It lacked heart, soul, and anything truly original.
It was just game cliche after game cliche, and not in the spirit of Bad Company where it was jokes, more in the spirit of 'other games did this and it was cool'. I simply stopped playing when the mission to get the arms dealer's house was barely halfway (I guess), running into Russian Paratroopers was enough for me.
Honestly, cliche after cliche, FPS game staple after FPS game staple. Oh look, routine patrol, oh look, lone wolf segment, oh look, massive battle sequence, oh look, another linear firefight, oh look, another forced sniper segment, oh look, the first person execution of my character, oh look, an escort mission. It's just been done to death. The truly unique segments that Battlefield takes pride in, the VEHICLE segments were either heavily scripted (i.e. the F-18 sequence) or limited. The F-18 sequence was fun and exciting, but it was a rail shooter. The Abrams section was fun, but halfway through, it turns into a generic rail shooter/turret shooter, taking away all the vehicle fighting you expect.
The characters are singularly uninteresting and forgettable, cue tough non-com, cue away from home family man, cue bitter Russian terrorist, cue amorphous and nebulous middle east leader, cue smart-mouth marine, cue scarred Russian special operations bad-ass. They're just cliche and done to death, and with each one, I'm seeing parallels to other game characters who were better. Too many parallels to Modern Warfare One-to-the-latest. I honestly, could not remember the 'main' character's name without looking at his name tag in every one of the cut scenes (on an addendum, I disliked Dragon Age 2's framing narrative with Varric and the Seeker, but damn it, at least it happened less).
The plot even felt like a cut-and-paste from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's, missing nuclear weapons, gee, where have I heard THAT one before? US Marines invading a middle east country after a coup, gee, where have I heard THAT one before? Russia and America going head to head after terrorist attacks, gee, where have I heard THAT one before? There is NOTHING endearing or original, nothing to make me have this stick out in my mind beyond how blase and dull it is. It's just so mediocre and been done to death so many times I can't stand it. At least when the bomb went off in Sum of All Fears, the damn book was interesting. In the game it feels like, "Paris was Nuked, moving on...".
I even felt like many of the scripted 'story conversations' that take place with the Marines and characters felt like the developers were doing the game equivalent of standing on a chair flapping their arms screeching: 'SEE! SEE! WE CAN CARRY A MESSAGE! SEE!!!'
The Marine conversation in Fault Line when the Marines are talking about how 'America was founded by Terrorists, for Terrorists', and the conversation in the car between the Russians about how 'what would people think if they knew how much people like us influence the world?'. It all just felt so weak and feeble while the developer was trying to not even make a message but just be edgy and push the limits of 'acceptable'. To try and insert some sense of serious contemplation that just comes off as pathetic.
And that's just the writing issues I had and I haven't even finished the damn game! Don't get me started on the bloody graphics and AI issues which are simply unacceptable.
The single player is not worth the game, and the Multiplayer is better, the mechanics are sound for the most part, but there are still enough glitches and issues that I want to yank my hair out over a few of them. This entire game should have been multiplayer, no Single Player campaign at all, just a solid multiplayer game, because I'm sure that the issues I'm seeing with multiplayer wouldn't have been there if the developers had been able to focus all their efforts on making a polished and great multiplayer game, rather than adding a single player campaign just to combat their competition.
The Single Player is a D, at best. I'd rather play the Battle: Los Angeles game than this campaign, at least Battle: LA has aliens.
