Battlefield 3: Strike while the iron is hot.

Pre-ordering ain't half bad. Considering the fact that I didn't have to pay for shipping and it arrived on my doorstep at 9am-release day, it's alright.

Anyway, it's begun. My money saving plan of just playing video games throughout the Holiday season is in motion. Turns out all my snowboarding poseur gear/classes associated costs destroyed my wallet.

As far as I can tell the game plays very similarly to Battlefield 2, but even better. Maybe it's because I'm so used to COD, but I have to admit that I'm pretty happy that they've included strafe-running and going prone into this version (so I can juke and hide in bushes). But yeah, the game build on something already great and is definitely refreshing from Black Ops.

Just by having it you automatically get a Battlelog account too. I guess it's EA's response to COD Elite, but unlike COD it's been done before by other sites like Stats Verse. I guess EA has some sort of API available, but as far as I know there's no affiliation between the two - just another way for people to publicly see the same info and how much I struggle.



I got in a session going with Jon last night and it's clear that they haven't worked all the bugs out yet. The servers are overloaded and even after the initial patch I got stuck in limbo a few times. Luckily getting booted or quitting the game for those reasons chalks up as a loss in Battlelog (great). Squads (still) don't work properly and apparently neither does voice communication, but I think that might have something to do with the servers being so busy. Smooth moves, but I look forward to the fixes.

As I mentioned yesterday, you gotta surf that initial noob wave to quickly level up before everyone gets pimp gear and shines tactical lights in your eyes so that you can't see before you. Otherwise it's rubber band gun vs. LMG (or something like that). Other than the outright skill (which I don't really have), stuff like weapon/class upgrades and especially map knowledge are the only things that can give you any sort of edge. And being me, I'll take what ever I can get (just like in real life).

The fact that most people at this point are ranked at level 2 or 3 and just bee-lining it to anything that pops up on the map at least gives you a chance to figure out what's what before people actually start playing smart. When everyone else knows what they're doing and you don't, it's not very fun. See me buying Black Ops one year after it's release as an example...

In my extensive years of sucking at games, I've learned that map knowledge is pretty damn important - routes to run, where to expect contact, objective locations, vehicles, stuff like that. So now is as good a time as any to get that before you get waxed by dudes laying in bushes, picking you off before you even know what happened.



Deploy now!