Seeing as how I've always been a battlefield fan, I went ahead and bought the game and got access to the beta. While it does need some work I would say that this game has massive potential. (My reactions are copy/pasted from a post I made on another forum.)
First off the good:
The game is beautiful. Graphics are great and when an explosion goes off you really feel as if it's happening right near you. Smoke effects are great and you can really use it to your advantage. In addition everything is destructible. That wall of cement blocking your path? Plant some C4 and blow it up. Opposition camping in a building? Shell it until it collapses. Trees, fencing and the like can all be destroyed as well.
Vehicles feel pretty good, though some of the tank secondary guns suck beyond belief. Haven't spent much time in the gunship but from what I've seen a good gunship pilot can really lock-down an opposing team until he/she is taken out.
The HUD doesn't display enemy locations unless a vehicle with the proper unlock is equipped and even then in a relatively small radius. This means communication is key or else you and an enemy may both run corners and see each other face to face.
Weapon kits are very diverse. Lots of unlocks that put 2142 to shame. I've been playing primarily assault and have unlocked 5 of the guns. Be warned though the first assault gun sucks hardcore. You will die a lot until you unlock the next one. Currently I've been using the shotgun with C4 explosives as an assault due to the close combat nature of this map. C4 also helps you rack up points really fast if vehicles aren't paying attention, (or if you take out a building full of soldiers causing it to collapse on them)
Game mode available is RUSH. Assault has to rush two capture points and plant explosives. Once the explosives are planted and assuming the other team doesn't disarm them you neutralize the point. Once both are down the defensive team falls back to the next two points.
The Bad:
Optimization is still poor. Graphically, this game should not be eating up the resources it currently does. Personally, I have been getting a solid 40-50 fps consistently with x4 AA and AF.For some reason, people with nvidia cards have been reporting more problems. Dual core's can run this game but a quad is recommended and I can see why.... PLEASE NOTE: HBAO does not work. Keep it turned off, if you turn it on your game will crash randomly especially if you're in an exploding vehicle. Bloom also needs to be tweaked. It's so bright you can barely see sometimes.
Regardless I trust DICE will be working around the clock to better optimize this game. As drivers are released for cards I can see the game stabilizing somewhat. That being said this game does require a beastly computer. The recommended specs ask for a quad for a reason.
Next up Server Browser....It works.......kind of....DICE needs to work on this thing and a complete overhaul is necessary. It feel's like a console browser.
Issuing commands doesn't work. Q is supposed to bring up the menu but it does nothing. My hope is that DICE implements the same system 2142 used. Now that was efficient. Also voice doesn't work yet for some unknown reason.
Sometimes this game feel's like a console port, from the way your player moves to slow mouse response. DICE I think has been working on optimizing this for PC as in the past 2 days the sluggishness of the controls has significantly decreased. Again, it's not too bad but something to look out for in this early testing stage.
Guns are not balanced. Some are godly, while some are useless (see assault first gun) Furthermore, sometimes you can literally sit in front of an enemy and both of you will expend almost a whole clip into each others chests and nobody will die. Shotgun is OP I think atm. At close range this thing is devastating. You have to be up close but flanking is quite easy with lack of radar.
This is good or bad...No prone. While this is great in that it ensures people are constantly moving forward and that snipers don't camp all day and contribute nothing to the team, there are times when you'll be crouching behind something that seems made for prone. This game with it's destructible environments feels as it were tailor-made for prone, and it is a noticeable omission.
Ok that's it for now. If you guys have any questions post them and I'll try to answer them in a timely manner. After I get back from ball tonight, I will test out the medic class and report my findings.
Edit: Quick edits before I go to bed. Shotgun is not OP, it's actually a bit underpowered in that the spread is ridiculously wide even for a shotgun. Being a medic is a great way to rack up points to rank up and actually helps the team. M-Coms (the thing you need to destroy on offense) can be easily taken out via C4 spam. Arming them is almost pointless. Ever worse/better (depends on perspective) the 'Jihad Jeep' is back. Now called the Allah ATV by some, you put 5 C4's on the ATV hop on and drive it near an M-com station and blow it up. It's really hard to defend against this at the moment.
Also griefers will have a field day as they can blow up their own M-Coms even on FF off servers. Alternatively for the Jihad tactic, you can get a friend to load it up with C4 and wait back at base, the expendable driver it close and when the time is right tells his buddy to blow it up. So even if he is killed while hopping off the ATV, the M-com still gets destroyed. Server stability has improved though optimization is still horrid. I've been getting a consistent 60 fps now with 8x AA and 4x AF.
Q just spots enemies if they are in your line of sight. There is no way to communicate with teammates like in 2142 if you need something.
That's it for now more updates to come.
/End Copy Paste
This game will have a huge install base and perhaps a single WDFnews 32 man server is in order? Even though it is a beta and needs some fixes, I am having ton's of fun playing this game. If any of you have 50 bucks to throw around I would recommend picking this up.
I'm the leetest one here
