BATTLEFIELD 3 CAMPAIGN REVIEW
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| Fellow Squadmates |
Battlefield 3 is a first-person shooter game developed by
E.A. DICE. This game was produced by Electronic Arts. Battlefield 3 is the
direct sequel of Battlefield 2 which was released in 2005. It is the eleventh
game of the Battlefield franchise. The game was released for Microsoft Windows
on 28th October 2011. In the Battlefield 3 campaign, we get to play
as many special individuals, like U.S. Marine, an F/A – 18F Super Hornet weapon
systems officer, an M1A2 Abrams tank operator and even a Spetsnaz GRU
operative. The campaign takes us to different locations in different missions
and the storyline consists of two protagonists Henry Blackburn and Dimitri
Mayakovsky.
BATTLEFIELD 3 GAMEPLAY
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| M1 Abrams Tanks !!! |
Battlefield 3 introduces many elements that were not present in the “Bad Company “series of the Battlefield franchise. This includes flying fighter jets and going prone (yes, you cannot prone in the Battlefield Bad Company). The maps are set in Paris, Tehran, some other locations of Iran, Sulaymaniyah in Iraq, New York City, Wake Island, Oman, Kuwait City, and other parts of the Persian Gulf. The maps consist of urban streets, metro and downtown cities and open areas for vehicle combat.
In the game, we control four different player characters. Most of the time we control Staff Sergeant Henry Blackburn who is a member of the U.S. Marine Corps 1st Recon Battalion and he is also the main protagonist of the story. We also control Capt. Jonathan Miller who is an M1 Abrams tank operator who is deployed in Tehran; Lieutenant Jennifer “Wedge” Colby Hawkins who is an F/A-18F Super Hornet weapon system officer; and Dimitri “Dima “Mayakovsky is a Russian GRU operative. The main Antagonist, Solomon is an overseas asset for Central Intelligence Agency. There are non-player characters like – Misfit 1, Blackburn’s Squad (David Montes, Steve Campo, Christian Matkovic and Capt. Quinton Cole), Dima’s GRU squad mates Vladimir and Kiril and CIA Agents Gordon and Whistler who interrogate Blackburn in the campaign.
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Battlefield 3 also comes with co-operative mode and Multiplayer mode. Split Screen is not available in co-op mode so it’s not very impressive. This game introduces Battle log social media which track your scores and your friend’s scores and also overall performance.
BATTLEFIELD 3 STORYLINE
Battlefield 3 ‘s campaign storyline is set during the fictional war in 2014. The game covers a time period of 9 months. Most of the stories take place in the Iraq- Iran region. There are other locations like Iranian-Azerbaijani border, Paris, New York City. Most of the missions are the flashbacks of Staff Sergeant Henry Blackburn who was being interrogated.
On 15th March 2014, Sgt. Blackburn’s Squad, Misfit 1-3, attempts to find and safely return a U.S. Squad investigating an explosive in Sulaymaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan, whose last known location was in a PLR territory. PLR stands for People’s Liberation and Resistance which was an Iranian paramilitary insurgent group. Blackburn’s Squad finds the missing soldiers who were ambushed by the PLR. When they were escaping the City, a massive earthquake destroys the city. Blackburn, Montes and other survivors somehow managed to get out of the ruins and on the same day, the PLR turned Iran into a military dictatorship. Lieutenant Jennifer Hawkins volunteers to fight enemy fighter planes over Iran and execute an airstrike over Mehrabad Airport. Yes, you will be the one doing all this in the game. You will not be allowed to fly the fighter jet instead you will be in the back seat handling the weapon system. I enjoyed this mission a lot. This mission was really epic. After the Airstrikes, Misfit 1 was sent to Tehran to kill PLR Leader Faruk Al-Bashir. Blackburn and his squad reach an underground bank vault where they come to know that the PLR somehow acquired Russian nukes suitcase and two of the three devices were missing. Misfit requests backup from M1 Abrams Tank column “Anvil 3”, including Sergeant Miller. Miller sends a helicopter for Misfit 1’s extraction but his Abrams tank gets destroyed and the tank crew gets overrun by the PLR. The crew then waits for Quick Reaction Force for extraction while defending their position. But eventually Miller was knocked out and was taken, prisoner. Later Solomon and Al- Bashir executed Miller, recorded the execution and posted it on the internet.
