Battlefield 3

[Why Are You Crouching Spock?]

http://bf3blog.com/2011/07/battlefield-3-alpha-impressions/

This fellow seems to do a good job of summing up the alpha.

 

[gregtestagent]

Spock, do you get those little orange indicators over enemies heads when you either aim at them long enough or when someone is shooting at you? And what about a kill-cam?

 

[Why Are You Crouching Spock?]

Yea you can spot. There didn't seem to be any kill-cam in the alpha.

 

[gregtestagent]

Yay! Someone was reading our posts on the EA forums! We wanted everyone to be able to spot, in a limited way, so it would'nt be so difficult to see and coordinate against enemies in battle. I didn't expect the enemy combatants to get spotted when they fire upon you, and don't make a kill, but it's also very welcome! Finally, no more constantly getting blind-sided by a shooter, which you never see!

 

[ProjectPat2280]

I thought everyone could see everyone when they are spotted? Eh it doesnt really matter too much as i only play hardcore and no indications appear above the players head when you spot them out, you have to look at your map.

 

[xwolverine2]

that alpha footage looked terrible.... terrible game mode,lag,glitches,all the atmosphere stuff makes it seem nearly impossible to see enemies... not to mention that epic noob guy playing

why'd they bother releasing that? lol

 

[Why Are You Crouching Spock?]

To make it not an alpha.

 

[Why Are You Crouching Spock?]

Animation and destruction

 

[ProjectPat2280]

Coming along damn nicely. The sound is yet again better than that other shooter by a mile.

 

[Why Are You Crouching Spock?]

I'd agree with that, sound seems to be something alot of people over-look for visuals.

 

[gregtestagent]

that alpha footage looked terrible.... terrible game mode,lag,glitches,all the atmosphere stuff makes it seem nearly impossible to see enemies... not to mention that epic noob guy playing

why'd they bother releasing that? lol

You've heard of a Beta for games right? a testing phase for a game that is not ready for release? Well, this is an Alpha, an even more early version of a game, intended to explore and test all the (graphical/technical/aesthetic/gameplay/server/etc) data they have in or will be putting into the game at a later date. To be a player in these early versions is to be a tester, the devs will get feedback from these testers so they can make changes accordingly. It's really an amazing process, and all you can do is completely overlook and discount it.

 

[ProjectPat2280]

I'd agree with that, sound seems to be something alot of people over-look for visuals.

Yea bad sound IMO can ruin an experience. It's one of the main reasons I never switched back when I moved to BC2. The sound is just off in CoD. The weapons don't have the right, 'pop', so to speak.

 

[Heisenberg]

As far as Origin goes, I'm currently downloading the Alpha now (3.2GB) and it's been holding steady at 200-400kb/s, which is atrocious on my connection. The design itself is smooth, but entirely familiar to Steam with most of it completely the same. The primary annoyance is that it allows you to recruit friends from Xbox Live, PSN and Facebook - but the PC gaming crowd wound naturally want to import Steam friends. Steam, being a competitor, isn't listed. Naturally I browsed the store too, and the pricing is ridiculous, with no real incentive whatsoever to buy from them. Overall, it's just divisive and unnecessary, and I can only imagine it will hurt them in the long run.

Will give my impressions of the Alpha when it's done craaaawling to the finish.

 

[TheBat812]

Yea bad sound IMO can ruin an experience. It's one of the main reasons I never switched back when I moved to BC2. The sound is just off in CoD. The weapons don't have the right, 'pop', so to speak.

What impresses me most about Battlefield over others is the realistic space they create. In that demo where you walk through an open destructed area, it just sounds right. This is coming from a post-sound guy. Very impressive stuff.

 

[Why Are You Crouching Spock?]

http://n4g.com/news/813140/battlefield-3-alpha-trial-opened-now-for-all-origin-accounts-4news-it

 

[Spider-Vader]

No console beta?

 

[ProjectPat2280]

No console beta?

The console beta is coming in September.

Which basically means it'll just be a demo, as i doubt they'll be able to change much so close to release.

 

[Balthus Dire]

It'll probably be like the BC "beta" for consoles, no? I remember when BC was first released they had an online demo/beta with their own dedicated servers and it was great. Without that, I probably wouldn't have bought the game to be honest, as I'd never played a BF game before.

 

[Why Are You Crouching Spock?]

There doesn't seem to be too many great team shooters on the market. Personally I love team games, especially ones were you mix ability's.

 

[Wolvieboy17]

Man, I was so annoyed. I'd been trying to drag my friend over from Halo and COD to BC 2 for AGES, and I know he'd love it. Well, he's been getting more and more sick of COD and he's pretty over Halo, so I finally convinced him to give BC 2 a try last night, and the damn servers were being updated, so we couldn't level up at all, and it erased all my stats temporarily (and unlocks) and now I don't know if I'll be able to convince him to give it another try. So ****in' annoying.

 

[ProjectPat2280]

Man, I was so annoyed. I'd been trying to drag my friend over from Halo and COD to BC 2 for AGES, and I know he'd love it. Well, he's been getting more and more sick of COD and he's pretty over Halo, so I finally convinced him to give BC 2 a try last night, and the damn servers were being updated, so we couldn't level up at all, and it erased all my stats temporarily (and unlocks) and now I don't know if I'll be able to convince him to give it another try. So ****in' annoying.

Well if you guys got to play it then it shouldnt matter if you couldnt level up. The gameplay alone should keep him coming back.

 

[Wolvieboy17]

Not with the stuff you start out with. He couldn't use engineer tools or med kits or anything like that because it wasn't giving him any unlockables. Its all good now though, we just had a round tonight and servers were fine, and he was really getting into it.

 

[gregtestagent]

That stat dump stuff happens from time to time, because they don't let the data just save on our hard drive. Why it's necessary to have all our stat and unlock data on separate servers is beyond me, just have to to figure that it doesn't happen all the time, and it's only temporary.

 

[Heisenberg]

I usually balance my time between playing MW2/Black Ops and BF:BC2, but after having played for a substantial amount of time (25+ hours) on the BF3 Alpha, I have a feeling I'm going to find it hard playing MW3 much later this year. I really, really love the game. Once the bugs and glitches are cleared out, it's going to be hard for much to compete with it in my opinion. They basically took everything I loved about BF2, and BF:BC2, woven them together into something balanced towards the more tactical end of the spectrum, and thrown them into the best looking FPS graphics/physics engine I've ever seen. More friendly to the casual gamer than BF2, but more tactical than BF:BC2, which is exactly what I was hoping for.

 

[ProjectPat2280]

Sounds awesome man.