BC2 > BF3 (Why I think Battlefield 3 is inferior to BF:BC2)

Heyooo. Just thought I'd let you know we're not dead. I'll be coming soon with a a few posts right before our massive exams, but for now, here is an argument I want to show you that supports my recent views of the superiority of Bad company 2 over battlefield 3 (yea, I had that view, if you didnt know yet).

Credit to Ganondorf_is_God over at Reddit (i.e. he wrote this amazing thing), Please, sit back, relax and dig into what I cant possibly agree more with!

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Originally I was writing why I like BC2 more than BF3 for a forum. Over an hour it grew to this. I'm curious what other people think as well.

Quite simply from someone who tries to objectively view games I find myself in a situation where I can say, easily, that Bad Company 2 was a better 'game' than Battlefield 3.

There are numerous reasons why:

Health/Damage disparity: In BC2 you could take 1 or 2 more bullets from nearly every source. This made headshots worth more and made it so if you were skillful enough you could manage to get a kill when surprised by an enemy. In actuality you still have 100 hp... its the gun damages that were altered.

In BC2 the weapons of the offensive kits did about 14-16.7 damage per bullet. In BF3 they do 26-31. This means you die in 4 bullets in BF3 and 7 in BC2.

The Guns: "Man I really like the ak-47! It's just feels like the best for me." "Yeah man, I know that feeling. The FAMAS is just a killing machine in my hands!" That crap is an illusion. Here are the gun stats from BC2[1] and BF3[2] .

In BF3 almost all the guns are homogeneous in every way. Every gun class (assault rifle, submachine, etc) may have 12 different skins but there are only 2 different guns. They vary in this way. Either one gun has a lower fire rate but more damage or a higher fire rate and lower damage. Of course once you categorize them this way you may notice that your favorite gun isn't the most statistically superior in the 'lower fire rate higher damage' category and is beat out by another gun with equal stats in everything except reload time. And even then the reload time is only .05 better.

Hell, here are Modern Warfare 3's gun stats[3] . They're almost identical to BF3's in every way. They even kill in the same number of bullets.

In BC2 you had more variety. Different guns had special properties. Some had their damage drop off in different ways at a distance, some didn't drop off at all. Some guns had unique firing modes. Some let you switch weapons faster. Some had different spread patterns (mostly shotguns). They had the same homogenization issue but on a much smaller level. Every gun had a statistically similar pair or two... but not 5-8 pairs.

I also enjoyed the potency of the pistols in BC2.

The Maps: The maps in BC3 were almost entirely designed for consoles (by that I mean their max player cap per server). There were very few maps that played properly with 64 players. Hell, on most maps even 32 was pushing it. Quite frankly... this is incredibly obvious from a design standpoint.

Hell, even the god damn vehicle spawns don't adjust for players. It's like they wanted enough vehicles for only 32 players at all times. This creates a situation where on 32 vs 32 on several maps in BF3 you literally don't have enough transportation out of your base. You could fill every seat on every vehicle and still leave several people walking absurd distances. And since most people roll off by themselves you get half your damn base walking.

Too much close quarters combat. They appear to have been trying to cater to the CoD crowd here. I know that sounds like something a forum troll would say but seriously... CoD maps are all about closed sightlines and close quarters combat.

Battlefield is about large maps and large amounts of players battling it out with tons of vehicles and armaments. There are plenty of open areas in BF3 but they aren't places where you should normally be fighting. The funnel the players via incentives and choke points. An incentive is having an objective in a tunnel. A choke point is having to go into a tunnel to get to the objective. BF3 made the mistake of having a god damn inventive in a god damn choke point.

The system that Battlefield's 64 player combat created was that you didn't need large amounts of incentives or choke points to control the action. How it worked was simple. There were so many players that you were literally incapable of not running into someone.

Of course there many subtleties. Since there were two main bases you knew which direction the player would be coming from. Since players could spawn from captured points you knew that was also a possible direction they could be coming from. If you manage to come from an unexpected direction you were almost guaranteed a kill.

