_FFC_
Battlefield 3 released overseas (USA release is the 25th) to stellar critic reviews, as expected.
While the MP is where it's at, the COOP and SP received mediocre feedback...not great, but not too bad.
Looking forward to playing all modes as soon as my Newegg pre-order shows up!
NFO only supports ranked BF3 servers (meaning public-only) right now, and the game is too costly and over-large map-wise for most of us anyway. So I don't expect us to be playing it anytime soon. That said, if anyone does buy it, I'd be up for trying out the 2-player COOP. Plus it sounds like the TDM maps may be smaller than other modes, tho' "small" in BF is likely still huge.
Speaking of NFO, since we never play "Crysis 2" anymore I dropped the server. We can still play on my test server if/when. I don't expect to be renting any more game servers from NFO for the foreseeable future since we just don't use them enough to justify the cost. My home net speeds are plenty fast these days for what we play. And I would still have a little ping either way. lol
In other FFC news...
Gonz and I have been check'n out GRAW2 (Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2) when we have time. Fuzzy has the game also but has been too busy with the job to do more than install it.
I've also been playing the SP missions a bit and it's kinda fun in a R6:V2 retro manner; guiding Huey, Luey & Dewey around and letting them "take one for the team". Maps are again a bit large, but it has a nice grid map feature so when playing DM/TDM we find each other using that ("I'm in zone E3, moving to E4"). With only 2 of us in there that can still take awhile tho' might not be too bad with 4+ players.
Here is the Steam link: http://store.steampowered.com/app/13510/
Pros:
- Cheap (<$10)
- Prone, lean, slide, dive, run crouched, NO jump so NO bunnyhop'n
- Dated but decent graphics (with tweak'n)
- Tactical (for a change)
- Various MP modes (COOP, Campaign, usual TDM, DM, etc)
- Dedicated server (I already have that working)
- Custom content (custom maps, mods, etc)
- Few remaining bugs (last patch was 1.05)
- Modding/support community slow but alive
- Low hardware requirements
- Ubisoft game (ugh..)
- NO melee (not too surprising)
- Limited grenades (but has M203 option)
- Limited or NO health recovery (again, not too surprising)
- GameSpy sign-in required (not a big deal)
- Maps can be large
- Drab graphics on some maps
- SP can be too difficult (if anyone cares)
- COOP AI is a challenge
- No redirect download for maps/mods (manual, like L4D series)
Mamba, out
