Battlefield 3

Finally the long awaited Battlefield 3 has arrived! I started playing Battlefield when Battlefield: Bad Company 2 came out. A lot of hardcore Battlefield fans might say ‘no!’ to me but even though the campaign wasn’t that great the multiplayer was were that game shined. I don’t care what people say, Bad Company 2’s multiplayer was damn good and it was damn fun. I don’t care if it didn’t have jets in it, it was my first Battlefield game and it was epic. Anyway, this isn’t about Bad Company 2. I guess what I’m trying to say is that this game is an improvement to its previous games, I know I should be comparing this to Battlefield 2 more than Bad Company 2 but unfortunately I never played it. I know there are slight differences between console and PC versions of the game, for this review I will be talking about the Xbox 360 version. Again the hardcore Battlefield along with the PC community will be going crazy at me and may not even take this review seriously but it’s the platform that I play most of my games on. I did try to get the beta working on my PC. I recently upgraded my PC because my old one couldn’t run anything but sadly for some reason even after I downloaded the driver it told me to download it wouldn’t let me join a match. I would just sit there staring at a spinning circle on Battlelog.

One main thing about Battlefield that everyone loves is the graphics. I thought the graphics were really good in Bad Company 2 and when I heard they were stepping up their engine to Frostbite 2 I was really excited. I play Battlefield 3 on the console so obviously the graphics aren’t going to be superior, if you play console you’re just going to have to accept that and if you don’t you’re stupid. This is coming from a console gamer so don’t get too offended. Coming up to the release I was a little bit scared how the game would look and run on the Xbox 360. I heard a lot of crap from mostly PC elitists who have nothing better to do than to insult console gamers. I’ve played the game for almost 24 hours and I can safely say that you don’t have to listen to anyone who says this game plays terribly on console because it doesn’t. It simply doesn’t. I only ever found one recurring problem and I doubt it happened on PC was that there was sometimes a huge drop in frames per second during the single player. This only happened maybe four or five times throughout the roughly seven hour campaign. During multiplayer the only problems I have encountered was server lag and quick match problems, each of them I only encountered maybe around three times which is a lot less than what everyone else is complaining about.

The singleplayer is pretty awesome. I’ve only played this and Bad Company 2 and the Bad Company 2 campaign wasn’t that great so I didn’t have much to compare it to. I don’t want to compare it too much to Call of Duty because they really are different games and you’ll understand that more if you play a lot of video games. I installed the HD texture pack straight away so I haven’t don’t a comparison but I have seen one and there is a difference. There’s a difference in the small detail of things but there isn’t in the big picture if that makes sense. I would say, don’t play this game without the texture pack. There isn’t any reason not too and it does make a difference. It’s the small things that make a difference! Call of Duty campaigns rarely disappoint. I’ve played since World at War and I have played the COD4 campaign and I haven’t been disappointed by one yet. I’ve heard that the singleplayer of Battlefield 3 was just an excuse to show off the graphics. Even if it was they’ve done a good job. The dark knight in the city alone was really eerie. The whole singleplayer had a great atmosphere around it the whole time. Right at the beginning they make sure you see the handcuffs around your wrists which I thought was pretty cool once I got to the end of the singleplayer. My favourite mission was when you were playing as the Russians in Paris. That mission was really colourful and I really liked the gun I was given.

Now down to the multiplayer. This is what everyone is excited about and rightly so. Bad Company 2’s multiplayer was a lot of fun but it definitely wasn’t perfect. No game is ever going to be perfect but this one is amazing. One of my favourite things about this game is the animation of the characters. When you think about it, it’s a small thing but now I realise how huge and important it is. The animation of the Engineer reloading an RPG, Gustav or AT4 in Bad Company was god awful. In Battlefield 3 the animations are so smooth. The running animation is so realistic I find myself staring at other people in the game rather than doing anything. Of course, the thing that everyone loves in Battlefield are the jets. I’m just going to be honest here, I suck major nut sack at the jets. I can fly them but I fail sometimes and crash but most of the time I just can’t shoot anything else done with my god damn gun! 300 points doesn’t seem that much when you look at the little progress bar but the odds are against you when you are flying against a pilot who has flares, heat seeking missiles, the fancy map thing that I don’t know the name of. I got this game on the 31st of October. I preordered it so I have the limited edition with the code for the Back to Karkand DLC. I live in Europe so I had to wait a couple more days to get it. By the time I got it loads of people were already flying around with all this jet gear that I’m probably not going to get till Battlefield 4! Personally I shine on the ground with a gun in my hands, that’s the player I am.

