PC Gamer - March 2012

You are no longer welcome in this fine dining establishment.

Wake Island isn’t quite as we remember it in BF3.

back to the future
BATTLEFIELD 3: BACK TO KARKAND tests
how much we’ll pay for a slice of the past by Tom Senior

Need to know

What is it?

Map pack adding four revamped Battlefield 2 maps, 10 weapons and three vehicles. Influenced by Battlefield 2 Play it on 2Ghz dual-core CPU, GeForce 8600 GT/Radeon X1950, 2GB RAM Alternatively Battlefield Play4Free (71%)

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Origin

The Back to Karkand expansion for Battlefield 3 started a war inside my head. On one side, the cynic. On the other, the boy who likes shooting things. “$15 for four old maps, 10 old weapons and a few old vehicles?” The cynic scoffed. “Shut up!” the boy cried. “I just killed a tank by shooting a rocket through a hole in an apartment block!” It’s an argument the cynic was never going to win.

The maps are fantastic. But they should be. Wake Island, Gulf of Oman, Sharqi Peninsula and Strike at Karkand are all Battlefield 2 maps, rebuilt to make use of the destructibility and graphical loveliness of the Frostbite 2 engine. The four-year-old architecture has been t weaked and iterated upon countless times. They’re finely honed, fair, and consistently produce great matches.

Strike at Karkand and Sharqi
Peninsula provide the most
memorable fights. Almost every
building can be blown apart. The
streets are dominated by rumbling
tanks, but the nooks of narrow
alley ways let assault fighters take the
battle away from the monstrous
vehicles. Gulf of Oman is also
fantastic. Its tall buildings and
leering cranes offer some creative
vantage points for snipers and it’s
much more built up than the
Battlefield 2 original.

Old stomping grounds

The slender horseshoe of Wake Island is perhaps the weakest of the bunch, but still delivers a great spectacle. It’s wide-open, narrow walk ways and bridges are a nightmare for infantrymen who aren’t inside a vehicle, and its weird shape and increased size makes it hard for fighters on one end to get around to the points on the other. It’s a great hunting ground for pilots of the F- 35, however. The V-TOL jet makes a return from Battlefield 2. It’s much more sluggish than Battlefield 3’s jets, but the ability to hover like a bird of prey and pick off infantry make it a devastating and especially satisfying weapon.

The maps are top notch, but the

$15 price tag is still troubling. At almost half the price of the base game (which is required to play Karkand ), we should expect a little more than a few remastered classics. Bad Company 2’s Vietnam pack succeeded because it took us into a different place where the weapons were rustier and the warfare dirtier. Back to Karkand gives us more Battlefield 3, with the same highs and lows attached (Battlelog is still frustrating: long load times and disconnections are typical).

Only two of Battlefield 3’s original
maps delivered the full, sprawling
warfare experience: jets flying over-
head as tanks dueled below. The
four new maps added by Back to
Karkand show Battlefield 3 at its
biggest and best. It’s strange that
DICE had to reach into familiarity
to really show what Battlefield 3 can
do, but there’s no denying Back to
Karkand’s quality. n
◆ Price $15, or free if you pre-ordered ◆ Release Out now ◆ Publisher Electronic Arts ◆ Developer DICE
◆ Multiplayer Up to 64 players ◆ Link http://bit.ly/ueh5ks