Why does BF3 get slammed for scripted events but MW3 gets praise?

 Edit: Praised is a poor choice of words. More like it gets a pass.
 
Ok, I haven't played MW3 so I might be completely off about this but something struck me as a bit off. Jeff and other reviewers have complained that BF3's campaign was scripted which made it boring. Now MW3 comes out and again, the campaign has a lot of heavily scripted bits. Jeff even points this out then goes on to say how awesome they are because you get to blow shit up. Well, didn't BF3 do that same thing? Chasing a car in another car, yep, in the turret of a vehicle mowing people down, yep, crashing through buildings, yep. Each game has them yet Battlefield 3 was slammed and MW3 is being praised. Now I'm not saying the BF3 campaign was great, it WAS too scripted but why do reviews flip and flop like this? MW3 scripted scenes look nearly the same except uglier.
 
If scripted events are bad, why praise Modern Warfare 3 for it? If it's not about the scripting, why do so many reviewers use that as the excuse for Battlefield 3's failings?

Because teh bias.

because sometimes scripted events are well done and sometimes they are not.

@neoepoch said:

Because teh bias.

@damnable_fiend said:

because sometimes scripted events are well done and sometimes they are not.

Both of these. Maybe. I have no idea, but they both sound good.

Didn't Dave review BF3?

different horses for different courses I guess.

I haven't read to many BF3 reviews, so I can't speak on that, but I did just read Jeff's MW3 review in its entirety, and he did not praise MW3's scripted events.

@Metal_Mills: I'm pretty sure that Jeff said he felt like there was too much on rail scripted shooting.

What do you mean? Jeff specifically called out the heavy scripting and linearity as "one of my big problems with the game's campaign" and said "it isn't much fun to play". He praised it for looking cool and intense, but it's balanced out.

Because BF3s single player campaign is highly derived from COD4s and so is MW3s but the difference IW has been getting away with it for years and people are just starting to notice.

Jeff did mention in his review for the original bad company that he is very pro-explosions.

@JustKamToo said:

Didn't Dave review BF3?

different horses for different courses I guess.

Horse meet BF3. BF3 meet horse.

because sometimes scripted events are well done and sometimes they are not.

Possibly it is because Battlefield has such freedom of choice and variety in the multi-player game (vehicles, destruction etc) it was a shame they went so heavily scripted and linear in the single player, my opinion is it may have been more fun to have a training mode for the multiplayer with bots (would have been good for new people to the battlefield series and crap vehicle drivers/pilots like me). Call of Duty has always been heavily scripted and you know what you are getting with that franchise.

What do you mean? Jeff specifically called out the heavy scripting and linearity as "one of my big problems with the game's campaign" and said "it isn't much fun to play". He praised it for looking cool and intense, but it's balanced out.

I haven't played MW3, and I won't for a while, but I can at least compare BF3's campaign to Uncharted. While both have scripted sequences the ones in Uncharted gave you the feeling that you were playing through something awesome. Battlefield made you feel like you were a bad actor in a bad movie. You felt like when you broke script the game almost slapped you in the head and said "No you must do this at this time and in this way." Uncharted's scripted moments felt more natural and just better designed.

@Metal_Mills: I'm not trying to defend it at all here, but it may have something to do with the expectation of what CoD is and what it's single player is, people know going in that it was going to have scripting all over the place, we haven't come to expect the same of Battlefield, so it was disappointing that BF3 went in that direction (also considering Bad Company had a less scripted campaign).

I however think that, yes both should be lambasted for it, there's no excuse for it in this day and age. Call it for what it is, Lazy Design.

@themangalist said:

@damnable_fiend said:

because sometimes scripted events are well done and sometimes they are not.

Ummm... examples? Battlefield's jet mission is pretty damn impressive... to look at. It was one of the boringest fps campaign i've played. It does pick up near the end, but man, i'm so sick of scripted campaigns.

