Battlefield 3 Initial Reactions, Everyone?

[Wrath 228]

So about an hour and half ago, Battlefield 3 was released in North America. I'm currently unable to play on LIVE, so I'm stuck with the campaign for now.

I'm on "Uprising" right now, playing on normal, and while I'm impressed on a technical level, I'm not too sold on the gameplay yet. This game definitely feels like it would benefit from a lean function, similar to the recent Medal of Honor reboot. Seriously, it's impossible to quickly pop out of cover by moving, shoot one or two guys then pop back into cover without getting hit. Crouching is pretty ineffective, and going prone, while obviously adequate in terms of covering the body from harm, does not allow for quickly peeking from cover to eliminate exposed enemies. Part of it right now is probably also the fact that I'm alone against groups of enemies, which is not cool. Battlefield is about teamwork, dammit, give me some Marines!

Also, the aiming on Xbox feels really...well, I can't quite explain it, it just doesn't feel that precise. I replayed the rooftop section over and over on Swordbreaker for about twenty minutes just sniping enemies, trying to get a feel for it while adjusting the stick sensitivity, but it still feels...meh.

Anyway, it's not a bad game by any means, but it's looking like they focused more on the multiplayer (obviously, it's a Battlefield game so I expected nothing less, I'm just sad I don't get to play online until the weekend )

Anyways, what's everyone else's thoughts?

 

[Supertegwyn]

I don't know, it doesn't get released for me for another two days.

Oh how I envy you.....

 

[Frostbite3789]

The installation so far is really smooth. So that's good.

 

[Joccaren]

Well, its not out in Aus yet, so I can't play it, but from the Beta it seemed alright. Yeah, I wish they had of kept the BF2 almost insta-prone style, but it seems they were more intent on animations than allowing people to get in and out of cover quickly. All it means is that you have to slightly adapt your strategies. Its what humans do right?

As for aiming, on the PC its just fine. I miss my tanks MG for the driver though I loved having a cannon and a MG, for taking out infantry and armour, but I can kinda see why we don't have one...

 

[Wrath 228]

Well, just got a break from the infantry controls (which are starting to grow on me a bit more, I turned off aim assist, something which I'm not sure why I didn't do in the first place) in the form of the first F/A-18 mission, and all I can say is wow. I LOVE how they handled the fact that it's a two-seater craft, so you wouldn't be both flying and shooting. I won't spoil it, but I thought it was a really cool level, and I hope there are more fixed-wing aircraft missions in the game.

Now that I'm back on the ground, another minor complaint that is nonetheless rather annoying is that there seems to be a lot of invisible walls and objects that have very large collision...areas (not sure what the technical term is) that are larger than the object itself. The result is that enemies that are perfectly exposed are protected by some invisible wall that taunts me with flying chunks of rock and dust as I try in vain to end his life. This has screwed me over a few times already when trying to kill advancing enemies while I still have the drop on them or when trying to flank enemies who do not know I am there. I fire at their exposed flank but hit the invisible wall and bam, now they know I'm there.

A little detail that made me grin is that when you reload the pump shotguns from empty, he first loads a shell directly into the chamber to facilitate quicker emergency firing should someone come upon you while reloading. Thought that was cool.

 

[KissofKetchup]

I'm lovin' it. Still some hiccups, but I'm sure they'll get smoothed over soon

 

[Greatjusticeman]

I just got off doing some multiplayer on Caspian Border.

So far, it's pretty sweet. There are sound glitches and other hiccups here and there. But installation and getting into an online game was very smooth and simple. Nearly instant. They were prepared this time.

 

[Still Life]

-Snip-

I'm getting this for PC, but I am currently watching a stream for the 360 version and I'm very impressed at how good it looks considering the hardware limitations.

 

[Hanzo Hattori]

I'd get it as soon as it comes out in my country but I really doubt it'd run smoothly on my PC :/.
Could anyone give me a hint? I know there's an official minimum requirement list but though.


My "high-end" computer consists of following components:

Intel 2 Duo E6600 (~2.44ghz I think)
2 Gig of DDR2 RAM (Yeah... I know)
ATI Radeon HD 5670


Thanks in advance!

