Battlefield Tri-hard

http://youtu.be/4xaEHem0UUg?hd=1

Was cool when the jets flew over 7 seconds in.

:unfunny:

Alright, so I've finally gotten to play multiplayer, on the Bro-box 360.

I am extremely disappointed. Where to even begin? I guess I'll start with the UI. In two words, it sucks. It's slow. It's clunky. I don't like having to press "B" to start cycling through my guns, especially when that used to be a "cancel spawn" button. It's also so far out of the way, being at the bottom of the screen, that I forget to change my weapon when I meant to. I don't need a big-ass view of the map like that, wasting space. Speaking of wasted space, they could have just kept the same UI system as BC2 as well as allowed us to add optics and other attachments to our primary if it weren't for the piss poor design they currently employ for the weapons bar.

Now for graphics. You. Can't. See. Shit. If you thought Bad Company 2 was a nightmare of ultra-high contrast, you're in for a scare with Battlefield 3. Yes, it's pretty. But god damnit, if I'm standing at the mouth of a cargo container looking out, I shouldn't be blinded by the friggin' road. And then there's the pilot tunnelvision when flying jets. It's incredibly hard to dogfight when you can't look around to see what's happening without turning the whole aircraft. And since we're on vehicles, let me get to that.

Why does it take seven rockets to take out a tank? That's just wrong on so many levels. Seven. Rockets. I mean, yeah, I get that you need to use your noggin and shove the rocket up the tailpipe or hit it from above, but most of the time that isn't an option because proximity sensors fuck that plan six ways from Sunday. Oh, and there is a vehicle perk to up-armour, but no infantry perk to over-explode (at least as far as I could tell)? Who thought up that nightmare of balance? Flares are still awful. DICE needs to either increase the recycle time or introduce a probability of failure to confuse. Fuck it, I see three rockets streak towards a jet in succession, and the jet has time to drop three flares. WAT. I'm also sick of shooting HUMVEES and them NOT exploding or the occupant NOT dying. I get rocketed and I die, so why don't they? What gives?

Maps. There are only two somewhat decent ones, and they are "Kharg Island" and "Operation Firestorm." None of the other ones have any sort of flow to them whatsoever. You can't win by using flanking tactics and closing the enemy in. You HAVE to brute force it. There are no places to flank. Why? Because everybody and his dog is using that IR scope and just sitting there, camping every single route because they have nothing better to do. Because everything is made out of rubble and anyone without an IR scope has one hell of a time trying to pick out targets with that shitty high contrast. This is especially true on "Tehran Highway" and "Seine Crossing." How about "Grand Bazaar"? What a joke. US grabs A, RU grabs C, and then it's just tubing down B. This is fun? This is Battlefield? This is stupid, that's what it is. And then there are the vehicle maps. As far as vehicle heavy maps go, Caspian Border is the worst of the bunch. There are no tactics on that map apart from grabbing a hardened vehicle and hoping that the helicopters don't notice you or that the enemy tanks are not using Reactive Armour. Running around on foot is going to get you killed in no time flat. You can't lie in ambush to enemy tanks because of the aforementioned proximity sensors, and you are going to die damn quick if you get into a jet and don't already have the flares. Kharg and Firestorm are great, because they are big enough to allow fire and maneuver, open enough to maximize vehicle effectiveness while not making vehicles overly powerful, and because when a squad works together on these maps it actually produces results.

So no. Battlefield 3 has a long way to go before it's as well-polished and refined as Bad Company 2. It is in no way an improvement as it stands, more like a side-grade with a slight down-grade. The jets are a gimmick, there are too many game-breaking "features" (IR scopes, uber flares, uber armour), and the UI is unwieldy. The shipped maps are awful. A BF3 port of Harvest Day would be better than any of the maps that shipped with the game, or Port Valdez. I will go so far as to say that even a port of Laguna Alta would be more fun than any of the Charlie-Foxtrots that came with BF3.

Ugh. Hate.

I don't have time to quote you on every thing but here is some main points to counter your rant.
(This is all based off of my PC experience).

