Be Excellent To Each Other

The game is out and must have its own thread now, as will CoD and the existing dual-game thread can be for the debate over the pair of them.

Anyway, the BeeX Platoon (clan) is up and running:

http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/pl ... 333306602/

So you need to buy the game, get set up on origin (PROTIP - play a game in multiplayer before bothering with origin/battlelog as it makes it a lot easier to figure out once there's stats) and join the platoon. Clan name can, apparently, be changed in future.

I have applied!

I was just debating whether to go and buy this or FM4. Now I have seen the platoon insignia I think I'm sold on this

Ha! We talking PC here or 360? I'm torn on which to get.

You in, bitch!

Tree siddeh!

I may be a dumbass here, but how do I link an origin account to the game I'm playing? Doesn't seem to be anywhere to do it in game, and the battlelog website tells me I have to buy the game.

Doesn't it do it automagically for you? If you've played an EA game before it should link up to your gamertag automatically. Shouldn't it?

Erm. How do I find out what EA account is linked to my Gamertag in that case?

I've still not figured out how that part works.

Aha, found it, I think. This is a monumentally fucking stupid process.

Well apparently I got the EA/Origin site to send an email to the account registered to my gamertag. Dunno where that's gone, because it hasn't appeared in any account I have access to.

Apparently what I need to do then is go to my XBox Live enabled game and go to the 'My Game' menu, where I can change the email address to get it correctly registered. Battlefield 3, of course, doesn't have a 'My Game' menu.

Or a manual. This game is a lot like making love to a beautiful woman. It's really pretty and you just want to keep playing it, but first it has been decided that you have to do all this other stupid pointless shit. And you're never quite sure what's happening.

I had to reset the password on an EA account this week to enter a competition. Searching my email, I found three, all with different addresses. Entering my Gamertag instead found one, but it only listed a single EA game (BF:BC2) -- I know there should be more.

Like you said, crap.

Got there in the end. Glad I didn't want to spend that hour and a half playing the game. And that was after the 45 minutes of installing the game, patching the game, and installing the extra content. Quite why it didn't install the extra content when I installed the game I don't know.

Not to kiss the game's arse but the running around, jumping, sliding to prone, etc feel like I'm playing Call of Duty made by the guys who did Mirror's Edge, such is the weight of the character controls. Then I google Mirror's Edge and see that that's precisely what I'm playing.

Good. Deffo plus point for me.


Craster - welcome to the platoon, soldier.

What's your extra content I got the Cackhand DLC which I can't DL yet apparently. In Tesco there were a couple of Lim. Eds left but mums kept streaming past, getting the wrong one for their kids.

Oorah. I do have to admit that the running around and hopping over things is really very nice indeed.

One thing is for certain, looking at the platoon scores, we are all equally shite

Heh, yeah, but it doesn't feel unfair (yet) when I get chain-pwned by the same bloke over and over or anything. Just had a fantastic game where I got 11 kills to 12 deaths, the enemies were lining themselves up for me, got a scope for my AK, was in the middle of the spawn nest for the opponents but I was killing them and sneaking about mutually unfamiliar brush territory too quickly for them to get a bead on me.

When it comes together it is like nothing else on the console.

I installed disc one to my HDD, which took about 15 mins. Now I'm downloading the day 1 patch - this has taken about 30 mins so far. I haven't even installed the HD textures or input the online pass yet.

It's a good job I haven't got time to play until tomorrow, really.

I'm glad I didn't buy this in tesco earlier. Which is to say, I'm glad that tesco didn't have this in stock earlier, as tonight is the only real chance I'd have to play.

...and then there were five.

People are probably playing now. I should go on but I've been watching Deathly Hallows part two and stopped to watch some Katy Perry videos about an hour and a half ago so it's taking ages.

Should put in a shift tomorrow.

Still can't quit inbetween maps! Bloody idiots.

You weren't able to do this on either of the Bad Company games either. A bit annoying, but once you're on the next map you can just press start and quit out before spawning in the next game.

