Battlefield 3

My brother used to work for Sony PlayStation which is officially Sony Computer Entertainment of America. One year for my birthday, he got me a PlayStation 2 and sent me a copy of SOCOM 2. It was a first person shooter (FPS) and was a lot of fun. One nice thing about SOCOM was that you could play against others online as long as you had a broadband Internet connection. I used to get online once a week with my brother and other family members only to get shot to death for hours. FPS games are my favorite and so when Battlefield 3 came out, I used one of my contacts at Electronic Arts, also known as EA, to get me a copy. A neighbor who was one of my former scouts wanted to play the game and so I gave him my unopened copy. Then a few weeks ago, I found myself having lunch at EA in California with a different friend and picked myself up another copy. EA has this great store on their Redwood City campus and as long as you have an employee with you, you can get copies of their products for a huge discount. If you don't know anyone that works at EA, I highly recommend finding one, simply to get some of their products.

Battlefield 3 was developed by Dice, one of EA's studios, and created using the Frostbite 2 engine. The guys at Dice spend an insane amount of effort making sure that their engine is incredibly real. I have to say they succeeded. You can do things like blow up a building and then walk through that area. While most other FPS games make you feel like you are in a maze, Battlefield 3 is not like that. Of course if you do find yourself leaving the mission area, you have a number of seconds to get back on course or risk failing your mission.

The game runs on the PlayStation 3, XBox 360, and PC. Naturally I have it for the PlayStation 3 and the matching HD TV to go with it. The graphics are incredible and so you are going to want something better than standard 480p resolution. Mine is cranked up to 720p which is the best the game can do. To be honest, I thought it was 1080p when I started playing and didn't realize it was on the lesser setting until I checked the TV.

I have yet to play online as I am just trying to get familiar with the game. I'm sure it will be a lot of fun and once again I will spend a lot of time dying.

Battlefield 3 is rated M for blood, intense violence, and strong language. It has really strong language and I wish I could turn that off. I am all for realism, but I wish I could turn on some sort of censoring so that when the players swear, you hear a beep or a substitute word. It is also a first person shooter and so killing people is part of the game. Sometimes at really close range. So far I am enjoying the game and would recommend it to anyone who likes FPS games and isn't offended by strong language.