Single Player Discussion

**Dredge** · 10-25-2011, 02:03 AM

BE ADVISED, SPOILERS IN THIS THREAD

(mod note) This thread is for discussion of the Singleplayer Campaign. Please be aware many posts will have spoilers. I strongly suggest we each post which mission we're talking about so others don't read too much. -Skud

Just spent a few hours playing the SP and as of now I am mildly impressed. The overall look is done well and the audio is just amazing. Weapons handle very well, although I think the sights are a bit off. Not a lot of destruction available sadly. There see to only be certain things you can blow up and they are usually tied to the mission. Only real gripe about SP thus far is the "slow" AI. It's one of those "if you don't kill everything you can't move" deals. Sure they call out contacts but they fire blindly and in a general direction towards the enemy. Yet they don't hit them. I watched the enemy waltz right up and fire bursts into my comrade and he continued to call the contact and fire at a wall. Sad really. Could have given them a bit more in the "help the team" category.

All in all it's not too bad. MP is next hopefully. Anyone else have any feedback?

**Skud** · 10-25-2011, 03:10 AM

Dredge, I've modified this thread a little bit to be the 1 stop shop for SP discussion. I'm sure there's going to be plenty of threads about MP in the coming 24 hours!

I've played a few missions so far, just stopped at "Operation Guillotine"

So far my favorite has been "Going Hunting"

Spoilers follow!

Going Hunting

Going Hunting is a mission where you play the gunner/co-pilot of an F-18 as Lt. Hawkins. A Female. I thought this was cool, since this will be the first time in a modern military game with a possible Female role. While Hawkins was silent in this mission, I'm optimistic.

You and your partner "Wedge" walk up to the flight deck. Immediately you're hit by the scale of a carrier. Really awesome. It's raining, and the ocean looked amazing. We took off and immediately ran into a dogfight. After the dogfighting, we went to an enemy airfield with RADAR and anti air guns. We mopped those up pretty fast. Then we lase parked Migs and fuel trucks for JDAM strikes. Awesome. Finally, we lase for the A-10's to go after a High Value Target. Fly home by Night Vision and the mission was over.

Whew. Awesome sauce.

**dawolf** · 10-25-2011, 06:04 AM

Originally Posted by Skud

Whew. Awesome sauce.

Agreed, the Going Hunting mission was epic. This game just looks totally amazing and I found myself wishing for a BF3 flightsim with coop play in one plane - or two seated bombers like in BF2

The story so far is meh, the action is pretty much on rails so far but the overall audio/visual experience is impressive.

**kilroy0097** · 10-25-2011, 07:45 AM

In the SP you are a backseat RIO which also does weapons. But in BETA we have only seen single player jets where the pilots does everything. Do you think we will have 2 seaters in the jet/strike aircraft category (Excepting Helo)?

**Bodofooko** · 10-25-2011, 10:07 AM

It certainly looks and sounds good. Just wish there was an option to have the computer control your character too because sometimes I miss my marks and end up standing in my squad mates position or in an enemy spawn location. I think a high quality youtube play through might be the ideal way to play it.

**sc1ence** · 10-25-2011, 10:59 AM

I started the campaign last night but nearly had a phototropically induced seizure from the game loading graphics flashing like a strobe light... I went to sleep nauseous after playing less than 5 seconds of the campaign. lol, wish I was kidding...

**K1E5ER** · 10-25-2011, 11:50 AM

Luckily I bought BF3 for the multiplayer and not the singleplayer campaign. I was able to play through it all yesterday and just about every mission found myself thinking "didn't I do this exact same thing in MW2?" There were some cool things like the aircraft strike mission, but overall it was pretty much the same as every other campaign out there.

The Good:
impaling a rat is pretty sweet
shooting huge stacks of money and watching it scatter
opposing AI actually has good aim sometimes (especially in tanks)
I got to try out weapons that I missed in beta
graphics are wonderful, of course

The Bad:
opposing AI has no problem seeing/shooting you through light cover
you are extremely limited with weapon setups, no changing optics and only dropped guns available (need flashlight? find a gun with one)
maps are way too dark and lights are super bright without illuminating much, would have liked NV
the button presses during melee fighting got old fast, wished they would have limited it to one button
no minimap or large map, no tab objectives screen
terrible friendly AI, watched an enemy jump over a car and shoot us from behind and the friendlies didn't even move
some of the scripted objectives were vague, "knife a guy" meant get 10 feet from him and hit knife to activate scripted event, "stop helicopter" meant jump on it, not shoot it

**mat552** · 10-25-2011, 01:08 PM

Going Hunting, is (OPINIONS LOL) probably the worst done, most boring Death-From-Above of all the ones I've played. It lacked the shock value of "Holy crap, this is impossibly awesome", had none of the "what I'm doing really matters here, these guys are counting on me", and did very little to present a credible threat of failure. I was amused by the mention of the pilot being female as well; she said and did nothing at all to justify going out of the way to point out her gender, it felt like one of those things where they said "John Q. Placeholder" in the script and filled it in on the day the other characters reference her. I don't even really know why the player is made to sit through the landing.