The multiplayer is amazing but it isn’t perfect. I find myself getting spawn killed a lot, and when I say a lot I mean a lot. It could just be my fault and I’m sure some of them are but it just seems like it happens way too much. I could be really stupid and not realise that people are in combat and I shouldn’t spawn on them. They have taken spawn invincibility out of the game which I guess I’m happy about. In Bad Company 2 it was such a bitch and it would always cost me a kill. That is probably the only criticism of the multiplayer. I like the idea of the degrading vehicles. I don’t like the idea of vehicles regenerating health but when I heard what DICE said about it I felt better, to keep vehicles in the game and make them more of a core part of combat. It seems like they have taken out of decreased at least the recharge of the defibulators. I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing in terms of gameplay but I like it. One thing I really praise DICE for doing is increasing the amount of points for capturing or destroying an M-COM. This really helps people actually go for the objective. I still get frustrated when nobody does it but it feels like more people are trying harder to get to the objective.

For some reason I can’t get into Battlelog and check out my stats. I’ll keep trying and get back to you if I can.

This game definitely has a lot of play time in it, much more than Bad Company 2. I will be playing this game a lot and I’m really looking forward to the DLC. This game is really awesome and there is no reason why you should be on the fence about buying this game.

I still rage in the multiplayer but I give it the double thumbs up, 9/10

By the way, I did a MW3 wish list a while back and I didn’t do one for Battlefield 3. The reason for that is because I wasn’t worried that this game was going to be a disappointment.

Battlefield 3 Open Beta!

As you can probably work out from the title what this is going to be about, the beta for Battlefield 3 was released to the whole world of gamers today! As soon as I got home I started the download and waited patiently. I started downloading it for the Xbox and I know a lot of the Battlefield and PC elitists will be screaming right now. I pre-ordered it for the Xbox but I am having second thoughts and may cancel it. Still haven’t made a decision yet. I’m still currently downloading the PC beta but it is taking ages and is locked on 89.95%. I’m having second thoughts because I recently upgraded my PC because my old one was a hunk o’ crap. I didn’t upgrade to a ‘beastly’ machine but apparently I can run, not on ultra high settings though. That’s why I’m getting the beta on PC too so I can compare and see if it’s worth it.

Maybe it’s just me but Origin has basically been dead, I can only assume because of the masses of people trying to download it. Anyway, lets get to the good bit, the game. On the console you can play the Paris Metro map on Rush. I think on the PC you can play Conquest on Caspian Border but I haven’t played the PC version yet so everything that I’ll be talking about here will be from my experiences of maybe an hour playing on the 360. The game looks great, I know a lot of console players like me have been kind of worried that the console version will lose out on the best parts of the game. Obviously the PC graphics are better but it still looks nice, similar to Bad Company 2 but cleaner, the lighting effects in this game are amazing. There seems to be a lot of recoil on the guns, I don’t think it’s a bad thing, it feels more realistic and it’ll force people to burst fire and shoot a gun properly for once. I’m fed up of seeing Ken Burton holding down the trigger in another one of his videos (I still like Ken as a commentator). The map is very cool. It has open colourful areas then contrasts to a linear dark passage. The destroyed metro station is a great place for a fire fight. The M-COM stations are in great places, great places to defend yet not too good so the attackers can destroy the defenders.

I may post another article on Caspian Border and my eventual decision on which one to pre-order. If you haven’t downloaded the beta, go do it now.

Battlefield over Call of Duty

I haven’t posted anything in a while so I thought I’d talk about something that is kind of important in games right now and will be later on this year. Lately I’ve been a lot more interested in Battlefield: Bad Company 2. I bought the game when it first came out and I immediately fell in love, I played a lot of COD near the end of MW2 and pretty much played COD over Battlefield most of the time, only going back for a game or two. Now I’m back in and really excited for Battlefield 3 and not so excited for MW3.

