The Three Rs N3twork is a primarily British viral entertainment network, with standings in many niche interests involved in a variety of different groups. Ranging from gaming to adulthood to video creation.
1/10 - "Just, No." 2/10 - "Avoid." 3/10 - "Gamebreakingly flawed" 4/10 - "Not so great" 5/10 - "Pretty Average." 6/10 - "A few nice touches, nothing amazing" 7/10 - "Not brilliant, fun anyway" 8/10 - "A decent enough game, Well worth a look." 9/10 - "A really good game. Highly Recommended." 10/10 - "An absolute must buy, a defining game for the genre."
EA has finally come through on its promise to deliver a free conquest mode for bad company, and has named a date: August 7th. What is conquest mode? Made famous by Battlefield 1942™, Conquest mode pits players against each other in a fast paced battle to eliminate the opposing team’s tickets. Players deplete their opponent’s tickets by one point per kill and can cause their opponents tickets to spiral downwards by capturing control points. Four maps that are currently available for online play in Gold Rush mode will be available to conquer with Conquest mode.
This has caused much rejoicing amongst players of battlefield, including myself, as sometimes gold rush seemed slightly... unfair on certain maps. I'm unsure how it will be implemented, whether it'll randomly select between gold rush and conquest, or whether you can choose one or the other. More when I know.
Technically, I've played enough hours of battlefield Bad Company to write a full review, but I haven't played enough single player yet for me to consider it review worthy, so I'm going to give you my first impressions.
I'll start with the game engine. The ability to blow a hole in just about any object in the game world is more then just a fad like in the PS2's "Red Faction" titles, it honestly changes the way you think. In single player this is a useful mechanic letting you take out entrenched enemies by blowing their cover away, But in multi player this really shines. After a ten minute skirmish over a defence point, Houses are burning, tank wrecks are burning, smoke columns stretching up to the sky. Its a brilliant game engine, and I'm hoping it becomes a regular addition in First person shooting games.
The single player, which is an aspect I thought would be weak at best, is heaps of fun. You run around with 3 AI teammates, while they wisecrack and help you the best they can. This is a major difference to other squad shooters where you have to babysit your soldiers and order them around, In this they do they own thing while supporting you and thankfully, the AI is sharp enough for it not to be a problem. The fights are pretty entertaining, and it never feels too unfair even when half of Russia is attacking you.
The multi player is where I've been spending all my time, And in addition to it having the magic "battlefield" gameplay that everyone was interested in, Frostbite adds a whole new layer to it. Smoke from exploded tanks can obscure a snipers vision, and the squad system is a brilliant idea, letting small groups of people work together to complete their goals. This brings me to the first of Battlefields major flaws however. No team voice chat. Your put in a squad, and you can only talk to the 3-4 members of that squad. It makes you feel almost isolated from the team, and makes it impossible for the attackers to organise a real offensive. Secondly, The helicopters are ridiculously overpowered, Too fast for an RPG to hit, and to high up for a tank turret to aim at, and the third flaw is the hundreds of snipers populating every game. But that isn't really anything i can pin on DICE or EA.
Expect a review soon, In the meantime, go and buy the game, The multiplayer is a nice change from COD4.
For our 99th post, I'm merely going to post the battlefield TV spots.
This is more of a normal trailer, it's notable for "Haven't they got guys trained for that?" "Well, yeah, but those guys are too expensive to waste."
They are frankly, amazing, I had a fair few sniggers as I realised what games they were spoofing in these following trailers.
Mocking Rainbow Six Vegas...
Mocking Metal Gear solid..
Mocking the Gears of War TV spot.
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Pretty moving pictures aside, since playing the Beta of this game back in April, I've been well up for taking the full game for a spin, and it launches this Friday.
Since the beta, there's been a lot of talk about the "micro transactions" to buy certain guns in the game, and while i disagree with it solely on the idea that someone willing to pay shouldn't have an advantage over someone who won't, or can't, its an academic difference seeing as EA quickly removed it. However, the fuss has remained. This is a similar shit storm to the one conjured up by Oblivion's various small additions, like horse armour. And it got me thinking.
The games buisness is just that, A buisness, and however much we love to get free stuff, you have to face the fact that somewhere, somehow, someone has to get money out of this. In my opinion, Map Packs are okay, Camo packs, or character customisation packs, they are okay. But Weapons and armour? No. Too far.
Single player content is all fine. After all, they have the right to offer said items, and we have the right to turn down the items, but when those items threaten to divide the community, like Ghost Recon's map packs did, they shouldnt be allowed. Xbox live is one big community, and for developers to change fundemental aspects of this, by seperating us by money, there's a big flaw.
The Ao2 free content I talked about here is now available for free on the European marketplace. Still doesnt ring true for EA. I'm considering borrowing a copy of army of two so I can play the new end mission.
The Battlefield: Bad Company demo came out while I was away playing Ninja Gaiden 2, and so iImissed it. From what I'm reading its got major connection issues. I managed to get into the original Beta well back in april, and I enjoyed it. Although, there was the occasional lagspike. I hope this gets ironed out before its release, Because if it launches with lag all over the place, it'll put alot of people off [me included.] otherwise, I'm still pretty eager to pick it up, I like class based FPS, what can I say.
A friend of mine gave me a copy of the Battlefield: Bad Company closed beta. I wasnt so hot on the it, because I couldnt stand the Teamkill fest that was Battlefield 2 on the 360.
Anyway, Today I loaded it up, and I was most impressed. Getting into a game was easy, and fast, and I found the game remarkably easy to get to grips with, as the controls are largely similar to Call of Duty 4's including the remarkably overpowered knife kills.
Play is simple, the defenders have 3 bases. They start at the first Base. and at each base are two crates of gold. The attackers have to destroy the two gold crates. When that happens, the Defenders fall back to their second base, with another two gold crates, and the attackers spawnpoint moves to the first base. This continues till either all 3 bases are destroyed, or the attackers one out of respawns, its an interesting game mode, and keeps the combat fairly focussed on a small area. I played for about two hours, scoring about midtable for the whole thing,and in general found the whole experience to be pretty enjoyable, Unlocking new weapons is done with unlock points, earnt when you rank up, and you earn awards for doing certain things in combat, on the weapon screen however, there were 8 weapons with the text "unlock via the Xbox live marketplace" under their unlock criteria, and this being an EA game, it wouldn't suprise me if they charged over the odd's prices for unbalanced weapons, so everyone is forced to buy them.
I enjoyed the Scenery destruction, it changes the way you think about cover, as a well placed grenade or rocket can destroy the cover, leaving you in the open.
as for flaws, i noticed there was a metric shit-ton of explosives. Every class has something explosive, and generally alot of ammo with it, as an assault I spawned with 6 Grenade Launcher rounds, and 5 normal grenades. Also, the weapon customisation is non-existant, which is a shame, as I have gotten used to being able to snap a new sight onto my assault rifle, and i reckon it would of given the game abit more depth. Obviously, these are only small flaw's so im not so fussed, and I'll probably pick the game up launch day.
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