Hi! My name is Ryan and I do web development & design.

This is me speak­ing as some­one who played the Bat­tle­field 3 alpha and beta tri­als, in addi­tion to own­ing all of the pre­vi­ous Call of Duty games on the PC. This may read as a bit of a rant but I’ll try to stick to lay­ing down the facts. I could go on for para­graphs, but let’s keep this brief.

• Price. I was able to get BF3 for $42 USD on Ama­zon (you can still get it for ~$50 USD), com­pared to $60 USD for MW3.
• Con­tent. Bat­tle­field will ship with more maps than MW3. Not tiny maps, mind you… MASSIVE, SPRAWLING landscapes.
• Destruc­tion. Dynamic cover is some­thing you come to appre­ci­ate, and the Call of Duty series is igno­rant of this.
• Redun­dancy. Mod­ern War­fare 3 is essen­tially the same game its pre­de­ces­sors have been. Watch­ing game­play shows a bla­tant dis­re­gard for innovation.
• Armour. Heli­copters, jets, tanks, quads, humvees, light armour, and other vehi­cles add so much more fun to game­play in Bat­tle­field 3!
• Scale. Bat­tle­field 3 runs up to 64 play­ers while the “other” game is only bal­anced for 18.
• DLC. I was really irked that Activi­sion con­tin­ued to charge $15 for map DLC. If you decided to buy Black Ops plus all of its DLC, you would have spent $120. Not a great investment.
• Pres­tig­ing. I’ve never pres­tiged in Call of Duty and never con­sid­ered it to be worth­while action. Not only do the costs vastly out­weigh the gains, but it’s an obvi­ous attempt at player reten­tion. They try to push you to keep play­ing (one more pres­tige, one more pres­tige, etc.).
• Com­mu­nity. From what I’ve expe­ri­enced in both games, Bat­tle­field has a much more… “mature” com­mu­nity. Guys that can actu­ally make ratio­nal deci­sions regard­ing objec­tives… not to men­tion intel­li­gent con­ver­sa­tion. I’ve never met an unpleas­ant per­son in Bad Com­pany 2 — can’t say the same for Mod­ern War­fare 2. That game is sat­u­rated with mic-spamming tweens.
• Evo­lu­tion. Cor­rect me if I’m wrong, but MW3 is still using an older ver­sion of the IW engine that dates back a few years? Yeah, Frost­bite 2 is leaps ahead.
• Team-play. Even though you can play as a lone wolf in BF3, you’re dras­ti­cally sti­fled in your suc­cess. How­ever, if you play in a squad and move as a team… you’ll get those “Bat­tle­field moments”, where you become lucid to the fact that you and your friends are mov­ing as one in syn­chrony. It’s hard to explain, but it def­i­nitely kills any monot­ony and gives you a bit of  a rush. Sounds silly but trust me.

To close, here are just two Bat­tle­field 3 videos you should watch if you’re on the fence. This game is far supe­rior to Mod­ern War­fare 3. If you do hap­pen to get BF3, let me know and we’ll drop in as a squad! Con­tinue read­ing →