For me it’s the gameplay, I do enjoy arena games like Halo and COD but I love the open battlefields and realistic gameplay that is showcased in Battlefield. I understand that games like COD may take more gun skill to drop opponents and complete objectives but in Battlefield you have to work together, I mean it’s like real war! You have to revive to keep ticket numbers up, give ammo, spot people etc. There are a lot of games that I want for example, L.A. Noire, Portal 2 and games that haven’t come out yet like Skyrim but I haven’t been feeling the same way about MW3. The engine has hardly been upgraded since COD4 and I’m not a graphics whore! But seriously, the Frostbite engine has was upgraded from Bad Company 1 to Bad Company 2 and now they are upgrading it again! That shows that DICE aren’t looking for a game to crap out every year whether it’s ready or not, they want to take their sweet time making a quality game. Who knows, with Sledgehammer helping Infinity Ward on the campaign and Raven Software takes care of the multiplayer, we could see a great experience in online gaming, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up.

I know it sounds like I’m crapping on the Call of Duty franchise which I am and not very subtly but I do love Call of Duty no matter how much it angers me sometimes. In fact I am getting into it a little more thanks to Machinima Respawn posting competitive gamebattle matches and the Call of Community which just passed really got my hyped up to play Call of Duty.

I’m not sure if I’ll get MW3 but I’m not going to say no straight away. I know if something sells why stop selling it but I hope Activision one day see that enough is enough and do something about the franchise.

Team based or lone wolf?

I enjoy a good game of Call of Duty but I also enjoy a game of Battlefield or Halo. I enjoy these games for different reasons and everyone will have a different opinion. Call of Duty, even if you’re playing a team game, is a lone wolf game. Even in Team Deathmatch or Team Slayer, everyone is competing for the kills. The fact that there’s a kill limit really increases the competition. In Battlefield the games aren’t necessarily based on kills as it is a class based game. The multiplayer is split up into different classes that are meant to perform different tasks to benefit the team. By introducing tasks that don’t involve killing, the game turns into something a bit more sophisticated. By not even showing the amount of kills, assists, deaths and kill death ratio, it changes how the game is looked upon even more.

Halo may have games like Team Slayer and Lone Wolf game modes but there are more team based games that are actually team based. Doubles requires a lot of team work to effectively eliminate the other two enemies. In Halo: Reach, with the introduction to jet packs, sprint, evade, active camo and armour lock it creates even more team work, different people who are good at different things need to choose the best load out to achieve their goal. A sniper might choose a jet pack to get to high places or active camo. A player who likes to rush might choose sprint or evade or even armour lock. Halo and Battlefield and other games like Homefront (a game that I have no intention of playing) all have vehicles, something that Call of Duty STILL lacks in it’s gameplay. The use of vehicles creates a sense of team play, especially in Battlefield, one player in charge of something, the other in charge of another thing. Personally the best game that has mastered both of these things is Halo, it has the team work part in some game types and has other game types that suit solitary players but in the end I would take a game that takes team work and communication, like Battlefield, over Call of Duty. It forces you to communicate with other players and actually use a strategy and use your skills to complete the objective. I would love it if games started to meander to the team work side of gameplay but there will always be games like Call of Duty that live on, I can only dream that a team based game will be the next COD killer.

Assassin’s Creed, what’s next?

I completed the first Assassin’s Creed in 5 days, playing a couple of hours a day. I was hooked. The game was like nothing I had ever played before. Even though the fighting was simple, really simple, I still loved the action. Every assassination I did satisfied me, even though I was ending someone’s life. I would run around the cities just killing random guards because I could. Even though the first Assassin’s Creed was fun, it was really repetitive. Assassinating 9 different enemies, the only variation was how you gathered information on your target, and even that could have been the same if you wanted it to be. The AI wasn’t great either. Travelling to cities by horse was a nightmare, every time you come across a person they would chase after you. I was so relieved when I realised that I didn’t have to make the trip to each city again. The guards would always say the same thing, again and again.

