Be Excellent To Each Other

In case anyone hadn't realised.

I'm downloading it now and will check it out very soon.

This is exciting news isn't it?

I'm a bit curious about the complete lack of fanfare, or indeed any publicity whatsoever. It doesn't even appear on the front of the 360 dashboard.

Can you go prone?

Do I have to? Can't you just imagine that I am.

You've ruined my immersion.

Well after a quick game it all looks like jolly good fun.

I loved the first game so will definitely be getting this. It'll be a crying shame if it gets ignored like the last one on here.

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I'm so going to slap you.

I mean ignored by the general Beex masses. I know that you and Pundie Bear bummed it.

.. you... y... phhhhh..

I think I played a beta of this in the sweaty dark basement of HMV Manchester some time before Christmas. I remember it being Yet Another Generic Squad Based Shooting Game Featuring Soldiers. A played for about 10 or 15 minutes and was entirely... whelmed. I was a soldier. I shot other soldiers. They shot me. More the latter than the former, if I'm honest. Didn't really click with me, to be honest.

What were you expecting from a game called Battlefield? Monkeys racing jet skis?

It's more about the multiplayer anyway, this demo is solely multiplayer.

The game would have been vastly improved by monkeys racing on jetskis. But then I'm not a big fan of soldiers-shooting-other-soldiers kinds of games. I understand that people who are fans of soldiers-shooting-other-soldiers games think it's great, and that's fine.

(it was a multiplayer beta I played - there were about 3 or 4 other scallies in there, and a bunch of other players from over t'internet who I assume were beta players in other HMVs or something)

I never did try the original's multiplayer, as the single-player game--as brilliant and standalone as it was--annoyed me too much. Nobody seems to have ever experienced it like I did, though.

Um, no. Bad Company's campaign was fantastic. Light years ahead of the Modern Warfare ones. I barely touched the multiplayer.

I hated it. Anyway the reason I'm interested in this one is the multiplayer because I really enjoyed BF1943 and want some more of it.

Erm.... no it wasnt.

I was really excited when it first game out, but then the single player IMO dragged on a bit and was really frustrating at times. Spawn tank dead. Spawn lob grenades at tank dead. Spawn grenades tank do a bit of damage, dead... rinse and repeat until a few tanks that can seem to hit you from miles finally died.

I found the multi poop in comparison to CoD4 at the time, it just didnt feel as polished or smooth.

Hooray! That was my experience. Having to run around with that stupid healing wand, crouching behind trees until you managed to spot wherever each omniscient enemy firing at you was, having to have line of sight on tanks before you could take them down, but all the while being pummelled by their turrets from miles off before ever being able to get a shot in.

Repeat for every unit in the game, and make the walls destructible so you never really have a safe place to hide while you recover.

The multi player in Bad Company was (and is) excellentness, far surpassing that CoD nonsense.

I didn't even try it, as I didn't get along with the single player. But as I say BF1943 has really piqued my interest as I enjoyed the openness of it compared to other online FPSs I've played.

I played the demo today & while it's alright it's nothing amazing, like BF1943 I think bezzie action will make or break it. Here's hoping that the SP champignon is as much fun as the last.

Also, I'm still reckoning there'll be server/netcode problems at launch, so unless it turns out to be shithotmegaawesome I'll wait until it hits 20ish & has been patched to buggery & back.

Played.

First thought, controls are shit. There's only a few choices, none of which really feel right to me.

Second thought, it like previous EA FPSes (MOH Airborne, BF2:MC) feels really 'stiff', like you're wearing a diving suit or something. Looking around feels sluggish (even with high sensitvity), doing stuff feels sluggish, and you can't sidestep while sprinting (to make little adjustments, you can only look left or right to change direction while sprinting). This has the effect of making me feel like I'd do a lot better if the controls weren't holding me back.

Third thought, it doesn't seem to offer much that Frontlines didn't, apart from nicer production values. Alas, because there's no training section like BF1943 I haven't been able to play with all the toys yet.

The guns seem properly powerful but there's not enough feedback of hitting someone like in COD:MW2. There's also not enough feedback when you take damage. Aiming is bizarre, as you have powerful weapons which hence require precise accuracy, but then you have twitchy aiming but the sluggish controls. Perhaps it's just me being nuts.

Overall, intrigued but not frothing. Yet.

Played in anger (literally - nickachu and I had just encountered some complete cunts in MW2 and I needed a break lest I snap my controller in half with my bare hands) last night.

The controls really are appalling. Truly shit. Driving in an APC I found myself stuck in enemy fire while I struggled to remember what button let me back up. Left bumper (!?!) it turned out to be. The menu revealed this was all my stupid fault, obviously, the default was RIGHT bumper. You know, so that right trigger would be go forwards, as opposed to 'fire gun' as when you're on foot. Nice and sensible. Yes.