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| Sniper Mission at night, hell yeah! |
Misfit 1-3 then goes to capture Al-Bashir. Al-Bashir tries to flee by a vehicle but Misfit crashes his vehicle and Al-Bashir gets heavily wounded. Misfit 1-3 captures Al-Bashir. Al-Bashir realised that he had been betrayed by Solomon therefore he reveals Solomon’s Plan. Solomon’s plan was to detonate two nukes- one in New York City and another one in Paris. After saying this Al-Bashir dies due to his wounds. Misfit 1 gets a lead on an arms dealer who worked with Al- Bashir and Solomon named Amir Kaffarov. They attempt to capture Amir from his villa on the Caspian Sea Coast, near the Azerbaijani Border. Misfit runs into Russian Paratrooper Battalion who were also going after Kaffarov. The Russian Paratrooper Battalion engages Misfit with BMP-2s which were airdropped. The Russian paratroopers were supported by Su-25s which were providing them close air support. In this fight, Blackburn’s squadmates Campo and Matkovic were killed. Meanwhile, a Spetsnaz team led by Dima enters Kaffarov’s Villa to capture him. Kaffarov tries to bribe Dima but Dima beats the shit out of him. Blackburn then arrives at the Villa and finds Dima and dead Kaffarov. Dima tells Solomon’s plot to Blackburn and asks for his cooperation to prevent a war between the U.S.A. and Russian (Their Nations). When Dima was escaping, Misfit 1’s Commanding officer Cole arrives and tries to shoot Dima before he escapes but Blackburn shoots the official to save Dima. Since Blackburn shots the commanding officer, the CIA interrogates him for eight hours at Hunter Point, Queens.
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| Dima teammates in Paris. |
During Blackburn’s arrest, Dima’s Spetsnaz squad attempts to
stop the attack on Paris. However, Vladimir dies and the nuke explodes killing
80000 people. C.I.A. agents do not believe Blackburn story because Solomon was
a C.I.A. informant and there was no concrete proof for his involvement in the
terrorist attacks. Instead, they tell Blackburn that Russia is responsible for
the nuke blast in Paris and he was tricked by Dima.
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| Blackburn being questioned by the C.I.A. |
Since C.I.A. was not ending Blackburn’s captivity, Blackburn and his squadmate Montes break out of the captivity to stop the nuke attack in New York City. Blackburn evades police and manages to enter the hijacked Long Island Rail Road commuter train. This train scene was also shown in the prologue of the game. The scene continues, the train was full of Solomon’s men and explosives. He fights his way to the front of the train when Solomon ambushes him. While fighting Blackburn obtains the detonator of the explosives planted on the train and he activates it causing the train to crash. Solomon then escapes through the sewer and Blackburn pursues him up to the street level. Montes obtained a police car and picks up Blackburn and engages Solomon and PLR in a car chase. Both the vehicles crash in Times Square. As the crowd watches, Solomon shoots Montes but Blackburn kills Solomon by beating him to death with a brick and then he recovers the nuke.
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| Lat Train Fight. |
The epilogue of the game revels that Dima survived the Paris nuclear explosion but was suffering from radiation poisoning. He writes about the efforts of himself and Blackburn to stop Solomon’s plan to start a war. As he finishes, he examines a pistol. Someone knocks his door and the screen goes black and the last sound heard is that of the pistol being loaded presumably to defend himself. In the next game i.e. Battlefield 4, we get to see Dima once again. He was captured and kept by the Chinese Military. Therefore, we can assume that pistol wasn’t enough to defend him.
BATTLEFIELD 3 GRAPHICS
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| Scene after the earthquake. |
The graphics of the game seems pretty real. The developer team did a great work in making the environment look realistic. Although the characters in the game look very similar to each other, I mean there isn’t much difference between the face of two soldiers. But it is not a big deal. Overall graphics is excellent and it performs admirably on low spec PC. The game works pretty well in low settings but in the max settings, the gameplay looks stunning. I never experienced any glitches in the game, neither the game stuttered nor shut down itself.
CONCLUSION
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| Legendary Fighter plane mission. My personal favorite. |
Battlefield 3 is a very good game but the multiplayer part
of the game gained more popularity than the Campaign mode. This was because the
player gets more freedom in multiplayer mode than in the campaign. The storyline of
the game is really very interesting and meaningful and the graphics is
outstanding. The gameplay is very smooth and I didn’t face any issues playing
this game. Overall the game as a whole is great. I will highly recommend this
game to those who love Military FPS games.
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