Forgiving half a game: Why Battlefield 3's campaign shouldn't impact review scores

With the recent release of Battlefield 3, several reviewers have acknowledged a poor campaign, but awarded high scores and written glowing reviews.

So why hasn’t that poor campaign hurt Battlefield 3’s critical reception? A collection of short stories doesn’t deserve five stars if only half the stories are excellent. A comic book with a second feature much better than its first can’t be called great if half of its pages are garbage. So how can reviewers forgive the flaws of such a huge part of this release?

Tanks

That school of thought ignores a fundamental difference between games and those other media: games, especially multiplayer-focused games, give the player choices. Some players will prefer Conquest, some will prefer Rush, and some will prefer single player. They’ll spend the most time with what they enjoy the most, and only feel ripped off if that section of the game doesn’t justify their purchase.

Of course, I can ignore the short stories in a collection, but that only decreases the amount of time I can enjoy the book -- prose isn’t as re-readable, for me, as multiplayer games are re-playable. And since different game modes re-use the same assets (maps, weapons, vehicles, and the feel of controlling any of the different characters), sticking with Rush and ignoring other options doesn’t leave gigabytes and gigabytes of content unexplored, so it’s hard to feel like you’re missing out on anything significant.

The review score question comes down to this: do you want reviews to analyse every feature in a game individually and assign the game worth based on the sum of its parts, or do you want a representation of the reviewer’s experience with that game? I certainly prefer the latter, but I can see a problem for gamers who don't share reviewers' preferences -- whether or not they should read the text of a review and see the difference between the reviewer's tastes and their own, though, is a different question.

Which type of review would you prefer? Did its campaign spoil your experience of Battlefield 3? Is it even fair to assume that that part of the game is universally unappreciated?

Tags: Reviews, Battlefield 3

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Jonathan Oyama

November 08, 2011

That's what makes Battlefield 3 a really interesting game to analyze. One half of the game is disappointing, but the other half is extraordinarily amazing. Frankly, I don't think I've ever had as much fun with a multiplayer mode as I had with Battlefield 3. There's so many ways to play through each map. There's all sorts of different vehicles. The Xbox 360 version was a little shortchanged with fewer opponents on each map, but it's still a fascinating strategic look at team warfare.

I actually spent more time analyzing how each reviewer writes his or her opinion. It's easy to write off a game as flawed, just because of a faulty mode in the game. However, the multiplayer components were fleshed out with large environments and incredible lighting effects. That's a story in itself--the blinding flashlights force players to use different tactics in narrow alleyways. Players are probably already asking themselves how anyone would actually balance out gameplay based on a visual effect.

Modern Warfare 3 got the most buzz, but I think Battlefield 3 is going to lead the debate about the future of online multiplayer battles. It's one of the most complex multiplayer games of all time, in my opinion.

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Joe L

November 09, 2011

I honestly don't understand why every reviewer is crapping on BF3's single player campaign. I played it straight through on Hard difficulty and aside from the frustration of getting killed about every 30 secs or less, I thought it was better than Bad Company 2's and Black Ops' campaigns which for me were both immediately forgettable and annoying to get through.

I thought the drama and seriousness it brought was just what the BF series needed to be compelling enough to finish the story. The writing and voice acting was very good. The soundtrack was fantastic. The morality of the storyline was handled very well, not too predictable or cheesy.

I will certainly have fun playing through again on Easy mode just so that I can step back and take a look around at the beautifully rendered environments.

For the record, some of my favorite FPS campaigns are the Killzone series, Call of Duty 2, and MW2.

The execution was great. I think I was more disappointed in some of the more unrealistic sections. For example, I loved flying. The gameplay didn't bring back fond memories of Ace Combat though, because I was sitting in the back of the plane releasing flares to stop enemy missiles. And then there were those strange parts where I shot missiles at enemies behind my plane. It just seemed like they replaced the dogfighting experience with cheap FPS characteristics.

I also wanted a little more freedom to move around the preset path. In the escape from Iran, I was stuck crawling in some tunnel. I had no choice but to follow this straight line. I would have liked a little more space in the scenario, to make me feel like I wasn't just moving in a straight line.

It's an improvement over DICE's previous scenarios, though. I still have problems with their style of storytelling, especially in games like Mirror's Edge. That game lost almost all common sense near the end of the game. With this one, I think they finally managed to get the player deeply involved in the counter-terrorism effort. It was a simple plot, but it worked.

Alex Martin

That linearity was my problem with Bad Company 2. It felt like a shooting gallery, whereas Bad Company 1 had more opportunities to tackle situations differently.

I don't understand why Battlefield campaigns don't capitalise on the things that make multiplayer great: randomness, freedom of play style, and multiple paths through levels. That's what I come to Battlefield for. (And what I like about Halo's campaigns, now that I think about it.)