The sluggish feeling was slightly mitigated by turning sensitivity up to one notch below maximum. But for everyone else, seriously, do you really want to play in slow motion?

The environment feels lifeless, as there's hardly any radio chatter (as opposed to, say, Desert Combat, a mod, six years ago, which had well-written radio chatter to make the battlefield alive and hectic) and you're left with a few burbles (possibly in Russian) and the distant, automatically triggered shouts. These shouts, incidentally, are incredibly irritating, peppered as they are with entirely gratuitous swearing purely for swearing's sake.

I noted with some amusement there's a mini radio-controlled helicopter drone, just like in Frontlines. I have no idea what purpose it serves (the demo doesn't explain) but it caused another player in a proper Apache to crash into a crane trying to shoot at me. The Apache, incidentally, seems to control quite well but a combination of the fact you can only play online (no single player mode) combined with the usual problems of a game like this (five cunts all crouched on the helipad ready to rush for the helicopter when it spawns) prevented me from trying it more than once.

The destructible scenery is very cool. I was hiding behind a house as an engineer, repairing a friendly tank which was keeping enemy forces at bay. The enemy, firing at the tank, missed and instead blasted a huge hole in the wall of the house. I now had to stay crouched to avoid being sniped while I kept the tank alive.

There's no prone. A game where you can be a sniper, or indeed a machinegunner. But you can't go prone. Fucking hell. Myp-related-larfs aside, this is a serious issue. There's lots of low walls and stuff you could creep past if only you could lie on the fucking ground and crawl.

Driving vehicles is all kinds of fun (controls aside) and my favourite bit. Blasting enemy troops and vehicles alike, crashing through stuff, excellent. Less excellent is (again a symptom of this sort of game) people leaping into a vehicle with multiple seats and tearing off without waiting for anyone.

Overall, I'm intrigued, but I'm kind of curious why they're bothering with this when Battlefield 3 is on the way.

Bad Company is all about the single player. Battlefield 3 will be about the multiplayer.

I've still not tried this yet.

Fuck off with your prone.

How good is the AI? Games like Battlefield only work with other people as no AI can really handle the freedom the game gives you.

The AI was excellent in the first game. I can't comment on this one.

The prone issue: while playtesting BC1, DICE found that it wasn't much fun. Tonnes of snipers shooting at each other while hiding in the long grass. So they set up a build where you could't go prone. They found that it immediately made everything much more enjoyable. There is no prone in BC, BF1943, and BC2, will there be prone in BF3? who knows?

And to all the PC cunts who'll go 'blah! blah! no prone cos console tards are too stupid to handle it' please fuck off, because BF2 Modern Combat had it.

One thing that I like about the Frostbite powered games (apart from the glorious scenery destruction) is how physical they feel.

They sacrified realism for fun.
Something other games *cough*MW1*cough* could learn from.

How does that work out as a sacrifice? All it means is a wall I should be able to crawl behind unseen I instead walk behind with my knees bent, fully visible to the bad men guarding the objective. And there's all the undergrowth where you should be able to lurk or at least seek refuge when under attack, you're again unable to make use of it. SO WHY HAVE IT?

Being able to go prone didn't ruin BF1942 (though it did let you do amusing slides down slopes), in fact it let you do desperate dives behind cover to dodge incoming fire. And - shock - it didn't degenerate into a sniper-fest.

Seriously, if going prone apparently causes your game to become unbalanced, there must be other issues to blame. Not least of all that in this demo, while defending (or indeed, attacking) any approach across open terrain will have you being shot from snipers you never saw, who aren't prone.

Serious question, what is it about going prone that you like so much? I can't say that I've ever missed it in any game that doesn't let you.

If it is possible to repeatedly snipe across a map, then this failure in the game is as much a function of map design, sniper attributes and the ability to hide in grass but also be able to see clearly out of it, as the ability to go prone.

I'm getting the beta version on PC, I shall report back.

Been having a lot of fun with MW2 (PC) and absolutely loved BF2 and BF2142 back in the day.

Anyone BEEXers playing these games on the PC instead of the turbine driven 360?

Mr Riles I would have to agree.

Pah, I say. PAH! Sniping is a fundamental part of modern warfare. It would be a far better move to code the game so that sniping was actually realistic. So I can't put a 4 foot gun to my eye, jump in the air and repeatedly shoot the same 2 inch square.

Lol gotten prone.

Mmm, looking at grass.

If I wanted to do that, I'd go out in the garden.

The more I play online games, the more I think that what people who snipe want isn't reconcilable with what normal players want.

