The chat screen is a semi-transparent box item that comes up whenever someone decides to chat, and the geniuses at EA put it on the right side of the screen, but the text starts at the left side of the box it sits in, so it is constantly blocking what you need to see at random times, and there is tons of wasted space on the right side of the box where the text doesn't reach to. And this is on a 25 inch monitor. Maybe there is a way to disable this, I'm not sure. Seems a lot more logical to leave it on the left, where it's out of sight most of the time. (-)Why can't my character jump over a little metal gate? Why can't he jump or hop or climb over a small glass divider about 2 feet high? Something is wrong here and will get you dead quick when you are used to jumping over stuff almost twice as high in the same game. (-) Vehicle dynamics. You might have thought they were in need of fixing in BF2, but they are so much worse overall in BF3. For example, you get in a helicopter in BF2, and it starts spinning up, creates lift, and slowly lifts off. In BF3, you are almost launched into the air as soon as you press 'W'. In fact, the whole helicopter flying dynamic is horrible. It doesn't feel real in any way. It's very arcade-like, with overly quick response times, unrealistic physics, etc. This was a real disappointment. Why did they spend so much time making the walking soldier sound so real, but zero time on the helicopter realism? They could have just copied it from BF2! Another example; every wheeled vehicle oversteers horribly. From the tanks (yes a tank can oversteer in this game!), all the way to the EOD. It's like the designers had never been in a vehicle of any type, ever. Now you might be thinking 'well, vehicles do oversteer in real life', and yes they do, but the oversteer in BF3 occurs suddenly, and under slow speeds even. It's absurd. (-)Constant point reminders: The game is always telling you how many points you got and for what in a large font message at the lower half of the screen. So you are in the middle of heated battle and all of these dumb messages keep popping up. I don't need to know how many points I am geting until the END of the game. It's distracting and makes the gameplay even more chaotic for no reason. I've gotten shot just while trying to read what special award I've gotten. Guess I'll get used to it, but man it's a dumb design. This game looks more and more to be a port of a console game. Doesn't EA realize by now that PC game players are much more exacting and have much more involved, holistic views of what a game should be? (-)And the biggest con of all; this game just isn't as fun. Yes it's sharp, yes it's detailed, yes it's fast and furious, yes you have cool weapons, yes the character movements are more accurate and realistic, but it's just not that fun. It's like bmw with idrive. It's precise and accurate and fast, etc., but you don't really get attached to it, it doesn't make you feel special. It makes you feel like it doesn't really even need or want you there. I finished playing after a couple hours, and I thought, oh I should probably do something else now. It just doesn't draw you in, and make you want to miss school/work and other boring stuff to come play it. They focused so hard on making it look good, that they forgot to make it enjoyable to play. For those that want to comment, try to add something useful, like instructions on how to accomplish what I was struggling with, so future readers can benefit, don't just bash on a review, that doesn't accomplish anything. UPDATE: Game sometimes will not move onto the next round or sequence, in multiplayer and singleplay, respectively. Screen goes black like it's loading, then it goes white and stops. Frostbite looking good still, but has lots of weird issues. Seen guys inside of walls, looking through walls, etc. (-) Joining of games. So you know by now that you have to use your web browser to play and join games. Well that means that if you want to change servers, you have to quit the ENTIRE game, exit back to your browser and search again. Seriously!?! Get stuck in a server without enough players, or realize it's not the map you want? Oh, just exit the ENTIRE game, and enjoy the pleasure of starting it back up again. yay. (-) Special content for the pre-sales was the Karkand Expansion pack. Nobody is hosting this map! So guess what? You therefore can't play it, at all, unless someone decides to host it. Want to at least play in the singleplayer? Nope, impossible with this game. They should have at least given us an AI option.