Sure, but that is 45 seconds of waiting, plus loading time. It's such a simple thing to fix, it's very annoying they didn't do it. Either EA or Dice just don't seem to give a crap about the interface, which is a real shame as the actual game is so so good

I dont even like the mp so in the words of duncan bannatyne... I'm oot!

I think running a half marathon from the spawn point to the actual action justs grinds on you

You are spawning on your squad mates, I take it?

If you're running a half marathon every spawn, you're doing it very, very wrong.

My boss at work said he had quite an awesome bit in where he was running across a road and ran straight into a tank, the tanks turrent started to turn to get him as he was thinking "Oh Shit" then out of nowhere a jet zoomed down and blew up the tank.

I want this.

Get it, you dick.

Who else am I supposed to stay up until an hour before work with, constantly screaming ‘MEDIC!’ down the mic?

Went shopping and the Mrs bought me this!

Will be on later!

Finances dictate that I cannot afford it at the moment.

And it's £50 in the cheapest shop.

Fucking cunts. My online pass code was invalid. Returned it to Tesco. New one is invalid as well. Fucking motherfucking cunts.

http://help.ea.com/article/why-is-my-ba ... de-invalid

So yeah, beware. Another EA clusterfuck. Between this and the FIFA 12 live season bug I've pretty much had it with EA.

Went to a different Tesco to swap again for a third code. Also doesn't work. What the fuck is going on?

Now have a valid code. But I can't connect to a server. Even using the server browser as they're recommending. How can they possibly fuck stuff up like this for every single Battlefield game they release? I'm seriously unimpressed here. It's gonna have to be pretty special to change my mind at this point. Absolute clowns.

Okay, so... This is more Bad Company. Which means all of the problems are still here. Forgiven twice before but not for a third time. Really not enjoying this at all. Nobody is chatting because it's limited to squad chat again, you can't quit during the 45 second game over screen, the interface is dogshit, the minimap is a joke, the maps are boring, meh. How did it take them this long to make it? It's Bad Company 2 with new maps.

As is always the case with BF games, stuff just plain doesn't work. And it will never be patched, either, based on past experience. For example, you have to press the 'deploy' button several times to spawn. No indication why. Occasionally you'll get prompts on screen to press the 'back' button to, for example, request more ammo - never fucking works. How do they get away with releasing these bug riddles games? Bad Company was the same - they were never fixed, but we let them slide because DICE were working on BF3. The ironing.

The game comes without a manual of any sort, or anything other than brief game mode explanations. Good luck to the newcomers figuring out what the fuck to do.

No doubt we'll have a laugh together - provided we're divisible by four - but playing on my own I feel like I've wasted my girlfriend's money. Genuinely think MW3 will be better than this, and I was convinced of the opposite.

Okay, just had a decent game. The maps are hilariously Modern Warfare-like, though.

WHOSE IDEA WAS IT TO MAKE THE OBJECTIVE MARKER APPEAR IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING SCREEN? My god this really is shit. I hate this game.

So apparently there is an in-game manual. But it wasn't loading up for me.

Getting stuck on scenery is very common, and causes many deaths.

The maps seem to be mainly street warfare, very cramped and narrow with few vehicles. Doesn't quite work because the gunplay isn't as tight as CoD's, and the aforementioned scenery sticking makes getting around war torn streets a nightmare. Bit of rubble on the floor? Better run 10 metres around it lest you get stuck.

The more open maps (well, the couple I've played) are also pretty dull and forgettable. Even worse is because there are now so many vehicular options on the larger maps - usually two jets, two tanks, a chopper or two, some jeeps, etc, pretty much every member of the team has a vehicle. So the game is basically four jets flying about in the air unable to kill each other, four tanks blowing eachother up, four choppers crashing into the sea, and the rest a mixture of people driving around in jeeps and getting killed by people camping prone in bushes. 24 players ain't enough.

This is all suffered in isolated splendour as no fucker is chatting, and even if they were you can't hear them because chat is limited to the four people in your squad.

This is a severely gimped and crippled version of a version of Bad Company 2 that has been upscaled for PC.

