Well today I started to play Battlefield 3 beta and I have to say it was a VERY bad start. Let me start off by saying I’m in no way a Battlefield veteran. However I have played a couple of battlefield titles.
This is a beta game that hopefully will be better at the official launch. It started off with the game download, you first had to install EA Origins.. oh great.. more junk… and they have all kinds of social bullshit in it… yeah.. junk.. forced upon you because you NEED it to install the game. Fine, I installed it, turned off all the social shit and started downloading the game.
After it was downloaded and installed the next challenge showed up:
The game crashed on start up.. I had to do this manual patch to fix it (can’t they just freaking fix it themselves with a small patch? (bunch of lazy asses!) anyhow here is the guide I got from a friend.
Step1: Go to (C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games)
Step2: Search for the folder called ‘Béta Battlefield 3′ and change the name to ‘Beta Battlefield 3′
Step3: Press Start and go to your ‘regedit’
Step4: Search the following folders (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE » SOFTWARE » Wow6432Node » EA Games » BF3 Beta)
Step5: Change the ‘GDFBinary’ path. You need to change the ‘é’ to an ‘e’ in the word Beta
Step6: Do the same thing you did in Step5, but this time with ‘Install Dir’
After I did all this the game finally started.
Now, you get to a very poorly designed screen. With this I don’t mean the looks of it. You have your basic battlefield classes Support, Engineer, Assault and Recon. However, no further information what so ever and you need to pick what you will take right there just before the match. So I figured I usually like the Recon, so why not.
I enter the game and look around, graphics look good, there is all kinds of buildings around, half of them are exploding, bullets flying in every direction: total chaos. I test out my scope, hmm that stinks, I have to keep right mouse button pressed for the scope, I’m more use to the click on click off system, and.. I’m dead.. lovely. So I try to get into my settings. Hmm… I can’t while in the redeploy screen. I redeploy myself, guess what? I get shot, again within 10 seconds after spawn. I saw some settings when I hit Esc. So I redeploy again, and try to sit down (Ctrl) and hit Esc, no wait that opens my start menu. Ok I hide behind some pillar, standing, and open up my menu. I get shot again, 2 second later: game-over! so in recap:
- I got shot 3 times within 10 seconds after spawn
- I didn’t fire a single shot
- Scope is annoying that way
- You can only get in the menu when your not dead, but that will get you killed.
- Game ended in a very short time after I entered. (I think maybe 2 minutes)
I’ll post more info if I actually get into a game where I don’t die on the spot.
Update 30 Sep 2011:
I just tried to get into game with a friend, guess what? friend couldn’t get in, his game crapped out. A lot of the MMORPGs I play have a file consistency check build into them. That ‘repair option’ only downloads the damaged or missing files. So far it seems that only Online RPGs have this option (why?). Therefore my friend is now re-downloading the game to (hopefully) fix this. *Doh*
The fun continues, after he reinstalled: same error. Now its my turn I guess: A generic game error was reported, please try again. ( code: 1 ). oh great. (that’s the Quick match system that sometimes.. just doesn’t work.)
Next issues:
- Your game session has expired, please log out and then log in again. (No clue) happens a lot.. works after a couple tries
- Launching is currently disabled. Please try again later. (They have issues, again)
So far I’ve played 2 matches, the first one I described the second one I had no fucking clue what was going on. This game seems to offer a very poor overview and it’s very hard to tell anything in this game. You can hardly see any enemy in the game (they have no marking till there spotted). They have a ‘blur’ system that blurs your whole screen I have yet to figure out why or how and what the hell that is about. But its annoying as hell.
So far (keep in mind beta, but still)
- Matchmaking is ridiculous – couple of high-levels in the other team: not fair
- There are strange lag spikes from time to time (its not my pc) > not sure what this is
- The website (that is the launcher) is rubbish – at the moment I can’t begin to list all the issues with it.
- I personally think the overview is crap in game, you just can’t see anything.
- A Scout has a watch will reflect/flicker light while crawling.