It may have turned up in four previous Battlefield games, but Wake Island is not BF3′s Executive Producer’s favourite map. Shock, right? So what is? Well, that honour falls to Battlefield 2′s Strike at Karkand, DICE’s superb Middle Eastern urban sprawl, whose high rise buildings and tight alleyways make for some spectacularly tactile combat.
Both maps, of course, feature on Battlefield 3′s first map pa?, er, expansion pack, Back to Karkand. As it did with the full game, EA’s once again beaten Activision out of the starting blocks with its big shooter, packing in four new (old) maps, four additional vehicles (including the hover-capable F-35 jet and the utterly pointless yet hilarious construction site favourite Skid Loader), 10 brand-new weapons, an extra game mode and – most importantly – five new achievements.
Back to Karkand offers a nod back to PC predecessor Battlefield 2, featuring the best of BF2′s maps remade in DICE’s destruction-heavy Frostbite 2 engine. If you’re a Battlefield nut then, you’ll have likely seen all of the maps on offer here before, but don’t let that put you off. In addition to Strike at Karkand (whose towers make use of FB2′s destruction far better than any of BF3′s on-disc maps), Battlefield 2′s equally dusty and similarly urban maps Sharqi Peninsula and Gulf of Oman also feature – the former offering great scope for aerial warfare, and the latter leading to some brilliant vertical assaults amidst its craneyard.
As you’d expect, they fit Battlefield far better than some of BF3′s existing fast-paced deathmatch-inspired battlegrounds, but it’s the prospect of classic map Wake Island that will have most BF fans plonking down the cash on some Microsoft Points, its unique horseshoe design clearly as much of a DICE favourite as it is ours.
Wake Island’s been altered slightly for Back to Karkand, outfitted in a new modern-day, oily setting and with its flag points reduced from five down to three. Its superb design and great mix of land, aquatic and aerial vehicles still makes it one of the better maps in the franchise – the island’s two prongs provoking some tense sniper stand-offs and daring suicide runs – but its overexposure can often threaten to bore. The map also tends to highlight Frostbite 2′s limits on the 360, and sniping from one side of the island to the other can often expose the reduced polygon geometry and low-res textures required to keep up performance over longer draw distances.
And that’s not the only criticism we have of the pack. DICE has chosen to lock Back to Karkand’s new weapons behind ‘Assignments’, a new unlock system similar to Call of Duty’s Challenges that unlocks specific weapons once certain requirements have been met. To unlock the FAMAS, for example, you’ll have to heal and revive 10 players. That’s fine, but some assignments can require lengthy time investment, with one assignment in particular being unfairly difficult. Honestly, how many times have you managed to kill an enemy with a repair torch?
Balancing issues two months on are also far more prevalent than at launch, with matchmaking consistently grouping high-ranking players on one team and lower-ranked on the other. With advanced equipment available to higher-ranked players, it gives one team an incredibly unfair advantage. B2K’s new game mode, Conquest Assault, which sees one team start the game in control of every flag point, is easily the weakest and laziest of those available, too – and that’s including the dreaded Team Deathmatch.
So, is the release of Back to Karkand a good time to jump back in with Battlefield 3? Well, while it may feature the best maps we’ve ever seen in a download, it isn’t quite Battlefield’s best ever DLC – the scope and ambition of BFBC2′s: Vietnam still holds that title. But for the first of many new packs for Battlefield 3, Back to Karkand’s a great start, with each of the four maps as good as, if not better, than those already on the disc. Next stop: New York.
VERDICT: 84%
This article was originally published in Issue 62 of 360Zine.
Tags: Battlefield 3 Back To Karkand
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