THE PRESENTATION
The graphics (or more specifically, the Frostbite engine) is what makes
this game. It’s one of the best looking shooters to date. Every bullet
you shoot kicks up dust and debris, and the explosions are tremendous.
It never gets old.
The music, as mentioned before, is hardly noticeable. The sound
design on the other hand is literally stunning. It’s got possibly the
best mix ever for a video game battle (especially if you have a good
surround sound system), letting you know exactly where the bullets are
coming from and deafening you when things get blown apart near you. The
native languages spoken only add to the experience. Amazing, amazing
stuff. Crank it and scare your neighbors into thinking terrorists have
moved into the neighborhood. It’s fun!
THE REPLAY
The
single
player campaign will take you around 10-15 hours to complete,
depending on how thorough you are with finding everything. Every level
has collectibles (rare weapons) and cases of gold to find. The
collectibles and any special weapons (rocket launcher, repair gun,
etc.) will be marked with X’s on your map, but you’ll have to keep an
eye out for the mercenary insignia outside of buildings to let you
know that there’s gold in them thar walls. That makes things trickier,
especially once you get in the habit of destroying a ton of the city.
But you’ll probably go back to try and beat it in the Hard difficulty
for all the Achievements (and to find everything) in the Xbox version.
Plus, there are Achievements for destroying an entire forest, taking
out a helicopter with a guided missile, and destroying 1,000 walls.
Encourage destruction much?
But the multiplayer- man, the multiplayer.
We’ve talked at length about the Gold Rush mode included with this game (here and here).
All 8 maps included with the game are all fantastic, offering all kinds
of strategies. The choke-hold gameplay makes things so much fun, so
frantic…. I can’t remember jamming on the A button while waiting to
respawn like this, ever. You’ll want to jump right back into battle to
help your team take those crates out. Infinitely replayable. Honestly,
the multiplayer is the reason the game gets the score it does… if it
were just the single player campaign, it would have been significantly
lower.
One thing that may turn people off is that there’s just
this one multiplayer mode (Gold Rush), but when it’s as deep and
exciting as this can you really complain? Well, people did, and the
guys at DICE are going to offer a new, free mode for download. Fans of Battlefield know what Conquest is, a game where you have to hold
control points and whittle away your enemies one by one. It’s going to be a doozy.
THE VERDICT
My
new favorite multiplayer FPS. DICE has really found a way to make
console gamers happy with this one, and hopefully they’ll expand it
even further with the future downloads. Call of Duty has finally met its match. Hopefully the next Battlefield will include co-op, because then they’ll have everything a gamer could ask for.