This is why crap like Rush is just that, crap. You have one ingress through one or two choke points towards the objective. They know where you are coming from and where you are going. This creates what I like to call a killing field. A killing field is an impassable @#$% house of people camping behind better cover than you.

This includes: Respawns close to the objectives Better accuracy because they're camping (being prone) Smaller profile to hit (they're prone so you are going to have a hard time hitting/seeing them) Escalating advantage (you take out on point and then there is only one left. This makes it so you can't overwhelm one point when there forces are split. If 32 are fighting 32 and one side has a huge advantage I wonder who wins)

The Vehicles: Honestly this is a big one. So many things were changed. First off the unlock system makes vehicular combat incredibly unfair for new players. This is especially true for anything that flys. The unlocks for jets are what let them fulfill a function for your team. A new player in a jet has no way to defend themselves from the one billion rockets locked on to them or that Ace Pilot Lt. General RapeStorm coming his way with missiles locked on, his codpiece ready, and his extra large pack of flares.

No vehicle in a Battlefield game (hell, no games I can think of) should start of useless. You can barely attack anything that isn't another jet with the stuff it starts with. You have to 'unlock' crap that lets you actually contribute to the team below. Hell, a lot of jet players don't even take such unlocks and just continue to play the super fun jet mini-game in the sky that has 0 influence of the games objective. It's like everyone is playing Quidditch... except everyone on the ground is the chaser while the jet players are the pointless rabble of unnecessary extra positions.

The whole lock-on thing in general kinda sucks. It forces you to bring certain unlocks. It also raises another problem... too many players. The more players in the game the more lock-on sources... but the amount of vehicles doesn't change.

Bad Company 2 did it right and a bit wrong. Vehicles had a powerful presence and were hard to deal with but still being vulnerable to a foot soldier. Even someone ready to take one down would have to have a bit of skill to do it. You had two options hit it with dumbfire explosives (or the vaguely 'guided' launchers) or tag that beast with a tracer dart. This was a solid system because if they were flying in a way that made them hard to hit with the dart pistol then their crew had an incredibly hard time aiming.

When every player can lock-on to your vehicle with a two hit kill launcher from anywhere on the map you need to have a system for the pilot to be able avoid those lock-ons. This results in a single individual being almost incapable of taking down a chopper/jet.

The only problem was when you had a blackbird at the top of the skybox. This created several problems... namely that you literally couldn't stop it. They were higher than you so you couldn't ascend up to them in another blackbird because you couldn't aim your guns straight up... so they would spray you with miniguns until you exploded. They had a permanent floating spawn point.

My solution... lower the damn skybox.

My last issue is the disabled vehicle status in Battlefield 3. It caused several problems. 1. Investment vs reward: In order to take it down in a traditional manner you need to role engineer. You risk life and limb to fire 2-5 rpgs at this beast. You may get lucky and have the rear be exposed or you might risk even more trying to get a line of sight on its ass. You take your shots and bam... 100 points. They all get out of the disabled pos and either get away or get picked off by the rest of your team. Sure you can nab one too but what the hell.

You rolled engineer to blow these things up. A big hulking monstrosity full of players being destroyed should result in the points for 1x hulking monstrosity and 4x players housed within.

1. Only two good ways to blow them up and be properly rewarded. C4 or landmines. C4 is for active destruction (see a tank and blow it up). You can destroy it all at once and everyone inside. Landmines are for passive destruction (ambiently protecting your bases and maps). Land mines have the same property of being able to destroy armor in one go. You need 3 each to completely destroy a vehicle. Additionally landmines don't despawn when you die (which I agree with... but not when launchers aren't viable like they are in BF3) which further compounds their advantage.

The Server Browser: Holy crap. The battle-log is just that... a nice floating log in a toilette. When it works it works well enough. But it never works. Either someone appears offline for no reason, the chat doesn't work (voice/text), the chat does work but randomly omits certain things, and so much more. Playing with your friends on the same team has never been so difficult.

