Battlefield 3 review

Battlefield 3 is, perhaps even moreso than football, a game of two halves. There's the single-player, and there's the multiplayer, and the two are so utterly distinct that – if you, like me, are playing on an Xbox 360 – they're even hidden away on separate discs. This is going to pose a rather unique problem for me at the end of the review, but we'll deal with that when we get there.

We'll deal with the single-player first. I want to end on a high note, and, well... the single-player is really quite bad.

Oh, it has its moments. It looks lovely, for starters – while the texture work leaves a lot to be desired if you sit and stare at walls, the use of lighting, fire animation, and colour contrasts combine to create something rather stunning. The dialogue, although very gung-ho, has an air of authenticity around it, and it's well-acted and well-written. Some of the vehicle-based set-pieces, too, are fabulous: an early highlight in a jet later gives way to a great tank-based section, with the only mild problem being that both sections are really little more than on-rails shooting segments.

No, the aesthetics are fine. Battlefield's single-player problems instead stem from things that, frankly, Battlefield has no excuse for getting wrong. Like shooting.

The shooting – the thing that you'd expect to be the crux of the game - feels awful. Most of the guns are weightless things that lack any sense of power, with only the weapons that are of occasional use – like shotguns, machine guns, or sniper rifles – rectifying this. With the rest there's little feedback from kills, so there's no cathartic joy in, say, headshotting a distant enemy. Perhaps it's a sign that the guns are authentic, but authenticity should never get in the way of actual enjoyment.

Making the experience somewhat more painful is the intense amount of scripting, which turns most of the single-player campaign into a dull shooting gallery. You're constantly ordered to “Follow”. You're constantly waiting for the guy in front of you to finish talking and open the door. It gets to the point where the game seems to be taking the piss: on one particularly upsetting occasion, you're told to take point. With unbridled joy at being let off your leash, you walk forward three steps and are promptly thrown into a quick-time event in which an enemy soldier grapples you, and you have to hit a button to hurl him over a stairwell. And then, immediately, you're back to following a blue square over your commander's head. Thanks, game.

In fairness, it does improve. The last third of the game focuses more on the “fun” weapons, on spectacular set-pieces, and on doing things other than shooting with boring guns. In short, it finally gets a bit of character. It's just a shame you have to go through the rest of the game first.

Call of Duty is certainly equally guilty of the sin of over-scripting, but I can forgive that for two reasons. Firstly, Call of Duty is the game equivalent of a cheesy 80s action movie, and it moves along at such a frantic pace that it's generally uncommon to be sat twiddling your fingers while waiting for something to happen.

Secondly, Battlefield – to me – is about emergent combat on a massive scale, set in wide-open battlefields. Seeing the main series turn its first proper single-player campaign into a generic linear shooter is about as sad and disturbing as watching your child open their mouth to utter their first word, and then hearing “Ayn Rand” come out.

Then there's the utterly appalling checkpointing (seriously, guys: the checkpoints are supposed to go after the unskippable cutscenes), and the scripting glitches that cause characters to vanish into thin air at the end of sections, and the moronic teammate AI, and... you know what? It's not worth the words. It's just bad. Bad enough that, if you're only after single-player, you should really avoid this. You're spoiled for choice with better shooters.

If, on the other hand, you like to dabble in multiplayer... well, Battlefield 3's multiplayer is sublime.

It feels like that should be slightly surprising considering how much I loathe the single-player campaign, but it's not. Battlefield has always managed superb multiplayer, and this is Battlefield in every way that matters: maps are huge; death comes swiftly; you can lie prone, or act as a tank gunner, or perch on top of a building and snipe at the other side of the map. You can work together with teammates to attack an internal objective by blowing a wall apart with rockets, and then charge in with a shotgun. It is exactly what I want from Battlefield multiplayer.

The available maps cater to players of every bent, with variations for both the traditional Battlefield Conquest gametype, as well as the assault/defence of Rush and the pure carnage of Squad Deathmatch. There are maps focused on infantry, maps focused on the full experience, and a variety of settings letting you find a game to your liking.

Bizarrely, it even manages to avoid most of the missteps of the single-player. For the most part, guns feel right, and shooting is a tense affair. Gunning down a passing enemy, achieving a distant headshot, and successfully sniping someone from 2km away all feel marvellous.

All of this is tied into a smart levelling system. As has become the norm, the weapons and equipment available are divided up between classes – in this case Support, Engineer, Recon, and Assault. Helping allies and killing foes net you experience. If you get a headshot, you get more. If it's at long range, you get more still. The more impressive the kill, the more experience you earn, and the faster you level up.

Vehicles also level up, and this is where the multiplayer makes its sole mistake. If you want any of the useful vehicle add-ons - like IR flares or heat-seeking missiles - then you need to get kills. Kills against people who are probably very good in these vehicles and have already unlocked these useful tools, because at this point many have been playing for months. If you hop into Battlefield now, you'll need a good amount of luck to get anywhere with the vehicles.

But it almost doesn't matter, because the real joy is in the stories that the game creates, and I'll happily regale anyone nearby with tales of my first two matches. In one, I inadvertently ended up flying a fully-loaded helicopter into the side of a mountain. In the other, I ended up defended a capture point with one squadmate for the entire match, fending off everything from tanks to mortars. Games that generate stories you remember fondly are truly special, and Battlefield manages it with a pleasing regularity.

So we reach the problem alluded to at the start: how do you score Battlefield 3? It's not fair to condemn one of the finest multiplayer experiences on console because of a poor single-player mode, but by the same token this a review of a full product, so it's not fair to completely ignore the single-player. In the end, I think balance is key. So...