In one of Jeff Gerstmann's recent Jar videos he mentioned that football games weren't as fun as they used to be. That in the 90's you had access to football games that didn't require an intimate knowledge of the sport to have fun. Games these days are so intricate in their systems that a player could easily become overwhelmed and discouraged from continuing. After listening to this I tried to apply it to my feelings on Battlefield 3.

I adored Bad Company 2. While I know the tone in the games single player campaign is meant to be different between the two, I enjoyed Bad Company 2's story and multiplayer more because it didn't take itself too seriously. Battlefield 3 tried to put me in a real world scenario in the Middle East and it failed. I see that shit on the news every day. I read about it all the time. What makes developers think I want to play through similar scenarios in my games? I think there's less room for creativity and originality when they commit to serious, real world issues and inherently the game is less fun because of it.

One other issue I took with Battlefield 3 is that they toned down the destruction to make it accurately represent real life. No longer can you take out a building with a few grenades. That, to me, was what made BC2 so much fun. The unrealistic physics and destruction are what provided me with countless Battlefield moments. Those moments that make you wish the game had a built in theater mode. With Battlefield 3 you get fewer of those moments and the game is less memorable.

Because of the serious tone and lack of meaningful destruction, it feels more like Call of Duty. In Modern Warfare you get to shoot people, that's it. There are no vehicles to drive, no destruction what-so-ever. I think the reason Call of Duty multiplayer works so well is because they're multiplayer is not unlike an RPG. It's less about killing people and more about collecting things, and people love collecting stuff. They have a nice mix of arcade and simulation, a solid grounding in reality but enough of an arcade feel to make it fun.

What I've come to realize is the closer a games subject matter is to real life, the less fun the game is for me. My life is serious enough, I play games to have fun.