 

[Still Life]

I'd get it as soon as it comes out in my country but I really doubt it'd run smoothly on my PC :/.
Could anyone give me a hint? I know there's an official minimum requirement list but though.


My "high-end" computer consists of following components:

Intel 2 Duo E6600 (~2.44ghz I think)
2 Gig of DDR2 RAM (Yeah... I know)
ATI Radeon HD 5670


Thanks in advance!

I don't think you'll get the game to run in any playable form.

*Edit*

But don't take my word for it. Punch in a google search and get some second opinions.

 

[Joccaren]

You know you can unlock it easily if you bought Digital/have a Key, right?

e.g.: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=20387641&postcount=28851 or using a VPN from any country it released in already.

Yeah, I didn't get it digitally. I've ordered it in from the U.K and its shipping will probably start tomorrow. Only cost me $51 for the special edition Physical Warfare and Back to Karkand pack though, much better deal than the $100 odd I'd pay here, or the $80 odd I find on Origin...

 

[NLS]

Well, its not out in Aus yet, so I can't play it, but from the Beta it seemed alright. Yeah, I wish they had of kept the BF2 almost insta-prone style, but it seems they were more intent on animations than allowing people to get in and out of cover quickly. All it means is that you have to slightly adapt your strategies. Its what humans do right?

As for aiming, on the PC its just fine. I miss my tanks MG for the driver though I loved having a cannon and a MG, for taking out infantry and armour, but I can kinda see why we don't have one...

I found dolphin-diving one of the most annoying features of BF2.
As for now, I'll just have to wait until Amazon ships my package.

 

[Bat Vader]

I bought Battlefield 3 for the PC and so far I am enjoying it. The story seems pretty typical for a modern shooter. I haven't tried out the multiplayer yet. Can I just use bots or do I have to play with other people?

 

[Joccaren]

I found dolphin-diving one of the most annoying features of BF2.
As for now, I'll just have to wait until Amazon ships my package.

In all honesty, I can see why they took it out, as well as this:

It made it much easier to get yourself covered quickly though, and that is one of the annoying things about BF3 - there is very little way to get yourself into cover if your against a good shooter and you're caught off guard. As I've said, it only take a slight adjustment to your strategy (Stay in or very near cover whenever ingamely possible), but it does take some getting used to...
I do like what they've done with the knives though. No run and slashy slashy, its literally a humiliation kill. I wonder how knife fight challenges will go down in BF3...

 

[EvilestDeath]

Where should I begin? First off I bought the 360 version.

I decided to install the game to my hard drive completely, all 15.5 gbs of it the HD texture pack included and geared up for what reviewers have been calling a average single player FPS.

First bug I ran into was not that big of a deal, it was a dog that was hoping up on a fence barking at me. The issue was that the dog had no fur, it was a solid brown dog that looked more clay then like an angry fuzzy dog, no biggie just a small texture error.

Next there were textures all around that just were blurry and unfinished looking. PS2 visuals at best I could describe so I figured something was wrong with the texture pack (duah) and reset my system. Resuming it sent me back before the dog which was still a shining warbling mess of brown without fur still. But I saw that textures, lighting effects and shadows grew into greater detail as the mission went on. Slow loading but things got to a very nice looking point as long as I went at a moderately slow pace. nothing gamebreaking.

Then an open firefight breaks out in a parking lot (alright action time) I begin firing away and get lost in the games world and combat until I run up to a van and notice that there were three enemy's to my left about 10 feet away I had ran past who were not only ignoring me but not doing much at all besides taking cover. Two of them stood up and shot a few times but not at me but at my teammates 20+ feet behind me which were further then I was from them. Retarded AI, great...

The battle continues after I shoot the three blind mice to my left and run up the left side to test out the knifing. First thing I notice is the enemies slowly running away from me as I cam close to them, expected but they ran at a pace slower then my walk so i easily caught up and knifed the first guy who promptly vanished as soon as the knife stabbed him. The second one was further away so I tried to knife knowing he was a cars length away and my character commando lundges and knifes him...great broken knifing system in single player.

(This is getting long so I will make the rest shortened.)