My main complaint is it has all sorts of unique issues in every browser. It's a hulking crapsack. Battlefield has a history of releasing unusable server browsers but in this day and age... come on. It feels like BF2142 all over again.

The Ranking System: Not too many gripes here. It takes a bit too long to level up into class defining mechanics. Hell, it takes too long to level up without resorting to stupid crap like MAV point farming (float the thing to the top of the map and just get points for marking crap and get 1st place at the end of the round).

The Little Things: Lets start with scope glare. Well all sniper scopes have the same two types of glare. A crapload or none at all. That's right that 6x has the same amount of glare as a 12x. Fine, sun glinting off glass is sun glinting off glass. I find it renders snipers and even more compromising class. Not only with all the new players role recon/sniper/1337assassin... they will now role one and be easily targetable at a distance. It also discourages scouting via scope and instead only shooting at enemies you can readily see without a scope.

The flashlight. I just personally find it retarded. Sure even in real life you can temporarily render someone incapable of seeing properly if your light source has a high luminous intensity. I might also add that your eyes aren't nearly as susceptible to this if they are adjusted to daylight.

How certain unlocks are unlocked on a per-gun basis. I don't know what kind of mentally handicapped soldier I am that I can't just remove the scope I unlocked on one gun onto another. Hell, I can even put it onto another that uses the same kind of accessory rail. This exists solely to pad out unlocks.

Destructibility: How BF3 has less destructibility on maps then BC2. Buildings don't collapse, very few walls are destructible, very little cover is destructible, and generally less crap being blow-up-able. This is just another feature that was lost. I enjoyed the changing dynamic of the maps during a game. In the first ten minutes people took cover in this building. At the twenty minute mark that building was a hole in the ground so they all moved on to new locations. That rooftop where all those noob snipers camp bothering you? Blow it the @#$% up.

Realism is not equivalent to fun nor is it the antithesis: People complain about realism in games or want more. If realism adds to the game in a positive way then implement the feature. If it doesn't... then avoid it like the plague.

I'd like to talk about skill in Cod games. Your aim in CoD is far from the most important thing a player needs to succeed. The only real skill in CoD is your ability to move around the map in a way that offers you the most advantageous sight lines while denying your opponent theirs. Being able to do this in an unpredictable manner is the highest level of skill in that game.

As a gamer who enjoyed Unreal Tournament, Quake, Halo, and more I understand how this kind of skill is important... but I also understand how being shot at and dying with zero chance of retaliation in a 'game' is not fun.

Creating a game that has reasonable health pools along with this skill in using sight lines is what creates a competitive fps game with a high skill cap. People often mistake this for the argument of health vs damage. It isn't. It's encounter duration vs player ability (using sight lines and accuracy).

CoD is popular because it's modern setting which appeals to a wide demographic (and it's a setting which lets new players adjust faster and become invested in quicker due to it's familiarity) and how easy it is to do good (and bad).

In Closing: Battlefield Bad Company 2 was a lot closer to the sweet spot in 'encounter duration vs player ability' and differentiated itself from the competition.

Battlefield 3 while advancing graphics steps further from that sweet spot while attempting to play like its competition. These two factors make for a game that is less fun, less skillful, less strategic, and a game that no longer exists within it's own niche.

To me personally it feels like Battlefield 3 wanted to become CoD like draw in its user base and instead of evolving the features of the Battlefield IP (large combat, vehicles, etc) simply used them by saying "hey we have this feature and CoD doesn't".

I like CoD (as a player, not a consumer) and I like Battlefield. But I don't like what Battlefield 3 became. All it did was get better graphics, appeal to CoD's user base, lose a ton of features, and stagnate.

LGNS/Joyduck7's GOTY 2011 - Portal 2

I know its a bit late, and how this is also not as big as those major gaming media companies who contribute to the overall vote, but I'll add a little bit on what I though was game of the year and why, so forgive its roughness as its just a quick (and long for my standards) overview of my GOTY, i didnt cover everything and only some of the parts that stood out to me to make this my GOTY! So unless you haven't read the title, its Portal 2! My favourite game this year with Going back to aperture, the place of conspiracy, corruption and evil disk operating systems.

