Where’s the Battlefield 3 review?

If you’ve been reading the internet over the weekend you’ll know all about this, but if your gaming news comes exclusively from VideoGamer.com (hi Mum!) then here’s the info: our review of Battlefield 3 is going to be late for today’s 8.01am embargo set by EA.

VideoGamer.com signed for its code at 8:30am on Monday morning, meaning we’ve now just had over 24 hours with the game. I’ll be doing the review, and I also demanded time to eat, sleep, proofread Emily’s Risen 2 preview and watch the Spooks finale.

While other sites have run reviews based off PC code, I’m currently playing through the 360 version. Our benevolent bearded editor Tom Orry requested PC code from EA, and we’ve got a massive machine powerful enough to fly the entire company to the moon, but we never heard back from EA on this topic.

The publisher also stressed that the game could not be reviewed without a 167mb day one patch that would be available on Monday. Whether this was online before Monday I do not know, for obvious reasons.

Obviously the situation is not ideal, but our current plan is to bring you the review before its UK launch on Friday 28 October. DICE is one of my favourite developers in the world, and like many of you I am looking forward to spending more time with one of the most anticipated games of 2011.

I am, however, now allowed to publicly disclose my opinions about the game. Here are some of my thoughts from what I’ve been playing, many of which I will probably regurgitate into the review later this week:

• Overall, I find the single-player campaign disappointing. I’m one level away from the end, and I was going to finish it last night but I went off to play multiplayer and never looked back.
• One of the major campaign problems is that the game thinks it’s more emotionally engaging than it actually is.
• I really don’t have much love for the co-op missions, either. They are functional but never fun, and DICE has obviously tried and failed to turn them into score-attack missions similar to Modern Warfare’s Spec Ops mode. They are far too long to serve this purpose, and the lack of checkpointing is way more infuriating than it is tense.
• The requirements for unlocking all of the co-op missions in multiplayer are also very high. I expected it to simply be a case of finishing the co-op campaign to get all the unlockables, but you’ll need to do the 6-mission campaign multiple times if you want to extract all the goods.
• Other reviews have said this, but the game is redeemed by the strength of its multiplayer. Like Bad Company 2 before it, I see Battlefield 3 as an excellent multiplayer game with a disappointing campaign tacked on.
• But how does the multiplayer actually fare? I’ve noticed that lines of sight are far greater than you’ll normally see in an online game, and you’ll often find yourself killed by a prone sniper from absolutely miles away. I have to adjust my usual style of play, and I honestly can’t imagine playing without a scope equipped.
• It’s especially jarring to view EA’s ‘above and beyond the call’ marketing brouhaha in light of the fact Battlefield 3 falls to its most damning lows when it’s trying hardest to compete with Call of Duty.

Update: Find out what we think of Battlefield 3 on consoles in our Battlefield 3 review.