Firefight was over so I ran to an alleyway which promptly gave me 5 seconds to return to the battlefield since the sprinting animation takes a little bit to stop I died before I could turn back and get in the map again since iI ran to far. (no invisible wall and only 5 seconds, the f***?

Game goes fine for a while then we get to the sniper hiding in the hotel you get to kill with a rocket launcher. Fun fun, Squad tells me they will provide cover fire so i can can get him. First guy stand up and fires a shot so i decide to stand up where I am immediately instakilled by a single sniper shot. Sniper had one other target fireing at him but decided to get me before I even had time to finish the standing up animation. (Not a big issue but still lame)

Game goes on for a while and I find myself alone and needing to clear out an area of many enemies. takes a bit but I finish and enter a garage and see one guy standing looking at me in a room behind a window. There was an ammo box right in front of him on my side of the wall so I decide to grab some ammo and finish this guy off afterwords since he was still not moving just staring at me. I walk up to the ammo box where I am instakilled by that guy as he telaported through the wall like he was Nightcrawler in X-men and killing me with a single knife to the face before I even got the ammo I was grabbing. Scared the poo out of me and sent me back to the big firefight just before then. the second time he came out of the room as I approached the garage and was filled with holes soon after.

Frustrating so far but a game is not without its small hiccups, I am willing to forgive and move on, irony strikes soon after I decide to just move on with the game faults in all. I get through a firefight and reach the transport hellacopter I had been waiting on durring the fight and am relieved when i see a loading screen loading the next mission "Going Hunting." Ao I wait for it to load to move on to the next mission, then I wait a little bit longer, and even longer, and after 10 minutes it freezes. Just the game, the loading animation stopped moving and the sound cut out but I was still able to use the Xbox Home button. Another bug but its fine, I Dashborded and restarted the game. Played through the last checkpoint, got on the helicopter and waited for "Going Hunting " to load again, then I waited a little bit longer, then after 7 minutes it froze again. This time I shut down the system and tried again, same thing same thing. Figured it was an issue with the installed game so I decided that and played straight off the disk. But it froxe again at the same loading screen.

That was it the final straw I could no longer stand waiting around for a mission that just won't load so i went off to Multi-player. The single player was far too buggy for a linear experience, with crappy AI, odd bugs and cheap instakills I am going to have to wait for a patch to fix at least some of these big issues i guess just so I can play the game. I know some reviewers have said there were bugs in Single Player but I never imaged them to break the gaming experience at least once per mission. With all the promotion EA has done for this games Multiplayer and PC version I should have figured something was up but really this is just an absurdly bad PC port. Almost Fallout 3 bad. I am and will continue to try and love this game but the Single player is not letting me even like it.

Multiplayer is great. Nuff said about that.

 

[Coreless]

Bought the game last night, install was smooth and picked up the new drivers, game launched from battlelog without any problems for me. I played about an hour of the campaign which I thought was pretty standard fare so far so I headed to multiplayer, but man it did it look spectacular. Got in multiplayer and didn't notice any of the bugs from the beta so far, like falling through the floor or not being able to aim down the sights on the main weapon. my latency was great had about 50 or less ping on the two servers I tried.

Haven't had any crashes or servers go down, ran pretty damn smooth and so far I have been enjoying my time with it. Only thing that kinda gets annoying is just getting stuck on very low obstacles like a piece of wall shin high that you have to leap over in which you should be able to walk over. Another thing is just not being able to shoot through certain spots that seem open enough for bullets to go through like when walls on certain buildings that get destroyed, somehow there is still some kind of invisible wall stopping rounds from going through. Also seems like helicopters are pretty much useless on most maps, I have yet to see a helicopter that didn't get shot down within seconds of taking off.

Of the maps I played I have to say so far that Operation Firestorm and Noshahr Canals are easily going to be my favorites, there are tons of great set pieces and places to take up a good defending positions like around the oil rigs on Firestorm and the big industrial building on the docks in Noshahr it really made for some great firefights and vehicle battles. Can't wait till work is over today so I can jump back in and check out the last few maps.

 

[Pfheonix]

Well, the only problem is microstuttering. Which is, again, fixed by the 280.26 drivers. Who'ld've thunk it?