Our new writer, Dieter, got a chance to visit the Battlefield 3 booth at GamesCom in his home town Cologne, Germany. He played Battlefield 3 on two occasions, and he let us know of his impressions of the game. Without further ado:
Caspian Border map was detailed, lush, and just awesome to play in.
Flags are close together, felt about the same distance as the flags in Harvest Day from Bad Company 2. The rest of the map was very big.
The close proximity of the flags, coupled with a lot of players and vehicles resulted in some tense action between the flags, like a melting pot of vehicles, soldiers, explosions and gunfire.
Outside if the flag zones, there wasnt much action. But there is a lot of room for flanking, both on foot and in vehicles.
The game crashed once. My friend who played had it crash a lot more often.
Jets dont feel slow at all, feel about the same speed as in BF2. Jets arent hard to control either if you played BF2 and operated a jet with mouse and keyboard, BF3 is just as easy.
Controls and movement felt a lot like Battlefield 2, it definitely didnt feel like a Bad Company 3″ game by any means.
The graphics are awesome, everything is detailed and crisp. The forest areas with a lot of trees and shadows looked just as good as Crysis. Water effects were the best Ive ever seen.
Destruction is back and looked amazing, although you cant destroy everything (obviously).
The PC system was powered by two Nvidia GTX 580 cards in SLI.
Vehicles felt more responsive than in Bad Company 2.
Tanks are operated differently now, the MG isnt on secondary fire any longer, you have to use the 1″ and 2″ buttons to switch between main gun and MG.
You can spawn in vehicles now, e.g. you can spawn in a jet on the runway.
Weapons felt more realistic than Bad Company 2. Theyre less violent, with less muzzle flash. They felt, sounded and handled realistically (BC2 weapons are almost cartoonish by comparison).
There were a lot of weapons available from the get to and there are a lot of customization options, even if the player I used was a level 1 Private. They might have added more guns just for this GamesCom preview.
The game just felt like a proper sequel to Battlefield 2. I played Bad Company 2 the night before, and BF3 is totally different. Theres an atmosphere and feeling of war and combat that was in BF2 and something BC2 couldnt replicate.
It felt full of BF2 nostalgia when, as soon as I spawned, I could see and hear jets dog fighting in the sky above, see tanks blowing up far into the distance, see teammates running around me towards a flag
Just those 5 seconds made me feel what I felt when I played the BF2 demo for the first time in 2005. Just wow.