The first portal was simply amazing, it drew in every aspect of creativity and brain-bending puzzles, and the second improves on that in everyway. Its as everyone says, insanely hard puzzles until you solve them, and then you feel stupid. This is an amazing rare experience that is rarly seen not just in games, but in anything nowadays, and when in co-op, the experience doubles as you and your partner may try and try again to outsmart each other, only making yourself look even more as an idiot, but thats only part of the fun compared to working together! The single player campagin for me was brilliant, from start to finish, it was interactive, fast but not rushed, had huge verity, puzzles straight forward & others which you could approach many different ways like the original portal (especially in the white gel parts) and i enjoyed every moment of it, especially the most epic climax in a game i have ever experienced (cant spoil it) followed by the most satisfying ending i also have experienced in a games ending, as this really was the 'end', seeing how we dont expect chell to appear again. The co-op following was equally as amazing, everything the single player did right but not only with a friend, but with another interesting story, that although wasnt as 'impacting' was just as engaging and still managed to give not such an end, but an opening, as shown by the follow DLC as well that the co-op story still has yet to end, maybe we'll see one more future DLC campaign, but whatever it is, im sure it will be awesome. If you want a satisfying co-op experience (like I did), then get Portal 2, but be careful, in some cases its like sex, treat your first time wisely as once you've played the game through once it isnt the same the second time (not entirly in a bad way).

Another reason for me to give it GOTY is the incredible soundtrack; including the use of interactive/dynamic music while doing puzzles (especially the use of classical, oh how i love that) and even better the original sounds at the end. Yes, we still got a GLaDOS single, but for me it was the Turret Orchestra that blew me away, so good that i downloaded it to listen to it on my iPod, man, i only wish there was a longer version. Many people seem to complain about its short length, although it is short, i think it was perfect for the type of game, any longer and it would have been repetitive, any shorter and it wouldnt feel like a real game, so to me it hit the sweet spot of what I would call a satisfying single player experience. The co-op depends on how good you are with your friends, although slightly shorter than the single player, i think its good, as i managed to get a whole convinant play though with my friend in one day and experience it all fully at once, rather than in sections every now and then and having to tireringly track down your partner, sort times and make arrangements if the co-op were to be really long and took quite a few plays (starting up the game) to get through it. The replayability for me was the achievements, although many stopped after they 'completed the game', i saw much more replayability in going back and getting all those 'possible for once' achievements, which i had fun doing and saw much more things than i though in the campaign such as the new rat man dens. Even in co-op, they were even more challenging and fun to do, this enabled me to play through it more than once without it feeling all the reptitive and still managed for me to enjoy myself. So its length and replaybility for me was spot on!

People also seem to complain about the source engine, and how the graphics in Portal 2 'aren't the best', to me thats not a problem. I grew up in gaming with the source engine through lovable titles such as CSS, Gmod, TF2, L4D and I still love it to bits, to me it looks awesome and never gets old. The controls and physics are top notch and the graphic standards in portal 2 itself i though was extremely good, there was nothing i saw 'amazing' in the graphics, but there was DEFINITELY nothing i saw bad! If your one of those graphic-whore haters, than maybe Portal 2 wont float your boat, and if it doesnt because of that reason I think your a fcuking retard, but thats just me. Overall, i think Portal 2 wins it for me, Theres so much more i can cover of why this game for me was the best game i played this year, although Serious Sam 3 would take the best FPS action game (until i got optimisation abuse, read more below), the game i had the most fun with and enjoyed was Portal 2, the consistent post-game support as well as free DLC has continued to make it look better and better and i hope future DLC will also be just as exciting!

