More Shooters...

So, I  know that I'm a few days late on this one, but oh well. I've got a real life to live.

Anyway, as many gamers are probably aware, there are two new major shooters coming out this year, and both are trilogy enders. I'm of course, referring to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and Battlefield 3. Both have been revealed over the past couple of weeks with new gameplay trailers. Take a look:





Did you watch them? Ok, now for my impressions.

Basically, preliminary predictions for me are like this: MW3 is going to get record sales thanks to the CoD franchises massive base of raging fanboys. However, in the long run, BF3 is going to be remembered as the superior game. Here's why I feel this way:

It all has to do with which is the most truly 'new' game. Let's take a look at that. If you watch the MW3 trailer, it looks an awful lot like... surprise... Modern Warfare 2 (which looked a lot like Modern Warfare 1...)! It's clearly the same engine, and the graphics look barely upgraded at all. We see a lot of scripted cutscenes, and we don't see any new gameplay features at all. The only glimpses of of vehicle combat all involve you running away from them... the exception being yet another boat chase, wherein you can't do much except dodge random chaos.

Now, let's look at the BF3 trailer. Admittedly, BF3 has given us a lot more footage to work with, but I think that shows just how confident they are in what they've created. First off, the graphics are amazing. They probably won't be as good on the Xbox360 version, but most PC players won't have $1000 gaming rigs either, so I'll bet the average graphics experience is going to be the same across all platforms. Either way, they're way better looking than MW3. Next, we see tons of new in-game features. You can drag injured comrades to safety so that they can return to help you later, the environments are almost totally destructible, you can switch between semi and fully automatic modes on your rifles, you can play through hand-to-hand combat (no more knifing people in the ankles or hands for instant kills like in MW... you might actually have to have skill to get a kill up close) , and of course, we see the return of player operated vehicle combat (including aircraft) to the Battlefield franchise. I love blowing things up with tanks. Yay!

So, does this mean that MW3 is going to suck? Not at all. I quite enjoyed both the previous MW games, though the multiplayer didn't impress me enough to actually buy the games. I just borrowed them from a roommate. If MW3 is as similar to its' predecessors as it looks, then it will be just as fun. I'm sure I'll borrow it and play it as well. And, if they fix the multiplayer to be less unbalance against new players, then I may just buy it eventually. However, I suspect that BF3 will just be a lot more fun from the get go, and over a longer time.

Of course, as I just implied, multiplayer could change my mind completely. Let's face it, a games legacy isn't in its campaign story, it's in how fun the game is to play over and over again. That job is almost always going to be done (or not done...) by the multiplayer options the game offers. As I mentioned above, the unbalanced design of the MW2 multiplayer turned me away after I beat the campaign. We don't have a lot details on either games multiplayer features yet, so the pendulum could still swing either way for which game is best. We won't have to wait too long though. Both games are due out this fall, and I'm sure that we'll see plenty of both games at E3 in a couple weeks.