QUEUE NEWS! #BF3 queue at #GamesCom, and randomly chosen comparison queue.
This is not really fair to CoD, although the line for Battlefield 3 on PC was longer then the MW3 line, there were still plenty of people in line to play MW3 when i was at GC this weekend. The Battlefied 3 presence at the show was a lot bigger with things like this giant mural just outside the confention center;
I just got back from Gamescom where i had the change to sit in on a live demo of Borderlands 2; here is some of what was shown (the demo was in German and my German isn't that good).
First of all you play a new character (as shown in the teaser) during the demo we also encountered Roland, who was held by Hyperion in a hovering machine with a force field arround him. You try to free him by shooting the machine as it moves through the level and they throw waves of enemies your way. At some point the player got help from a female character, but i'm not sure if she was controlled by the AI or another player.
During the demo a number of new enemies were shown along side skaggs, bandits and psycho's, one enemy (didn't see the exact name) looked like a sort of snow gorilla that could throw large boulders your way and do melee attacks (its the first enemy you see in the teaser). Later in the demo we encountered the new robots called Loaders. You have different types of Loaders; the Gun loader (as shown in the teaser) like the name says uses guns, the EXP loader which explodes and bigger versions like the Badass War loader which has two smaller flying bots that repair him during battle.
The new skill tree was shown briefly with the first skill (like turret/phase walk or rage in the first game) being dual wield. Some new weapons were shown like the minigun that took some time to spin up but looked and sounded just great, and did massive damage at full speed. A sort of SMG you would shoot and when the clip was empty you threw it at your enemies and it would explode, but you would have a new one to start shooting with right away. They also showed a new vehicle, basicly a big jeep that could fit four people, one drives and the others can shoot.
Probably the best thing about the demo was the humor from the first game being back in full force, which really got me excited to play this sequal. Things like the Loaders killing off bandits while you move through the level, one steps on a bandits head when you come arround a corner, things like that. The final scene was briliant were you were close to saving Roland, but a big robot is constructed out of thin air in front of you. When its done it fires a small nuke and because of the blast the player gets thrown off a cliff, and on his way down throws up two middle fingers at the robot. End demo.
Just got back last night, and i got to play the 64 player multiplayer on Caspian Border for almost 20 minutes. Like you´ve seen there was a crazy line for BF3 that went almost all arround the entire BF booth although they had one of those snakey lines in front. At the end was a sign that said the wait was app. 6 hours. Good thing i didn´t get scared off like my friends, because i was playing BF3 less then 3 hours later )which still was a long wait but well worth it.
Once you got in you first got to watch people play for about 20 min (thats how long everyone got to play), then you went into a theather where they showed everyone an extended version of the Fault Line trailer from earlier this year. After that everyone got a short rundown of the classes vehicles and keyboard layout (in German) and after that we went into playing the game our self. The room was split down the middle with 32 players on each side facing each other and big screens overhead.
Ok about the game, i didn't get to play a squad leader or create a platoon or anything. Not sure it was even in this build ( i forgot to mention that we played alpha code). It was layed out very similar to Bad Company 2, in that everyone played in squads of for and you could either spawn on your squad, spawn on your base or on one of the points your team was holding. The mode i played was basicly conquest and the Caspian Border map had 5 flags across a huge map.
As for your questions;
1. Didn't get to play as a squad/platoonleader 2. " " 3. Unfortunately we didn't get to finish the round, when the 17 minutes of play time were over every screen turned black. 4. It looked like the spotting only worked as long as an enemy was in your line of sight 5. Flew a jet and try to see how far it would go up, it read 1200 before the jet started to stall out, i guess thats 1200 meters. I was pretty high at that point... 6. Didn't get to fly a helicopter 7. If there is a bigger map i couldn't find it. I tried by hitting M and some other options, but pressing M would enlarge and zoom the small map in the left bottom. It wasn't very usefull in my opinion, i would have rather had a bigger map of the entire playing field. Maybe its in there, i couldn't find it. 8. I did see footage of a UAV but didn't get to use it, didn't get to play commander. 9. Haven't seen it. 10. The distance between the flags is pretty big, and there is a lot of things between one flag and the next. The flags were placed on a hill top, at the gasstation from the trailer, in a river bed, at a radio tower and the last one was between some barracks (if i remember correctly). With many objects and buildings / trees arround it was easy to defend a flag, but it was also not that hard to capture a flag with enough cover arround. The map had a good mix of open area's and some close quarters between buildings and stuff. All the flags were located arround the center of the map (which was huge), and on the outside you had the US and Russian base. You can run between the flags (which most players did) but getting from one flag to the one on the other side was a pretty long run.
Not sure what else to tell you, i've tried the Assault class who can also drop med packs and later i switched to the support class. You get a lot of people shinig you in the face with their red dot sight, which was a big warning to get into cover before getting shot. Other then getting points for kills and assists you also get points when you suppress another player by firing on his location. Even though the game we played was alpha code it looked great! When i was watching other people play i noticed some screen tearing but playing myself i didn't notice it at all. The loadout screen had some vehicle optoins like; active camo, autoloader, long range optics (those are the three i remember).
I´m pretty sure we don´t have to worry about BF3 "beating" Call of Duty. Although i'm a big fan of the Battlefield game i've played only the earlier CoD games (and the CoD4 MW singleplayer), but í am just amazed by how many people keep buying the CoD games (not saying they are bad). Its kind of crazy how many copies CoD sells and we can only imagine what MW3 will do. That said BF3 is probably shaping up to be the best competition CoD has had, but i think most gamers will just decide to go with what their friends are playing; or with what they know.
If gamers do decide to jump te fence and buy BF3 then i'll see it as a bigger challenge, not something to worry about. As long as i can team up with my friends i'm having fun.
Would like to play some TF2 with other GB members, been playing on the GB/Tested srever sometimes but a lot of times is just empty... already a member of the GB steam group though.
I´ll be playing me some BF3 in only two days! I can´t wait!
That's awesome! Do you mind looking out for certain things and giving me answers on them afterwards? I would really appreciate it.
What is it you want to know? I'll see what i can find out! I'll probably try and get into the 64 player PC multiplayer session they have on the floor. And they also have the co-op mission at their booth? I'll have to see when i get there though.
Bad Company 2 was one of my favorite games last year and probably the game i´ve spent the most time with online. And i never ran into the "problems" you mention...
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