The scripted events in Bulletstorm were pretty cool, they are meant to be visual and oooh'd and aaah'd at, bad scripting is when the game takes *any* control away from you for any period of time.

I haven't read to many BF3 reviews, so I can't speak on that, but I did just read Jeff's MW3 review in its entirety, and he did not praise MW3's scripted events.

Science.

The one thing that the CoD campaigns (in general, I haven't played MW3) do better with is that they still give you some freedom to accomplish a task. The scripted BF3 campaign parts were fine for me, but when you got to the gunplay, DICE really wanted you to follow predefined steps and it was clunky when you went outside of them and on hard, you die a lot very quickly when you don't stay on the path. I still think the BF3 campaign is something fun to experience, but the CoDs are a bit more free and fun. Just like their MP components, the SP between the games are quite different as well.

bf3 the scripted events were mostly qte's which arent usually a good idea to begin with. especially in a battlefield game where its supposed to let you have a big wide, well, battlefield to dick around in. but even then i dont know why mw3 gets praise / slack for basically being a big dumb michael bay movie

@Metal_Mills said:

Edit: Praised is a poor choice of words. More like it gets a pass. Ok, I haven't played MW3 so I might be completely off about this but something struck me as a bit off. Jeff and other reviewers have complained that BF3's campaign was scripted which made it boring. Now MW3 comes out and again, the campaign has a lot of heavily scripted bits. Jeff even points this out then goes on to say how awesome they are because you get to blow shit up. Well, didn't BF3 do that same thing? Chasing a car in another car, yep, in the turret of a vehicle mowing people down, yep, crashing through buildings, yep. Each game has them yet Battlefield 3 was slammed and MW3 is being praised. Now I'm not saying the BF3 campaign was great, it WAS too scripted but why do reviews flip and flop like this? MW3 scripted scenes look nearly the same except uglier. If scripted events are bad, why praise Modern Warfare 3 for it? If it's not about the scripting, why do so many reviewers use that as the excuse for Battlefield 3's failings?

Couldn't have said it better. I think Jeff's review was fair regarding the campaign and the on rails sequence but there is some stuff that I have seen this morning from other sites that just doesn't make sense.

I know it's not really as simple as that but let's say that both games have excellent multiplayer (which they do) then the only thing left to differentiate the score are the campaign and the co-op. I think the BF co-op was nicely done but lacking options and variety compared to MW3. The campaigns are both short (MW3 is said the be shorter than BF3 but haven't played it yet so who knows), way too heavily scripted, dumb and very generic. BF3 is also much better than MW3 on the technical side (I understand the 60 fps argument but I play games on PC so I always get 60 fps anyway). So...considering all that, why should MW3 get a whole point or more over BF3?

I knew the day that BF3 reviews came out that we would get some kind of double standard between the two games and this is what is pissing me off today. I think both games are great and they should be treated equally and without bias.

Anyway...my 2 cents.

@ericdrum said:

The one thing that the CoD campaigns (in general, I haven't played MW3) do better with is that they still give you some freedom to accomplish a task. The scripted BF3 campaign parts were fine for me, but when you got to the gunplay, DICE really wanted you to follow predefined steps and it was clunky when you went outside of them and on hard, you die a lot very quickly when you don't stay on the path. I still think the BF3 campaign is something fun to experience, but the CoDs are a bit more free and fun. Just like their MP components, the SP between the games are quite different as well.

Indeed. In the MW3 campaign there are a lot of cases where they give you a directive to do something or follow someone, but you still have the freedom to ignore that or run ahead of the guy you're supposed to be following. In one case, there was even a scripted event that didn't happen because I ran in-front of the guy it was going to happen to. The BF3 and MoH campaigns feel even more controlled, and I got completely bored with both.

That's not to say I care much for MW3, but the campaign is most definitely more enjoyable as far as entertainment value goes.

Because BF3 is scripted poorly. You always have to be guessing where the game wants you to be, and if you're not there, you die. If MW3 is anything like it's predecessors, there's at least a semblance of freedom.