Now you may be wondering why i would chose Portal 2 over some other titles, so i'll give it to you straight and tell you about my experiences with other'large' titles, starting with skyrim. Skyrim was NOT my GOTY. To me it had a huge amount of content and lots to do, but that was it, graphics werent that amazing and i found them hard to love as well as the poor engine, the quests got quite repetitive after a while and can be said as either 'exploring, killing or collecting' in a nutshell. There was no co-op when i think it was quite possible and the single player campagin missions as well as the gulid missions (although better than oblivion) still werent impressing. Dragons were also disappointing and got repetitively easy after a while. Although the music was one of the best parts of the game to me (I love orchestral scores with huge verity), the biggest issue was the lack of motiovation in skyrim, after a while i honestly did not care what i did, who i did it for and why, i was drawn away from the game and it felt like a chore, i had the big issue of  "i have heaps of quests to do but i dont give a fcuk if  i do them or not" and that to me ruined this sort of game. Skyrim was not my GOTY, and infact, it wasnt really that much of an enjoyable game to me for what it sold itself for; Portal 2 being a quite satisfying experience with excellence co-op which i managed to enjoy to the fullest while skyrim being a large game with heaps of stuff to do aiming for a huge experience but was too much of the same thing for me and failed to meet my expectations of what i though i would get out of the game. What i did get out, i didnt enjoy that much, but i did enjoy the game to an extend, but not at all good enough for it to be even considered one of my top favourite games, let alone GOTY. Other titles such as Batman AC and Uncharted 3 I HAVE NOT PLAYED either due to the horrible costs ($99) or even worse the bloody exclusiveness of the game. Serious Sam 3 was also very close to my GOTY as i had so much fun in the first hours i played it, but it was the fact that it fun at 20FPS on the lowest settings on everything, especially splitscreen and the poor support that followed afterwards that drove it away from me, unable to get a satisfying experience from it. Dead island wasn't that engaging and even in co-op i didnt feel as though i had as much fun with my friends as i did in Portal 2. Lastly, Battlefield 3 for me was really really good, its just that the maps were poorly designed compared to BF2 and BC2, this put me off and really, the web browser  server browser was also very very weird it, and although worked, we did not ask for it and DID NOT WANT IT. Back to maps, I didnt play much until B2K came out AND WHEN IT DID, i noticed i couldn't play properly with my mouse, so although not the games fault, I am waiting for a new mouse before playing this game because i want a complete experience and not some half dumbwit one when i cant aim, but even so, the absolutely worse most possible thing that happened, that battlefield 3 contains the thing i ABSOLUTELY HATED MOST OUT OF ANY OTHER GAME THIS YEAR, and i'll describe how it was an utterly terrible selfish asshole retarded move, idea and rip off in three words; BLOODY FUCKING ORIGIN!!!!!!. But back to being civilized, honestly, this would make a good third behind SS3 and Portal 2 as there is much i can compliment about this game, but also a bit that i can criticize.. (you know who to blame)

So there it is, my GOTY and why, and also as importantly why others werent. Remember this is just my opinion and if you disagree, thats fine, I just hope you had as much fun with Portal 2 as  i did, and if you havent got it yet, GET IT, it when down to $7.5 in the steam sales, and im sure with all the valve coupons you got you could easily buy it soon, even without theses its only $30 and im sure you could easily afford that compared to other horribly priced games (AC, MW3, BAC, im LOOKING AT YOU). Portal 2 was a great game this year, infact this year was a great year, and i hope next year will be as well, especially with two upcoming titles that have caught my attention; Fortnite for having a chance at being a game ive wanted for a long time, and Borderlands 2 for possibly improving everything i loved about the first Borderlands (and thats a heck of a lot). Goodbye 2011, HELLO 2012! - Joyduck7

"ahh valve, you've done it again! now how about trying to count to three"

Über Joyduck Update: Exams Finished and E3!!!

Yes, Finally!!!!!!!! i have finished my huge amount of study, exams are over and I’m very confident i did well :) now it’s time to relax and play some games, make some more videos and all that!

