BF3 Beta [update]

On the 29th September the Battlefield 3 Open Beta went live, giving you the chance to play before the games release on the 28th October. If you're new to the Battlefield series then it can be summarised as another modern First Person Shooter which features plenty of vehicular game-play. It's cutting edge graphics and physics are provided by the brand new Frostbite 2 engine - but don't expect to run this game on your machine that can barely churn out 125fps in Enemy Territory. The developers revealed that two top of the range graphic cards in SLI will just about be enough to make the most of the engines potential, and for anyone else who wishes to see Battlefield at its best then an upgrade will be in order.

Access to the Beta is straightforward. First you'll need to set up an EA Origin account which can be done here, then download the Origin client. (Origin is a new online store, similar to Steam, which has been surrounded in heavy controversy since announcing it's Terms & Conditions - which I give my full opinion on here.) Once that's complete you can proceed to download the game from the Free Games section of the Origin's store. If your PC is struggling to run the game then both nVidia and ATI have released updated graphics drivers specifically designed to increase performance in Battlefield 3 and the links to those can be found below.

Levin has posted a forum topic to localise the Battlefield 3 Beta players from Crossfire. There you'll find an existing player list and a link to the 'Crossfire Platoon'.

Battlefield 3 Beta Impressions

Frop

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First off, the whole origin business - completely redundant if you take the web UI into account. It only seems to add some simple verification, there's no reason at all for them to think they can compete with steam. The separate friend list is just cumbersome. The server browser isn't as responsive as you'd like and without a queue option it's quite annoying to have to join a server manually - and the quick match feature seems to want me to play in France instead of Holland or Germany.

Gameplay reminds me of a crossover between Battlefield Bad Company 2 and the latest MoH. Worst part is that you have CoD-style health which sucks because you're dead rather quickly. In your average game there are so many people in vehicles shooting at you that you don't survive out of cover very long, it'd be nice to be able to take a few more hits. Hit detection is fine. Yet another developer hating on the M16 :(

I have mixed feelings on the whole unlock system as I'm not really in favour of that but there's plenty to unlock so plenty of stuff you'll never touch - there's simply no point putting 7x scopes on assault rifles. All of that said, it's relatively easy to do well in this beta once you know when to push and when to camp.

Dunzy

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Impressions - pretty hard to say because it's still a beta without planes and choppers and vehicles and other stuff, what I do like is that it reminds me of BF2 (the game I nerded for ages back in 2k5), the weapon costumisation is something new and nice, the more you play the easier you can get frags due to some scopes and other tweaks, new weapons while leveling up. The graphics are way better than BF:BC2 or any other game, I'm playing on like 1280x1024 on low-med gfx with like 50 fps, still it's nice, especially last stage of "operation metro" when stuff blows up!. Tweaking/changing gfx doesn't help, literally it doesn't. Some new stuff like seeing snipers from a huge distance only because they're scope is blinking due to sun hitting it, is really something amazing :D

I won't go into bugs because I think we all already know the most obvious stuff going on, looking forward to the full game, hopefully I can manage 100fps with my PC when they tweak up, hopefully it will not take ages to do a patch (like EA like to do that).

owzo

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Whoever designed the menu system in this game should be thrown off a tall building. It's like they took everything that was wrong with Bad Company 2 and then made it worse.

The actual gameplay is great though.

Mayni

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Having not really played the BF series before I wasn't sure what to expect. The game provides a stunning visual experience, even on the medium settings. Good fun/class choices/weapon choices but as you can imagine it's somewhat buggy, especially the Origin side of things. Despite that I'll likely buy the game on release.

TosspoT

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I was looking forward to BF3 because like many the visuals and pre launch hype was too good to ignore. Unfortunately great marketing can't cover up the most awful user experience in the history of gaming and there's no defence to it because its nothing to do with the game itself. Who the hell created Origin? I actually cannot believe such a product exists in this form, it's the worst UX ever. I remember the days when once you'd installed a game there was a servers tab and you could just a join a game by clicking on the server...with Origin and BF3 you have to download a browser plugin, update your nvidia drivers (to a driver release that isn't out) then update the origin plugin, then hope that when you select join server it actually connects because it'll only actually connect about 10% of the time, if you go through the server tab and see a server with spaces that's no assurance that the server isn't magically full. There's a good 10+ clicks involved to actually get into the game.

On the few times when you actually do get into the game, there are some massive problems - its very hard to know where you're being shot from, the sound seems off and the weapon damage appears to have no variance. The word random comes to mind. I actually don't care about that because that's Battlefield, and I like Battlefield for driving around in tanks and aeroplanes etc - its never been a 'shooter' in the most literal sense. The beta has certainly made sure in a month when there are many games coming out, I will avoid purchasing this. Maybe in a few months I'll dive back in, but no time soon. Also a warning, make sure you turn off Origin when you stop playing BF, it'll massacre your connection in other games.