... because MW3's are better...? Haven't played either game but I'd expect more from the developer that popularised the FPS single player super-scripted campaign.

Not to mention Battlefield 3's set pieces are boring and quite frankly unmemorable.

@Akrid said:

Because BF3 is scripted poorly. You always have to be guessing where the game wants you to be, and if you're not there, you die.

This was my main problem with BF3's SP.

I found that this made the SP almost intolerable.

i didn't hate the BF campaign, but it wasn't great.

"Because Battlefield sucks".

/trolololo

In all honesty, It's probably because CoD/old IW just has a more rabid following than the Battlefield series.

From Jeff's review:

That's one of my big problems with the game's campaign. It feels like a large chunk of your time is spent as a passenger in a vehicle or as part of a fixed-position sequence, whether it's the long-past-cliched "jump into a helicopter and shoot its gun for a few minutes" section or a "hold this position by firing this mounted gun until a helicopter arrives" shootout. The rest of the time, the game demands that you follow another soldier who is helpfully marked with the word "follow" right over his head, in case you forget. This, obviously, isn't that different from past campaigns, but the structure's over-reliance on sections where they don't even trust you to walk on your own combined with a general lack of new ideas makes the campaign pretty dull from a gameplay perspective.

What exactly is it about that that sounds like he's giving them a pass?

Because Scripted Events is what the Call of Duty games does best.

Call of Duty is more about that kind of flashy stuff so its to be expected.....battlefield not so much.

@boylie said:

From Jeff's review:

That's one of my big problems with the game's campaign. It feels like a large chunk of your time is spent as a passenger in a vehicle or as part of a fixed-position sequence, whether it's the long-past-cliched "jump into a helicopter and shoot its gun for a few minutes" section or a "hold this position by firing this mounted gun until a helicopter arrives" shootout. The rest of the time, the game demands that you follow another soldier who is helpfully marked with the word "follow" right over his head, in case you forget. This, obviously, isn't that different from past campaigns, but the structure's over-reliance on sections where they don't even trust you to walk on your own combined with a general lack of new ideas makes the campaign pretty dull from a gameplay perspective.

What exactly is it about that sounds like he's giving them a pass?

"the structure's over-reliance on sections where they don't even trust you to walk on your own combined with a general lack of new ideas makes the campaign pretty dull"

Obviously this.

I honestly felt that, while playing Battlefields' campaign, every single plot point and set piece were either poorly done or just to copycat-ish. Which is weird considering I loved the shit out of Bad Company 1 and 2. Bring those guys back. All of the MWs' campaign, however, had great set pieces all around that were well executed and immersed me.

@Still_I_Cry said:

@Akrid said:

Because BF3 is scripted poorly. You always have to be guessing where the game wants you to be, and if you're not there, you die.

This was my main problem with BF3's SP.

I found that this made the SP almost intolerable.

Super agreed to the max.

Jeff's MW3 review has a lot of negative and a lot of meh in it yet the game received 4/5 stars. Doesn't make sense.

Id say some are just done better than others and the scale / scope of the game in question. If the jet mission from the Battlefield 3 campaign was in MW3 Id be fine with it because the COD series always has some vehicle related on rails mission and to be fair the jet mission looked great but I would say that I hated it in BF3 because of the game that BF3 is. If the game makes a big deal about having jets in it then why waste the opportunity to allow players to actually FLY them? I was a real let down in that respect. Also the BF3 campaign pretty much took a cut-and-paste approach from all other FPS military shooter (including COD) and did nothing with it. I would have like to have seen them take more of an operation flash-point approach to their campaign instead of the bland, basic FPS SP campaign formula.

@Arker101: I would go further and state that I wish they had a tutorial for flying vehicles as well.