I'll need to get round to adding some more videos, don’t worry, they will come eventually! But more onto some news! Although our site is more centred around the best gaming platform of all time and which still is... the PC! But we'll also post some interesting news, especially E3, which i have been missing out on recently, so I’ll sum up some important points

• Moar Battlefield 3 Awesomeness, YES, will be probably the best game this year, in my opinion, as all the Battlefields Ive played are the best War FPS out of all the many ones i have, yes, Battlefield is better than CoD.. wake up :)
• New Nintendo Console, well, so far its smaller, but still impressive, the Wii U. It actually looks good, a nicer way to enjoy the Wii, except this is the same feeling i had for the DS an Wii originally until they got repetitive and boring (to me..), so lets see how Nintendo keeps its hardcore fan base this time rather than its (as PC gamer rightfully said) Nint-infants/oldies...
• Bioshock Infinite is looking even better despite destroying my anticipation of going back to rapture and my favorite villains, the big daddies, although i might end up buying BI for its story and character development, Subject Delta will always have a special place in my hall of fame!
• Elder Scrolls 5, Skyrim, has now lost half of its credibility! That’s right, it has been announced to be made for consoles, and then ported to pc, Smart choice Bethesdasoft , way to go ruin the game for the loyal PC community. Now we'll have to deal with dumbed down textures and graphics whereas if it was made for the PC, it would be so much better... sigh... another one bites the dust..
• Dead Island looks even better with a more story perspective now, especially how its all in First person view... realistic... just the way i like it. But with all these scenes and awesome looking events, it looks like something from half life 2 (scripted cut scenes and events), but i mean is the half life story was amazing single player, and although synergy is an awesome co-op half life 2 mod, it never told the hl2 story as well as single player as its made for single. So looking at dead island and how it seems to take an important story perspective gameplay, how will they ever do this co-op. I only saw one person in the falling lift scene (seen in the trailer), how will they achieve this as a successful co-op game, i look forward to it :)

Well, there’s Joyduck7's spin on E3 for the time been (lol, Bias or not, its still pretty much what’s going on), I’ll try keep up to date on other important announcements soon, (probably Bf3 lol) but still, I’m Back, its official, so get excited!

Do people really hate losing that much?

simple enough, i was play a round of killing floor the other day, it was fun. Although i was playing with randoms, we were able to give each other money, help each other out, get the best weapons and get to pretty high waves... until that wave. Around wave 8, we exited the interior of the icebreaker and due to the fact we had spent too long in the trader, the wave started as we got out into the open. as quick as lightning, 2 flesh pounds appeared out of nowhere, followed by huge amount of clots, gorefasts and scrakes, all 20 of them surrounding us.

Unprepared as our team of 6 were, they when in for the kill, and our team was killed off every second, until only i remained. Now (not to brag) but that was probably due to my skill and survival, evidence as i was the highest ranking player... BUT... the point is, as soon as everyone had been easily killed off as they were, meaning all 5 left were spectating me... they quit.... rage quit to be precise.

Do people really hate losing that much, i mean, i know i would have been overwhelmed sooner or later, in fact, i kinda did after they all left, but thats not the point. They all quit, because they lost, they weren't good enough to win. And so they got angry about it and quit. You could say that they just didn't want to wait a few mins til my scar ran out of ammo and i got swamped, they quit seconds after they died, despite at such a high wave/achievement...

It brings me to feel that nowadays, people would rather win, or nothing... they dont like losing, and if they feel like they might, they bail out. What happened to the good'old 'Game Over' we have all experience from our endevours to conquer all challenging video games. It appears that people seem to prefer to win pathetically than die honorably, and in my books, thats like beating a 6 year old team in basketball instead of losing to Michael Jordan. Quitting every time you lose is a bad habit, somethings you gotta face defeat on, see it to the end, and who cares if you lose, its a fun game that everyone enjoyed. I'd Rather say 'that was an awesome game, good try everyone' than 'that was sooo boring so i quit' when really thats not the case. If everyone enjoys themselves and is having enough fun already, then why quit? Losing isrnt a glitch or a bug, its possible, and its part of the game, so chill, relax and enjoy the game :)