Hopefully the rest of the campaign improves, but for a game with BF3's supposed size, they should have put the player in the pilots seat and had arbitrary SAMs to hold them in the flying area.

**Dredge** · 10-25-2011, 05:03 PM

Sadly the rest of the campaign doesn't get any better. The story line jumps around so much it's hard to follow and towards the end the button press game becomes the flavor of the day. The enemies get harder and require entire clips to down. Then they still sometimes get back up. The final fight between you and the main bad guy was so littered with button presses I couldn't get emotionally involved like I would have liked to. I give the SP a 3/5. Had some interesting parts but the lack of originality and the constant press this button to do things and lack of destruction really started to add up in the end

**Ski-Racer** · 10-25-2011, 07:36 PM

I have finished the single player. They would have been better off continuing the Bad Company story.

In my opinion, the single player is pretty poor.
1. Storyline too much like MW
2. No backstory. Why is Solomon so pissed? At least in BC2 you knew why that CIA operative was so ticked at the U.S. Plus your squadmates had personalities, banter, and you cared for them.
3. The "big decision." No friggin way
4. Just when the story looks like it will get interesting (the Caspian Border map), the prospect of all-out war disappears.
5. Short
6. They actually revealed too much. If you have seen the Fault Line, Thunder Run, Guillotine, and Release trailers then you have played half of the single player.

**draeh** · 10-25-2011, 09:32 PM

SP?

This game has something other than Conquest?

Go figure.

**DocGuo** · 10-26-2011, 12:41 AM

"Just two soldiers speaking the truth..."

I was amazed at how the trailers gave a false impression of what the true story was.

All in all, it was a good "twist" that I didn't see coming until he said "Get down on the ground! I said get down on the ground!"

**Chuddly** · 10-26-2011, 06:13 AM

I thought the single player was really well done. It had its faults, but for a fps story mode, it was definitely one of the better ones I've played

Pros:

Great soundtrack. I loved the music, though I suppose its partly personal preference. I thought the soundtrack for when you first meet Dima in the Villa to be especially good, and really drove that scene home for me
Great setpieces. Wow, the set pieces were great, like the carrier, and all those other cinematic intros to the missions. I was very impressed, and really made the missions seem more than just meaningless shoot-em up in a box.
Great pacing. I thought the pacing was really good. They really managed to combine the cutscenes and the shooting areas really well, so it all felt pretty organic. They also made *most* of the hectic moments really feel hectic and rushed.
Great environment. The missions took you all over the place in all different kinds of settings. It was pretty awesome to fight through a subway train, or run through Paris alleyways.
Enjoyable, if a bit cliched, story. I thought the story was pretty good, and the characters relatable. The voice acting was great, especially from Campo. I thought the characters were actually more relatable than the ones in CoD:MW (which was my favorite FPS story campaign). Also, I like the way they jumped around a bit in the story. Personally I felt it was easy follow along. Nothing like MW2. I still have no idea what that campaign was about.

Cons:

Stupid AI. The AI isn't that great. They're average. They use cover fairly well, but in predictable ways. Also, your allies are useless. And the enemy always aims for you, making some of the larger firefights a tad bit tough.
Quicktime events. The quicktime events werent that fun the first couple of times. They definitely weren't fun after the 20th.
Positioning. Your squad/friendlies always stack up to breach closed doors. However, I never knew where to stand. I always wanted to stack up with them to be more immersive, but the AI just pushes you out of the way if you take his spot, which can be a bit jarring. Furthermore, occasionally they expect you to breach the door, but there's no indication of that, so you wind up stacking with everyone, and then nothing happens. Another example is sometimes you squad takes a knee to talk about the situation, but you have to be in just the right place to trigger the dialogue. It can really jar you out of the story.

Overall I would say its one of the better singleplayer campaings i've played, and I can definitely see myself playing through it again somepoint down the road.

**ANGELofDEATH** · 10-26-2011, 08:44 AM

So, am I the only one who can get passed the first minute of the single player in the train. Since they are doing maintenance on the back end, I decided to play the SP. But I can not get passed the first timing test... probably because I am old and my reflexes are slow as molasses. Maybe the Space bar on my new keyboard wont let me hit it fast enough.

Just past the point that the enemy AI is placing C4 on the window, you jump out the window, jump to the next car, he shoots you through window, you fall... It says to press [SPACE], the character hops a bit, and fails to move, I notice the [SPACE] goes red as he hops.. Oh so it is double jump... falls to death. I tried timing the double jump a hundred different ways, while holding other keys 50 times.. Mission fail!

Well DICE your attempt to create a CoD cinema piece fails. Instead of spending a thousand development man hours on a scripted linear SP, you should have worked on a couple more MP maps.

I know, you cant get through the first 30 seconds of a simple SP training sequence? . . . wft ANGEL, press the [SPACE] bar. A frikin hour trying everything. I know it must be one of those timing tests.. seriously, if I wanted a timing test, I would still be playing Super Mario Bros.

**Abel** · 10-26-2011, 08:59 AM

Actually space is Swedish for Alt+F4........ xP

Reading the thread I was actually unsure if you were talking about COD or BF.. Kinda scaring really.. ><