That said, character animations are smooth and realistic, explosions have significant weight to them, and environments get torn apart in showers of concrete and debris. During an intense firefight on a bridge, I noticed a helicopter chugging along at a drastically reduced framerate at one point. The framerate tops out at 30, but occasional dips will occur if there is a lot of concentrated activity or several incoming vehicles at the same time.
The game looks gorgeous no matter what system you’re playing on, but you’ll notice more pop-in and framerate drops on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Playing Battlefield 3 on consoles is mostly the same experience as the PC version, but it’s not identical. Whether you’re playing through the tense campaign or spending countless hours in multiplayer, Battlefield 3 greatly benefits from the stunning Frostbite 2 engine. With dozens of players battling across nine massive maps in tanks, jeeps, helicopters, jets, and on foot, multiplayer matches feel like a genuine war rather than a small-scale skirmish. While the Battlefield 3 campaign isn’t devoid of this feeling, its multiplayer offers a much more natural (and rewarding) sense of large-scale action. Being shuttled from one explosive set piece moment to another can be thrilling, but when this formula is overused it feels you’ve boarded an on-rails Disneyland ride. Modern first-person shooters have started to resemble big-budget Hollywood blockbusters in recent years, a trend that has received both praise and criticism from gaming audiences.