Human Battlefield Revolution 3

Or, My Game of the Year candidates

I know it is perhaps a little bit too early to call that out seeing as it's still two months until the new year comes around and there are other major titles coming up on the horizon especially this month but in my case I have found my two suitable candidates for the choice of singleplayer and multiplayer game of the year.



Battlefield 3 
What would be the best way describe to Battlefield 3?
As being served a three course meal.

Firstly we have the campaign as our Entrée which can be best described as a stew consisting of some choice pieces of good sequences held together by a thin gruel of plot. It is at parts enjoyable and at other parts very droll and in the end forgettable.
The actual plot is nothing special despite the hype that it was written by Andy McNab which says a lot about it's quality. Also the campaign has an overt fondness for using quick-time events.
In many ways the campaign is reminiscent of the in Call of Duty 4 which featured several decent and memorable segments surrounded by a thin plot.
The campaign goes away fast and won't offer anything in form of real replay value.

Moving over to the main course, the multiplayer. Which can be described as a large barbecue platter or buffet for you to dig into at your hearts content. Even if it can at times be hard to find exactly what you want and grabbing friends to come along may also come with its own problems. But once you have started you'll find that time passes very quickly with long hours of fun.

Lastly we have the dessert in from of the co-op mode which offers six different maps for two people. People who have played the Modern Warfare 2 Spec-ops mode will feel right at home with this. It's enjoyable with the right people but in the end it's not a very enticing or amazing experience and the only real replay value is to get points for some exclusive weapon unlocks.

In more clearer terms the multiplayer essentially blows Bad Company 2 out of the water by making it bigger and better. It's the old Battlefield 2 experience but improved on many accounts.
The game also looks absolutely gorgeous even on medium settings on the PC with some amazing graphical effects, not to mention the sound engine is astounding and deserves a special mention just because how good it is with explosions and weapons sounding incredibly impressive and meaty.

It's not all that perfect though, the netcode can be at times very laggy, especially larger maps can feature a lot of rubber banding back and forth which can lead to an exercise in frustration.
Then there is some issues with the external Battlelog and it's server browser. The game lacks built in server browser so everything is handled via the Battlelog web page.
While the concept of it is good due to it displaying a wealth of statistical information regarding your progress as well as giving you a chance to organize friends list and platoons, but the issues start when start looking for a server to play with friends as the server information is slow to update and the fact that they have moved over the queue system to a server side setting means that you'll often find yourself trying to preform a group join only to find that most of the group can not join due to the server suddenly being full.
That is if everyone can accept the party join as in many cases the invite has a tendency to not appear for some parties which forces you to restart the browser and access the battelog again.
Also there is no option to filter out passworded servers which is perplexing.
Hopefully those are some issues that will be fixed in due time, the same goes for the random server crashes/disconnections that seem to be occurring at times.

But when everything works as it should it is an amazing experience that few games today can honestly offer and this is why this game is my multiplayer choice for my game of the year.

Moving on to the singleplayer choice.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution
So how would I best describe DX:HR then?
To be honest it isn't the easiest but the best way would be to describe it as a giant adventure park.

At first it may seem a bit limited and straight forward just so you can learn the ropes and familiarize yourself but at the same time if you start look hard enough it actually shows that some things can be dealt with in a slightly different way than expected and then you suddenly get access to your first playground to really get started with the exploration with several options on how to deal with things and once you've gotten your feet wet for real you get access to the really big playground to really get going with multiple ways on how to deal with things before you get moved on to another smaller playground with the same freedom as before in how to do things.
But then all of a sudden you come across something where this freedom of choice is suddenly absent and try as you might you don't really seem to find any other way to deal with what stands before you. So grudgingly you do it the way it's supposed to be done and get it over with and before you know it you're suddenly returned that freedom you had before but now you're at a whole new place with new things to find and do so you quickly forget about the previous hurdle and start enjoying yourself again.

So this happens a couple of times and you get to see some previous attractions in a new way and then you suddenly are near the end of it all. But the problem is that it just feels a little empty all of a suddenly as you're suddenly being pushed in the right direction by things and all that freedom before just seems absent and then you reach the same giant wall as before which you just grit your teeth and deal with and then all of a sudden it's over which leaves you slightly disappointed as you had so much fun before.

Don't get me wrong here, DX:HR is good, really good as it retains a lot of the same feeling from its first predecessor with its freedom of choice in allowing you to tackle missions and areas in several different ways but there are some cracks in the façade.
Firstly there is the boss fights, they feel out of place with the freedom you have at your disposal as they all have one way of going through them and no other way of beating them other than using brute force which can create problems for non-combat focused players.
That also leads up to my second issue.
My second problem is that the final act isn't all that great to any extent and it feels very rushed and short. Not to mention feeling like it comes far too out of left field to a certain extent. There are some minor alternate paths here and there but at the same time it just feels unfinished like there was a promise of more to be done. The same goes for the ending, or endings should I say as there are several you can pick from. But the problem, without indulging in spoilers here, is that they aren't that immensely gratifying and they end up feeling kinda disappointing. The thing after the credits is however a nice touch but that really doesn't help the fact that the final part could've been done a lot better than it was.

But despite those two issues the game is an amazing singleplayer experience, that while not perhaps living up to the levels that some raise the first game to, still does provide several hours of entertainment and offering good replay value as well which puts it above a lot of other games today which is why the game gets my choice for singleplayer game of the year.