The map pack’s greatest achievement is Talah Market, an urban combat level that features narrow corridors with plenty of verticality for ambushes and vantage points. These maps may have just as well been cities that had experienced significant shelling or uprisings but that doesn’t detract from their overall feel. And aside from Epicenter, which features in-game aftershock rumbling, the inclusion of piles of rubble strewn about the levels doesn’t scream “earthquake”.
Culturally, these levels are standard fare: desert settings with shattered buildings, mountainous backdrops, and a war-torn feel. Set in, the four new environments have been shaken and destroyed by a recent earthquake. With the release of Aftermath, the Battlefield 3 designers have found their groove again. Levels were so large that for console players, you went long periods without engaging anyone from the opposition. The third map pack - Armored Kill - trended too far in the opposite direction. The Battlefield faithful were unimpressed, even in spite of the impressive graphical upgrades that came with the newly accessible processing power that is otherwise dedicated to tanks, jets, and helicopters on bigger levels. Thematically, the levels were the same close-range combat that has typified the Modern Warfare releases. Battlefield 3‘s original set of maps were some of the most dynamic, realistic, and geographically diverse levels ever created in modern first-person shooters, but the subsequent map packs have been a mixed bag.įirst up was a redesign of Battlefield 2‘s maps, which went as well as you would imagine, but the subsequent release - Close Quarters - was Battlefield 3‘s attempt to garner some of the Call of Duty crowd.
The Call of Duty series has been getting it right for half of a decade, but what those games never accomplished was a feeling of truth in its environments.
What the game designers realized early in the development process was that the gunplay was the easy part to get right. There’s a certain rhythm that permeates a well-designed Battlefield 3 level.