Played Battlefield 3 beta, xbox, off and on over the past few days. One level, Metro, over and over again.
This picture is not me but found on the net.
Review:
When the game first started I wasn't feeling it. The sensitivity seemed weird and I felt like the game was a clone of Battlefield bad company. After I played more my opinion changed.
I have not played the PC version yet, not by choice, so I can't compare it, but the graphics are great. One of the best I've seen on the Xbox 360. But it's still a console game and you can tell. The lights can be better and the crisps can be crisper. This is only one representation of the game, but graphics wise, I never got the awe factor. (When you step back for a second and sit in awe over some kind of amazing background animation or from how the sunlight pours through a crack in the wall.) There are some nicely animated scenes, but no awe... yet.
Two things that stood out to me was the destructibility and how the soldiers run.
Battlefield bad company started the whole, destruction of the map aspect of the game series with the frostbite engine. Destroying a building an enemy is in or some cover he is behind is awesome. In bad company two, the destruction was cool but not great. You would shoot a wall and it would break in a specific spot and radius, an obvious predetermined chunk of the wall that could be broken. It was good, just still video game programmed destruction, and you could feel it.
Battlefield 3 has the new frostbite 2 engine which is supposed to raise the bar with the destruction of the map. I noticed next to no destruction for most of my game time. There were wooden areas you were meant to destroy to get through and some cover by the objectives that was destroyed, but it wasn't anything to mention. I was actually somewhat disappointed. Either because I wasn't using explosives, nobody was due to no vehicles, or the frostbite two engine was a flop. There just wasn't much destruction. But wait, let me set up this story.
There is an building on the last objective area on the map where you can go upstairs and shoot from some windows. I went up there multiple times, it was always the same, and I got the cover and sight I wanted from the windows every time. Sometimes there would be small chunks out of the walls, obviously their attempt at destructibility, I thought. Later, I was running up the stairs so I could get the vantage point, but where my previously reliable windows used to be, the wall was no more. The wall and windows were all gone and not in predetermined sections. The wall was torn very unevenly and devastatingly. This sight produced two emotions, admiration, enter the slow clap, good job DICE; and shock. Shock from the unexpected awesomeness of the games destruction capabilities, and shock because my once reliable area was now a pile of rubble, bringing me to realize nowhere was really safe in this game, a kind of of new and scary feeling.
In video games you create rules in your mind without thinking about it, and one rule I had was that I could rely on that area and that the destruction of it, and anything, was minimal. Iv'e seen what is possible now, my rules were crushed along with my vantage point.
For instance there is an objective in that same area where you typically destroy the boarded up windows to get inside. That isn't necessary though. The more difficult, and sneakier way, would be to find the other side of the inside wall, blow it up, and enter through the inside. Something my internal rules assumed was not possible before, but now assume the contrary.
I like watching the soldiers run. It's like how the zombies run on Left for dead. They aren't stiff like stiff like boards but they lean into the direction they turn. On that note, I love running too. It almost feels like I am free running. I can feel so BAMF when I'm sprinting towards the bomb to defuse it, use one hand to vault myself over a short wall, shoot a guy waiting on the other side, and defuse the bomb. It all happens so fast and smoothly.
Whats to come:
Considering I only played operation Metro, on rush mode, over and over and over again, enough to get to (at this moment) level 13, they must be doing something right. Usually playing the same level more than twice in a row gets boring but.. it didn't. One reason is because the level is like two levels. You start outside in a large park and move into a long subway tunnel. If this one level on this one mode is this alluring, the full release with multiple game modes and multiple maps will be epic.
Metro doesn't have any vehicles. One of the things that sets Battlefield apart from other games are the vehicles. But playing Metro so much I forgot the game usually had them, and I was happy playing with just infantry. When I play a map with them in the full release will be an entirely new element from the beta, a pleasant surprise.
The game had its share of glitches:
- People flying abnormally far when killed
- Sound getting stuck on one loop
- Sound getting really quiet
- Bullet trails lingering in air
- Gun not doing the reload animation sometimes
But I'm sure these will all be fixed by release.
PC vs Xbox? I don't know honestly. I've decided to go with the Xbox because I am enjoying the game on it and my friends are on Xbox. Could the PC version be better? Yes, but ignorance is bliss. :)
Overall though I think this game will rock. Anyone intrigued by FPS should get it.
