Defrag

I'm unwilling to assume that you're being anything other than scathing, Rick. Your reputation goes before you

Going to buy 20 copies.

Well, I'm sure we'll get someone to make a better one when we have something vaguely interesting to shout about

What dux said, but using the pump shotgun instead (though not exactly 10:1...).

As nice as it looks, I don't really care about the single player at all. I want to know what the gameplay & balance is going to be like when there's 64 player carnage taking place

I hope it has TV missiles. Beware, jet fuckers!

We finally bothered to create a website (well, a placeholder...), so you can add me to eegeo. I've been there since RTW went pop in ~September. Mark Simpson -- Software Engineer http://www.eegeo.com

Please tell me there's a GI expert called Joe.

Kotaku is a shitehole anyway.

It made me angry in quite a few places (bad gunplay, some finicky parts where Faith wouldn't grab on to the bit I needed), but the parts of ME that worked were very, very cool. I'm sure they could've delivered a much better experience the second time around and it's a real shame that it's not going to happen The art was so cool, too.

If it only happens at peak times, then it's most likely their problem.

They had a single player mode with bots. There was no campaign, but still.

BF2 single player was a joke. I'd rather than just canned the SP and concentrated on the MP exclusively That's just me, though...

Two advantages of a narrow fov: Better performance (more of the scene is culled because the frustum is smaller) Less stretching at the extremities of the view Disadvantages: Makes some folk feel sick (read Valve's musings on narrow fov and the driving section in HL2 -- they had to increase the fov to stop some people throwing up) Subjective: I personally like ~80 to 105 fov (played TFC with 120, but times change). I dislike the ultra-narrow fovs offered in certain games these days because it really inhibits the sense of fluidity. There's a reason gears (and every 3rd person game released since) dynamically increases your fov when you run -- it gives the player a better sense of speed. Playing a game with a large fov makes everyting flow so much more nicely, and the sense of spatial awareness is heightened for me. I used to love flying around in Quake III & TFC with a high fov

Apple used to have a totally closed (read: guess why you were denied?) submission process, yet they can't respond to something that is clearly violating copyright? Pretty weird extremes.

I had the same problem with friend invites. I ended up just getting the other people to add me.

Shotgun + motion mines is definitely my favourite combo

... We should probably agree to disagree on this point, then I don't like what Valve has done with TF2. They took a game with well-defined, easy to understand roles and then needlessly complicated it with a million different stupid items, imo.

Doesn't sound like it.

Jenn0_Bing: haha I'm not a fan of those covers, and if the karkand dlc talk is true then... bleh. I hate paid for DLC that separates players.

A million? Nope. BF2 had 7 and they all got played. The only ones that didn't get as much playtime were spec ops (after C4 chucking was nerfed, it became too niche) and assault (after the n00b tube was nerfed, there was no real reason to play assault over medic)). I'm fine with some consolidation, I just dislike it when there's a million different unlock combinations and loads of the guns are interchangeable across classes. Not a fan of the vehicle specialisations, either. I'd much rather everything was clearer cut and you know what you're facing.

I don't think it's irrelevant because they're two different flavours of the battlefield franchise and so comparable; BF3 can either go more towards BF2 with bells on, or towards BC2. I'm arguing the point as to why I think one is more fun than the other. It's just an opinion. My hunch is that BF3 will be somewhere between the two, but with BC2's class system and infantry style (which I dislike). Haha, good stuff. I used to like TVing snipers in the face from about 10 feet away.

I think that's a fair point about the solidity of combat (BF2's infantry felt a bit floaty), but I still preferred the style of play. I'm just not a fan of games with extremely accurate guns that kill at all ranges. It was mainly down to the 64 player maps + extra vehicles, plus the gun handling in BF2 was more challenging to learn due to the much more pronounced bullet drop & bullet travel time. In BC2 it's basically just "aim gun directly at dude who is 20 miles away, fire gun until dead, repeat". This part is definitely personal preference, though. I just much preferred having to flank & mug people rather than having a CS style head-on brawl with super accurate guns. Prone was badly implemented, but even that made the combat more varied. I personally loved it as a lot of people had prone-itis and would throw themselves to the ground at the slightest sign of trouble, leaving themselves screwed There were more distinct, core gameplay elements than there are in BC2, so the way those basics could be combined was more varied and interesting. Fun things to do in BF2: [*:2yguvuk2]Trying to shoot choppers down using a TOW missile launcher (hard to do, but humiliating for the chopper crew) [*:2yguvuk2]TOWing far away points using missile drop (always serious lolz when you TOW the tv station chopper from the hotel and kill 6 people who are waiting to get in it) [*:2yguvuk2]Hunting choppers using concealed vehicle mounted guns. A lot of folk complained about the vehicle dominance, but I took it as a challenge. I'd spend hours every week just ruining the lives of Sharqi chopper whores. [*:2yguvuk2]TVing jets using the chopper [*:2yguvuk2]Chopper battles that required good timing and deceptive dodging to avoid TVs [*:2yguvuk2]Soloing choppers with the machine gun & tvs [*:2yguvuk2]Speculatively strafing ground hotspots with jet machine guns [*:2yguvuk2]Learning to dodge missiles in the F-35B and watching J-10 whores wear a confused expression (I was good at stratorunning, even if I was a pretty bad jet pilot overall) [*:2yguvuk2]Being a sneaky bugger and taking the enemy airfield while all of the enemies are too busy waiting for the vehicles to spawn [*:2yguvuk2]Flying a C4 watermelon (crap MEC/Chinese choppers) into a tank/chopper/jet/whatever ... there were just loads and loads of ways to make your own fun.

I was still learning new skills in BF2 two and a half years after it came out -- that's the sort of longevity and nuanced gameplay I go for. I also agree that class consolidation sucks as it really muddies the waters. You can't look at someone and figure out how to work with them or beat them so readily. I much prefer it when the the class roles are more rigid, characters have recognisable silhouettes/uniforms and a limited range of weapons/kit per class. In BC2 it's more like generic solider has generic weapons. Also, I really don't like the unlock system in BC2. First of all, you start with nothing and it takes time to get the most basic shit to even be able to contribute. No medpacks or shock paddles when playing medic until you unlock them? Really? However, once you're about 10 hours in, it's raining unlocks at a rate that you can't figure out which ones are good or bad because it takes ages to try them all out. Throw in the generic solider loadouts and it's just.. too much stuff with no clearly recognisable boundaries. Shooters going down this route just add artificial complexity, in my opinion. All of the unlock permutations != complexity / longevity short of putting the hours in to unlock the next trinket. BF2 had little in the way of that bloat (just the odd unlockable gun), yet its gameplay was much more expansive, nuanced and varied. It had its flaws (medic revive trains, grenade spam, claymores, chopper/jet dominance) but it was still a much better game overall.

That was amazing. I have a particular hate for the blood-spattered screen in games these days