Monthly Archives: October 2011

Waiting impatiently for Battlefield 3!

If there is one thing that makes no sense and encourages piracy, it is having different release dates for entertainment media in different countries. Whether films, videos games or music, it makes no sense to stagger the release dates.

Traditionally the retail industry is cited as being the cause (in the case of video games), so that in America, games are released on a Tuesday, whereas in the U.K. they are released on a Friday. That is all very well except there are two things that show this to be obfuscation, particularly in the case of Battlefield 3 (SHAME ON YOU EA):

1. It clearly has nothing to do with retail distribution. Look at the countries involved on the first release day (25th October): South America, West Indies, most of Asia, Russia and her neighbours, the far east – oh yes and the U.S.A. and Canada.  Then a two day gap after which Australasia, Antarctica(?), most of Europe and the Middle East are added. Then on Friday, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, South Africa, United Kingdom finally stagger in, with Japan trailing last next Wednesday. Huh?

2. Even if there is a logical reason for this staggered distribution, WHY DOES SOMEONE WHO PURCHASES A DIGITAL DOWNLOAD STILL HAVE TO WAIT?

Pah. Anyway, just two more days before those of us in the U.K. are allowed to start catching up.

Yes, as the beta draws to a close (it will finish tomorrow), DICE and EA have released the large Caspian Border map on PC for the community to play and test on.

Having played it a fair amount now, I have to say it is fantastic and certainly brings back memories of earlier Battlefield games. The frantic pushes to the command points, even more frantic defences of the same and the constant noise of aircraft buzzing through the skies really stirs up the old memories.

Interestingly, this map was released to test the performance with 64-player servers and so far that seems to be rather poor – many RSPs have dropped the servers back to 32 players because the game is far too laggy otherwise.

Battlefield 3 Open Beta – It’s here!

Yes, grab yourself a download of that annoying Origin thingy and fire up the single BF3 map available.

Sadly, in a nod to the CoD and BC2 crowd, they are showcasing the beta with a Rush map (and not a huge one) called Operation Metro. Although this is a good map (once you get past the choke point of the tunnel entrance) it doesn’t really show off the potential of BF3 – which is large scale conquest with vehicles.

Still, it is a good taster for what BF3 will feel like and personally I really like it.

What I like less is the layered applications they have used to let you get to the game – Origin itself which is an online store, game library/validator and in-game overlay (like Steam); battlog (or battleface as we have taken to calling this combination of server browser and facebook functionality), which requires a different friends list to Origin and manages the game lobby, stats pages and server browser, then finally there is the game itself.