Many of you fps gamers out there must be looking forward to these two well known series. At Fall 2011, it is believed that these two games would be dominating the fps market, creating a great competition between Dice and EA (Battlefield 3) and Activision and Infinity Ward (Modern Warfare 3). However, these two games are based on very different stories, built on different engines and based on contrasting styles.

As some of you may know, Battlefield games are often trying to imitate real wars as much as possible, unlike the Call of Duty series where they are known for its ‘run and gun’ experience which is more competitive and fast paced rather than prioritizing strategy and mentality. For the multiplayer experience, Battlefield is also known for it’s realistic large maps- to imitate an actual Battlefield, whilst Call of Duty is recognized by its close quarter maps with sharp corners and varying ranges of line of sights.

Like the experience, the story of the two campaigns are like apples and oranges. Battlefield 3 is not connected to any existing Battlefield games whilst MW3 is a sequel continuing from Modern Warfare 2. In Battlefield’s campaign, it is said that one of the locations where the player will fight enemies will be at the Iran/Iraq border. It is said that there will also be levels at other locations as well. In MW3, it has been said that the campaign will be set in major cities around the world. Anyhow, the campaign experience corresponds to the multiplayer experience a lot- MW3 with a more compact environment and Battlefield 3 with a more large scaled setting.

Another major topic for this discussion is the engines Dice and Activision used to build their games. At fall 2009, Activision released Modern Warfare 2, one of the best selling game on the two major consoles- xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. Nevertheless, one of the major downfalls in this game were the glitches, bugs and a lot of hackers, which is a major area Infinity Ward (the engine builder) should consider improving. Another factor that may lower our expectations is that Infinity Ward has build Modern Warfare 3 with the exact same engine used to build Modern Warfare 2 (IW 4) with only some minor improvements. On the other hand, Battlefield 3 has started everything from scratch, as they have built a brand new engine, Frostbite 2.0, just for this game. The engine can stream from mass destructions (taking down an entire building) to very detailed small explosions (like grenades or rocket launchers). The movement of the characters are said to be smoothened and are more realistic. This will be a major improvement since the last Battlefield game (Battlefield Bad Co. 2) had a slight lag for some players and also did not allow players to prone on the ground to avoid glitches. In spite of that, Battlefield 3 risks a chance of failing! By building a new engine, it is not guaranteed that it is at its peak performance level and there may be some major glitches or bugs whatsoever.

At the end of the day, it will be you and me, the users, to decide whether the two games are good or not. But looking at some demo gameplays, Battlefield 3 definitely is at the higher end considering graphics and its well-build engine.

Erin Cheong is a high school student who was born in San Jose, California. Raised in Hong Kong, Cheong developed interest into the gaming category. He moved back to United States for academic reasons halfway through 2011. Nevertheless, as a gamer, Cheong follows gaming news frequently and very closely as well. Cheong is also the owner of many gaming consoles and devices, in addition to the countless collection of games, giving him many advantages to discuss the fields of gaming and entertainment amongst other Plomonet members.