I’ve already expressed my disappointment for Battlefield 3 when the beta was launched for it a few weeks ago. My honest opinion of the game was both praised and panned by many people, but I stayed true to my feelings and cancelled my pre-order of the game. To my surprise, I received an email from EA promotions department and was told that due to my horrible treatment I received when I attempted to get my beta code and my low opinion of the game; that I’d be receiving a copy for free. That came today…hard to complain about a free game right?
I received the Xbox 360 version and as I figured, I was met with the typical day 1 title update that all games seem to have these days. No problem, I accepted and the game restarted. I was just about to pick multiplayer mode when I was asked if I wanted to install the “Optional 1.5 GB HD texture pack”
“Optional?!” I thought to myself. More like: “Press the B button to experience the game with shitty visuals or press A button for what you should be playing in the first place.”
There’s a catch to this one too though…See if you don’t have an actual XB360 hard drive attached to your XBOX 360, you can’t install it. It doesn’t matter if your USB stick has 16 GB capacity on it or not. No hard drive, no HD visuals. This means you, Xbox 360 Slim 4GB and Arcade users. Having just updated my review unit to a 4 GB slim, I was slightly pissed off; but decided to just play it without the HD visuals…I wasn’t impressed; obviously.
My video on the BETA…just in case you missed it.
I tried to join a few multiplayer matches with a friend, unsuccessfully and then we finally settled on trying co-op instead. Sadly, these missions don’t have much excitement to them at all and is definitely something I wouldn’t go out and buy the game for. Before we could actually try mission 3, we were booted from the servers and have been unable to connect to anything online related to the game since.
You would think that EA and DICE would have done a beta test or something to stress test the servers before the final release…Oh wait…THEY DID!
Free game or not, my experience with Battlefield 3 has been poor thus far. I’ll give a full review of the game when the time is right and its actually working, but what a let down for gamers out there.
I would openly agree, until early last night. They finally got the XBOX360 servers to run. I have played through a couple of matches and thankfully no issues. I haven’t had any of the issues that the beta had like falling through the map or people being dead bodies despite being alive. It looks like they actually tried to work on the game from the results of the beta. The vehicle game play seems crisp, however, if you are trying to fly a jet get used to getting shot down until you get the first unlock which is flares. The game seems sharp. I wouldn’t know about how the game looks without the HD textures but I can tell you that with them the game is beautiful. There are real lighting affects that if you go from a dark area to a suddenly bright area, it temporarily blinds you a bit.
Yea Battlefield 3 is already having many problems… to bad.. But i still think i’m going to buy it, plus SO many good games coming out this November..
I also played the beta and was turned off. I still might pick it up down the line when the price drops or goes on sale to give it another try. Looking forward to your review.
youtube username: israelpacheco89