Battlefield is about the mad charge to capture/ defend the point, taking on a tank on your own, and winning. About driving a tank through walls. It is not about a bunch of people with sniper rifles lying down for hours



How to make sniping realistic in online games:

You control the lenscaps on your scope, if an uncapped lens catches the sun, then you get giveaway sparklies.

If you fire a second shot within 20 meters of the location of the first, within 10 minutes of firing the first, you get a giant red flashing 'Sniper Here' arrow above your head, which the opposing team can lock on to for airstrikes. Preferably napalm.

If you fire and miss, the nearest enemy target to you can immediately see your location.

Your sidearm has very limited stopping power. Your rifle has very limited ammo.

Even though you have a suppressor on your rifle, the enemy can still hear every shot you make, though they have difficulty tracing the noise. Unless you use subsonic ammo, in which case your range and stopping power halve, but you are silent.

You have to take into account the wind on long shots.

I think I need a lie down.

prownd.

Playing a game built with snipers in mind is like doing sports day at school with a crip. While you're "racing" on all fours trying to keep a beanbag on your head, you have that thought of "what the fuck am I doing playing games with this dribbling retard?". Y'know, because you're young and stupid and rather blunt with your terminology due to not developing suitable empathy skills. Then you find out they're not even a proper crip, they've just got dyslexia or something.

I would like to see the effect of wind. Or at least a delay depending on the distance of the target so you have to aim infront of them if they are moving etc...
Would hopefully put a stop to the kids running around jumping not even aiming.

If snipers are implemented properly, it takes a lot of skill or luck to hit a moving target, so it keeps the game mobile (as long as, of course, the whole map isn't full of snipers), so it's not all bad.

I don't dare stay still in MW2 without putting some serious planning into covering my arse and sides, but it's a bit too easy to hit people while they're moving if there's no lag.

Piss snipers fuck! FUcking pisss for christ. Modern fuck shit 2 NO! Fucking cunt of shit is not it.

I've never had a problem with snipers/campers/whatevers in online gaming as long as they're playing the game without using any cheats or hacks.

Where a game is fundamentally broken at a design level to make a particular class/gun/underpants way overpowered then yes it's an issue, but in any kind of well balanced game, it's not.

CSS was a brutal ride with snipers if you weren't any fucking good at dealing with snipers, but it didn't take genius feats of brainly divinity to learn a map, learn the sniping points, and ruthlessly punish those who chose to snipe and do nothing else.

I often found that the resident campers and snipers on a CSS server soon decided to get a bit of a move on once I'd knifed them in the back a couple of times, it's when idiots run straight into their field of view ten times on the trot and then moan 'FUCKING SNIPING NOOBSTICK BITCH!' that I actually sympathise with the snipers.

(Similarly, if my team was getting brutally slaughtered, I'd think nothing of choosing a sniper rifle for the next round and blowing a few heads off as the gung ho opposing team figured they could just run straight into our base with no consideration for cover or tactics.)

I've played around with the BC2 beta and it seems like really good fun, although even on just the one map with one game mode, I've found myself looking for a prone key a couple of times.

With MW2 (which I've only been into seriously for a week), I don't see that sniping and/or being able to lie prone makes a negative difference, if I do get taken out by a sniper, I watch the killcam, and it doesn't take long to start to build up a mental image of where's dangerous on a map, I'm also learning the favourite sniping points, and getting some lovely knife kills off the back of it.

It's down to game design, a well designed game should have no problems with campers or snipers or anything else, as long as the game accommodates the smart player having a viable counter-attack method, it's all good as far as I'm concerned.

Desert Combat had several sniper rifles, huge maps, and the ability to go prone. Yes, you'd sometimes be shot from nowhere and die, and it was annoying. But you now knew there was a sniper out there. And when the enemy team knows you're lurking around, you helicopters and tanks actively looking for you, and unless you're very clever you end up dead pretty fast.

The rest of us who played the game properly meanwhile had prone to use to take cover, to creep up behind low walls near enemy positions, and enjoy the game.

This is exactly what the multiplayer in Far Cry did - I am astonished that no other game has picked this up, AFAIAA.

It meant that you had to act like a real sniper - i.e. shoot and scoot, rather than camping and being a colossal cunt - otherwise you'd have a pile of guys with SMGs on top of you.

so no prone in this game then? LOL

insta-not-interested

Besides, surely a Battlefield game is an IDEAL game for sniping? For the snipers, they have these sprawling levels full of nooks and crannies to position themselves in with the best view. And for the other players, they have the ability to take any route they like and also approach the snipers from any angle to kill them. Not to mention unsnipeable vehicles to ride around in.