Sorry for whinging about it loads - I guess I should've seen it coming from the shite beta - but I can't believe how much this game is pissing me off. DICE haven't fixed anything, and they've broken a whole lot more.

More things:

Other people are carrying torches that can apparently completely blind me if shone in my face? Fucking awful idea.

The fucking menu system has that stupid 'distortion' effect that looks like TV signal noise. When you're flicking through the character creation menu, every single time you change an option, the whole menu system flashes off and on again with that distortion effect. It's like having a tiny jet of vinegar squirted into your eyes once a second. It actually made my eyes sore after a few minutes. Who the fuck thought that would be a good idea?

Call of Duty's interface, clarity and ease of use puts this to absolute shame. I've never used a more terrible menu system. I honestly can't believe it got through testing. I'm dumbfounded that such a high-profile, hyped up, big budget, hugely publicised, 'CoD killer' game has been so poorly executed, and further, that so far I seem to be the only person who has noticed. All of the reviews said the multiplayer is amazing. Is it just my copy, then?

Fifa?

The front end here is appalling, and I did wonder about the 'press back to request or offer first aid' stuff which has never seemed to do anything at all. The manual is not good enough - tells me everything that I can figure out already and nothing that I need to know - for example, when I drop an ammo or a first aid box - does just being near it heal/rearm people or do they need to press a button? Hard to tell when some in-game buttons don't work. I'm remaining hopeful they patch a lot of this shit though - this is a far higher profile console title than the last ones.

FIFA's menu system is terrible, yeah, but mainly because it's slow as fuck. This is a different thing again. They'd deliberately made it difficult to use because they think it looks cool.

Man, I really wanted this to be great. My love of the Battlefield series is well documented here. I just can't bring myself to enjoy this at all. So disappointed.

Why not just copy Halo Reach's way of doing everything? Seeing as how that works.

Well yeah. The Halo/CoD multiplayer interfaces are excellent examples. Tried and tested, never bettered. Instead DICE decided to gimp Battlefield itself into a shit CoD, but ignored CoD's innovation in the usability department.

Jonny: I've moaned about every single one of the things you've complained about already (apart from the online code thing). Glad to see it wasn't just me. The menu distortion and the objective marker especially.

Luckily I still have yet to unlock any achievements (75% of them are for single player :facepam:), so I have the option of trading it in again which I may yet do.

-edit- oh, and you can have six people in squads now.

I agree with most of the negative comments, but spending a couple of hours online last night with a couple of buddies who I squadded up with a lot in BC2 was hilarious. Just as much fun as BC2 was
I'm just not getting stuck on the scenery like you are, at all. No idea what the problem is there...

Time will tell how the maps play out. Some are very CoD like, which is a huge disappointment, but others are great. The docks/trainyard map on conquest is great. The base jumping map, awesome.

Have you been playing Rush or Conquest? We played Conquest all last night and I think the maps are much better suited to that.

What else? Oh, actually getting in to a game is completely fucked at the moment. Quick match doesn't work, and the server browser only shows a dozen servers with 1 or 2 spots free, no matter what filters you select. Good luck getting your whole squad into a game! The only way to do it is to get one person into a match and the others to continually hit the join button on the server, waiting for someone else to quit...

I've gone from being at the bottom of the table to getting the MVP ribbon, and hovering around the top in the other more recent games, my win/loss record is around 2.0 and my k/d is around 0.6 I'm getting my eye back in and loving it at the moment. Time will tell if it has the staying power of BC2 though.

I agree with all Jonny's points too but I'm taking the long view - the faults are there but the online side will be stabilised in time, the majority of daft players will be heading over to CoD in a few weeks and the Cackhand map pack with the BF2 maps will be a nice free download for us all once it comes out. Once I'm accustomed to everything and can get a game first time, every time, I'll be very content with it.

I guess my disappointment essentially boils down to this feeling like Bad Company 3 - Bad Company. I was expecting more of a 'proper' Battlefield game. Whatever that is these days.

Oh, and by unticking the Europe filter in the server list it gives you loads and loads, even the empty ones.

Ta. I shall give that a go after the grand prix