My week with Battlefield 3

4 Nov, 2011

DAY 1

“Welcome to the suck!” or rather welcome to “I suck” – despite time spent with the beta I spent a lot of time dying in my opening hours of Battlefield 3’s multiplayer, even on Operation Metro which I know like the back of my hand saw me bite the dirt more than I expected. I persevered for an hour or so, ranked up and logged off. Much like a garden there is much tending to be done on Battlelog, setting up platoons, tweeking dog tags etc. and pouring over stats.

Refreshed I logged back on several hours later and hooked up with my old college buddy, I reasoned that as I am unable to hit anyone I could at least keep them alive so I kept many a battle fed on medi-packs and defibrillator saves – which worked a treat and I ranked up, a mutual friend joined our party and screamed at me for blocking his shot – despite the fact I had resurrected him twice within the last minute – that’s gratitude for you. I finally ventured out on my own and started racking up a few kills, I had the bad guys on the run at one point, I rounded a corner to find two of them side by side utterly unaware I was standing behind them – I leant in – drew my knife and…..the server crashed losing my last 25 minutes hard work and denying me two sweet kills. Bed.

Day 2

A quick stop of rearranging my newly won equipment unlocks and pimped my dog tags and I was good to go. For my first session I hooked up with Joey Dale who I last saw cosplaying as Commander Sheppard at the EuroGamer expo, I couldn’t get on his team but it was good to be working with him. In this session I remembered about “spotting”, a function I only learned about towards the end of my Bad Company 2 career, I did a lot of this today, my senses honed from spotting tube mice on the underground (look for the movement) spotting tanks and tipping my team mates off. I also rode in a lot of tanks and helicopters and racked up a lot of kills safe in my armoured shell. At one point my Ginx co-workers logged on so I teamed up with them and kept them alive whilst the went about their game capture – mostly hanging out of a helicopter and raining the pain down with a mini-gun, for the amount of lead those things spew out I got very few kills but I did my fair share of spotting.

The next map put me on the deck of an aircraft carrier which brought back flashbacks of Battlefield 2, sure enough at the front of the ship was an anti-aircraft gun which I spent about 20 minutes in, spotting far off troops, making them flee with more mini-gun fire and of course shooting down planes. As the battle moved inland things got boring so I abandoned my post and spent a familiar five minutes waiting for a jet to spawn, it didn’t so I ran up to the front of a ship just missing out on an attack helicopter which promptly took off, dipped erratically and ditched in the sea killing all on board – in the end I just swam for it.

Upon reaching dry land I did note how pretty the scenery was – like it was actually coastal – as a guy who grew up on the coast I appreciated that, I then caught a straggling sniper lining up a shot at my men and promptly shanked him. Win.

Day 3

A late night Battlefield session proved to be much more productive, having now ranked up to about level 5 my noob gun is now pimped with all manner of grips and barrels and more importantly a sight so I can actually aim it at people, this has helped me net my first few kills streaks. I was joined tonight by 4 xbox pals all of whom I’ve played Bad Company 2 with but they have never interacted together before, we got on with it though and regularly won best team. One thing I’ve noticed tonight is I need to get a better handle on the vehicles. Many maps were too large to trudge across and I spent a lot of time waiting for rides to spawn, I’m gonna have to man up and learn how to fly those helicopters. It’s also apparent that tanks are now built to last, many of the tank battles I’ve been in descended into two tanks circling each other at close proximity trying to get a shot in, much more like an airborne dog fight.

Playing at night does have its disadvantages though, I made a lot of silly mistakes due to being tired, bad guys would run straight past me and I was utterly unaware of their allegiance until they shot me. In knifing news I scored a tag from a battlefield 2142 veteran – now that is rare! Even I didn’t play that one – this will take pride of place upon my mantle.

Some strange server issues saw a few games where we were outnumbered three to one, this did nothing for my kill/death ratio but did turn up the fun including defending a stairwell sniping spot between four of us, i gunned down five bad guys and wouldn’t you know it – the server crashed erasing all of it – bed.

Day 4

Played during the day this time which saw a mix of half full servers – what is clear though is that as the game is a few days old now people are getting wise and worse still – they are developing tactics, tactics that threaten to undermine my capitalising on the chaos. . I have started to get aquatinted with the maps now and I too have my own means and ways of outflanking baddies – it rarely pays off but I keeps my wits sharp.

I’m about level 8 now and I’ve unlocked enough additions to my noob rifle to make it fairly efficient but even so it lacks punch, I’m going to trade it in tomorrow once I’ve got a clear 100 kills with it. I have started experimenting with other guns (frequently by accidently spawning with them) but I was surprised to find I’m really good at sniping – believe me this is a shock to me, I normally avoid the class all together but after being lumbered with a sniper rifle by accident I got my longest running kill streak – thoughts for the future there.

I’ve also stumbled into other multiplayer modes including team deathmatch where I was murdered 9-0, yeah won’t be trying that again. So a day with my best and worst streak – what can tomorrow hold?

Day 5

Aha! Today is the day that my noob gun started taking names, I’ve unlocked an infrared sight for it, suddenly there is nowhere for bad guys to hide from me. Needless to say my kill/death ratio has rapidly changed and I’m rapidly rising to the top of the leader board – the problem is…I’m bored of this gun, there’s loads more to choose from so I’m going to have to start experimenting with another.

Five days in and I’m finally finding my feet, I’ve ranked up 12 times and seen what the initial stages of Battlefield 3’s multiplayer has to offer. This game requires an investment of your time and you really so get out what you put in. I’m gonna sail into the weekend now and see if I can’t improve my score, find me on there if you fancy your chances…but remember…infrared sight. You can’t hide!!