-The only place I can agree with you about being blinded by the bright light is when you are on the US side and going out of the metro building. Other then that... It never bothered me in the least bit.
-You can look around in the jet, with out turning the entire jet around. (Look it up in your key bindings, no idea what it would be on the 360)
-IF you say that flanking isn't possible in the other maps such as metro then you haven't play enough. I constantly flank the enemy when my team gets raped.
-There are upgraded rpg styled weapons to take out vehicles faster, balancing the game with the upgrades on the vehicles. Most people I know use the javelin (How ever you spell it) and take out tanks in 2 hits max.

These are some points i came up with, since I don't have the time to go against every point. I honestly don't think you played enough, and if you did, you were playing on the wrong console. Play it on the PC.

Like I said, that was my review of the 360 version. I have it on PC, I just can't play it for lack of a capable PC. I agree that the difference between PC and 360 has something to do with it, for sure.

-If there is a jet-look on 360, I haven't figured it out with all of my button presses and stick wiggles. I'm on Hardcore mode only, because regular is garbage even in BC2 but especially so in BF3 with regenerating vehicles. That might have something to do with it.
-Javelin doesn't help a new player who only has access to the RPG7 and the SMAW while there are tanks running around with Reactive Armour and Proximity Sensors; nothing is more infuriating than being completely ineffectual at your job because the tools you were issued suck penis, even at killing infantry
-Flanking doesn't work on 360 because there aren't enough people to follow up. They are all so hell-bent on getting their K/D up by just taking potshots at each other across the way on the primary routes; you can't flank on Metro by design.
-The contrast doesn't bother me in BC2, and it's generally not an issue in BF3, but on Seine Crossing and Canals, it's not so good.


I played it all this week, and while that may not be enough to know everything that there is to know, it is more than enough to get a solid impression. BC2 gave me a good impression after only a few rounds and I stuck with it. This game makes me want to go and give Black Ops a try. Yes, it's that bad on 360.

Oh, and I don't know if you're familiar with the God Mode bug, but it's rampant on the 360. People die and get revived a bunch of times in succession and then all of a sudden they don't show up on the radar or squad list anymore, and have no indicator over their heads. They cannot be killed except by a direct explosive hit. As you can imagine, it causes hell.

tl;dr: don't buy it on console, it blows. But you all already knew that.

About taking so many rockets to destroy a tank:

Wasn't it done that way to encourage people to capture rather than outright destroy enemy armor? I originally found this irritating, but grew to love it when I realized my team and I could force a tank driver to bail, then repair his ride and claim it for ourselves. If it's on Rush maps where only the attackers have tanks, this is very useful.

I remember the first days of BC2 on Port Valdez, when some newbies would bail out of their tank once it was like 50% damaged, and then leave the enemy to repair his ride and turn the tables. Eventually everyone learned to either back off or just die with the tank, sadly.

Definitely agree on Grand Bazaar lacking flow though. Many times on Conquest I've encountered deadlock situations in the tight spots where literally everyone is spawning in that one area and just shooting blindly and throwing nades and spamming RPGs. And when the medics are throwing health kits and reviving like crazy, it just becomes a war of attrition. It's not as bad as Operation Metro on Conquest though (where the US side is almost guaranteed to lose because they can't even get to the surface).

Personally, With OP Metro and Grand Bazaar, it depends on your team. I have won on both sides, US or not, in almost all game types for both maps. If my team knew what they were doing, it was an easy win, if my team went nuts only for K/D (Ex; 20 snipers on one team), then it was a sure lose.

Warsaw's problems:
• Playing on Xbawks Tree Sitty.
• Comparing the game to Bad Company 2 instead of Battlefield 2 and trying to find parallels in game-play design.

Uh, you can't compare BF3 to BF2. There is no comparison; BF2 beats the snot out of it and is in an entirely different league. BF3 is essentially BC2.5. It plays more like BC2 already, except it misses all of the good points. BC2 is good on console, why can't BF3 be? Both were made with consoles as the primary platform. DICE dropped the ball.

BF3 was made with PC as the primary platform. It's a PC-centric game, hence why it's terrible on consoles and great on PC.

BF3 plays much more like BF2 than BC2, I run and gun like a CoD fag all the time in BC2 and get away with it easily. Not possible in BF3 because of the parallels with BF2 game-play.