I'm the moron who flies a jet into a wall because I can't figure out how it works :P

I imagine it is definitely possible for scripted events to be very different in terms of quality. At least from the trailers/video review it seemed like mw3 uses its on rails sections to deliver a lot of "spectacle" a la Michael Bay, which is probably when these types of sections are at their best. It's really hard to compare it with bf3 as I haven't played through the campaign of either yet (mp is so good!).

@Still_I_Cry said:

@Arker101: I would go further and state that I wish they had a tutorial for flying vehicles as well.

I'm the moron who flies a jet into a wall because I can't figure out how it works :P

I have my 360 controller hooked up to the PC so whenever I get in a Jet or Helicopter I just grab that and fly around. Makes it so much easier to control. Wish I could do it with a Mouse and Keyboard but that's never gonna happen.

@ZeForgotten said:

@Still_I_Cry said:

@Arker101: I would go further and state that I wish they had a tutorial for flying vehicles as well.

I'm the moron who flies a jet into a wall because I can't figure out how it works :P

I have my 360 controller hooked up to the PC so whenever I get in a Jet or Helicopter I just grab that and fly around. Makes it so much easier to control. Wish I could do it with a Mouse and Keyboard but that's never gonna happen.

I play it on the 360 and I still have no clue how to fly the air vehicles.

In the jet I started out fine but then I couldn't get lift and then boom :(

It could have something to do with memorable landmarks being blown up all around you in Modern Warfare 3 as opposed to a generic-looking urban environment blowing up in Battlefield 3's single player campaign.

He stated how boring this was to play in the review ...

@Still_I_Cry said:

@ZeForgotten said:

@Still_I_Cry said:

@Arker101: I would go further and state that I wish they had a tutorial for flying vehicles as well.

I'm the moron who flies a jet into a wall because I can't figure out how it works :P

I have my 360 controller hooked up to the PC so whenever I get in a Jet or Helicopter I just grab that and fly around. Makes it so much easier to control. Wish I could do it with a Mouse and Keyboard but that's never gonna happen.

I play it on the 360 and I still have no clue how to fly the air vehicles.

In the jet I started out fine but then I couldn't get lift and then boom :(

Just watch Top Gun and try to fly like that. Turn upside down and flip another pilot off. Once you've got that nailed you don't ever need to be in a jet no more. (Flipping off is not part of the game and you will have to do it in real life. Action not rated by the ESRB)

I remember Jeff saying he was enjoying the BF3 single player and i also remember him referring to the in vehicle sequences in a negative sense so i duno whee you're coming from.

The problem is, scripting is what Call of Duty is from the very beginning of that series. So Battlefield comes along and basically just rips off the COD formula completely for single player and at a point in time where Activision is really running that franchise into the ground.

Cant argue about the scripting in Cod, It's in the game's heritage. Battlefield has never earned it.

For the record, i liked the BF3 campaign just as much as any CoD campaign...which is to say i think they're, "ok".

MW3 is 50% vehicle sequences. If you asked me, I'd say that they got worried over BF3 and did what they could with vehicles.
 
BF3's campaign once they fix the scripting I managed to break will be second to MW1 as a modern, current-generation fave single-player "campaign" of a first person shooter for me.

What I find more baffling, is how some reviewers can criticize a game for being very similar (Uncharted 3, Forza 4 etc) yet not criticize Modern Warfare 3 for being an almost identical experience that we've seen now for the past three years if not longer. Baffling to me.

At least Jeff took note of that in his review, wish I could ask more reviewers why it seems MW3 gets different treatment in that regard.

Also why did MW3 get a video review and BF3 didn't? Both franchises are the best in the genre so why do a video review of one and not the other?

@MackGyver said:

Also why did MW3 get a video review and BF3 didn't? Both franchises are the best in the genre so why do a video review of one and not the other?

Because Jeff got his copy late and at to fly off to an event shortly after. Dave wrote a review but Jeff simply didn't have the time to make a video review. It's EA's fault for shipping their copies late.

becouse battlefield single player could be way way better

because sometimes scripted events are well done and sometimes they are not.