The second Assassin’s Creed was insanely better than the first. It had actual variation in it’s gameplay, not just assassinating 9 people in the same way, you actually had missions to complete and the double hidden blades only made things better. The AI was a little better but I found out that you could was up to a group of 4 soldiers and poison each one and none of them would suspect a thing. Some of the missions really pissed me off, the flying machine mission annoyed me a lot. Every time I failed (and I failed a lot) the guard would scream “LOOK AT THE FLYING DEMON!” or something along those lines. One mission actually made me stop playing the game for several months. The mission in the fair where you had to race against another guy. After several months I picked the game up again and realised that it wasn’t that hard in the first place. The story line was much more complex than the first. Even after I finished the game I was still so confused.

The next Assassin’s Creed, Brotherhood, isn’t a part of the trilogy and contained the same characters. This one improved on the AI on the first and added in cool new features to the fighting. When I was playing the game I was hoping that this wasn’t the official third game. The one thing that was really cool was the ability to call in other members of the Brotherhood, helping you on your missions. One of the best things about your assassin’s was that you trained them. You chose what missions they went on and with each mission they gain experience points, making them a better assassin.  It doesn’t add to the story very much, it felt a little like an extension to the second game.Maybe that was the plan but it didn’t feel like it was worth the same amount of money as the second. An online was introduced into Assassin’s Creed, it is so much fun. At first I wasn’t sure how they would pull it off but they did and it is extremely fun, especially when you play with a friend. Instead of rushing, like in FPS’, it’s more about being patient and blending into the crowd around you.

I am extremely excited for the third Assassin’s Creed. It should be the best one yet. I have read that it will be about the assassin’s trying to stop the world coming to it’s demise in 2012 and their race against time to find the temples “built by those who came before”. This sounds like the game will be set in the fictional present, so no traditional assassins. Some people might not like the sound of that but if it’s anything like the second, it should be awesome.

Is Black Ops already boring?

Everyone gets excited when it’s that time of the year when the new Call of Duty is released. I was really excited for this COD title because I wanted to see how they would expand and create a new game as good as Modern Warfare, especially after the slight disappointment that was World at War. I say ‘slight’ because it was my first COD title and I personally didn’t find it that bad… until I played MW2.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved Black Ops, I prefer it to MW2, the campaign has certainly gotten better, the action packed missions like, sliding down a zip wire whilst shooting at windows and killing guys. It is definitely the best campaign yet. I know some people may say that the Modern Warfare series may have a better storyline and it may but it lacked the epic feel that Black Ops has. Yes I know, shooting a load of civilians is awesome but it still wasn’t action packed. This brings me onto the multiplayer. The multiplayer is by far the best so far out of the series. It’s great to see that Treyarc are trying their best to combat retarded campers by only allowing killstreaks to be awarded with kills with weapons on your person. I got to say that I don’t really enjoy a lot of the killstreaks, my current set up for Team Deathmatch and anything other than Free for All is, Blackbird, Chopper Gunner and Dogs, Gunship is way to risky, if I get eleven kills I don’t want to be shot out of the sky in an instant. If I’m in Free for All I usually swap Chopper Gunner for a Spy Plane. Spy Planes are really underrated and are extremely helpful in Free for All as everyone is an enemy. I don’t use Chopper Gunner because thirty kills is the limit and I’m not looking for a ridiculous amount of kills, just to win and dogs will most likely be able to do that.

I know a few people, including myself that weren’t sure about buying this game in the first place and in the end we all did. I love this game but it doesn’t stop me wondering about the next Call of Duty and how it’ll bring a new and exciting aspect to first person shooters. First person shooters need to do this or they’ll be tossed out with the rest of the garbage like World at War was. Infinity Ward did create the Modern Warefare series so I’m not as nervous but with ever increasing competition with first person shooters Infinity Ward can’t just release another Modern Warfare title, believe it or not, a lot of gamers actually don’t  just drink Mountain Dew and eat Cheetos, (even though I do enjoy those things) they have a mind of their own and they will realise that they’ve been playing the same game for three years.

I know the Call of Duty series won’t suddenly become popular, it’s one of the best, if not the best first person shooter out there and it will continue to sell but just because it sells doesn’t mean it won’t become popular. The Wii was poplar then suddenly everyone realised what they had done and went out and bought themselves an Xbox 360 or a PS3, the smarter ones, a Xbox 360.