Butterfield

I played the new Battlefield 3 Open Beta multiplayer online last night on my 360. This game is supposed to be a game-changer that wants to tear the FPS dominance away from COD while showcasing what the next gen might looks like in terms of graphics. It’s really coming up short on those fronts. To be fair, it’s just an unfinished beta of one level, but it looks and plays like every other Battlefield. From what I was hearing, it was suppose to showcase movie quality graphics. My worries was that I was playing on an old res TV, since we moved the HD into the bedroom, and I wouldn’t be getting the full experience. Still, it shouldn’t look so shoddy. It actually hurts my eyes to play it. I was wondering why I kept seeing red blurs across the screen, until I realized they were laser-site being aimed directly at my cornea, which is an obvious flaw right there. With the frequency I saw this, my head should have been left a piece of Swiss cheese. I died a lot, often immediately after spawning, but if I can see their laser, that means I should be dead. Like I said, I really couldn’t see for crap. I couldn’t even tell who was on my team and who was the enemy, if not for the site turning red when I aimed at them. I could have scored a lot more kills if I hadn’t hesitated for fear of team-killing. As it were, I sucked. I found about 100 glitches in maybe an hour of playing too. Every time I tried to crouch or crawl, I fell through the ground into that bizarre framework below. When I was shown the enemy’s kill cam after dying, it displayed the same under-layer background on white, grey and red geometric blobs. It was kind of sad to note too that over 3/4 of the people playing were level 18 or higher, after the beta had been out for all of two days. I’ve encountered their type before. If you’ve ever played an MMO, you’ve seen them. I’ve purchased the first WoW expansion the day it came out, and that same day after I came home from work and booted up, I encountered players who had already put in weeks worth of experience in a twelve hour, no pee break period.

The beta is free and I’m not sure if I even want to keep playing it. The only thing it’s really got going for it is the ability to crawl through bushes. That’s honestly the most major improvement in there to other shooters. If you’ve ever run around in any shooter map, you’ll see objects or scenery you could easily use as cover, but can’t because the game won’t let you. In B3, (assuming that’s the popular nickname it gets) I crawled from one end of the map to the other through bushes, and shot one enemy in his camp, before being shot by his partner. That’s the only new experience I had.

I also noticed yesterday that I received another complaint in my profile. I’m still at a 5-Star rating, but not 62% of people who reviewed me chose to avoid me. Since the last time I checked, I don’t recall anything I did that would have pissed off another player, but then again there’s people out there who will stab you in real life for playing a game the way it’s intended to be played. I did have a couple of experiences in Halo: Reach where I was playing Invasion, where you spawn next to your partner. My partner was AFK, and getting spawn camped. So every time I died, I would end up right next to him, and I would have to deal with his campers. Only, his campers were spawning as a team. So if I killed one in the split-second of opportunity I got after coming back to life, his partner would be right behind me with a gun. This went on for about five minutes of my time. Just when it looked like I’d be able to move past the area, I was booted from the game by my partner, who hadn’t been at his controller for more than twelve minutes. Earlier, I had spawned behind him seconds before a victory, and noticed him AFK. I decided, for fun to assassinate him from behind on the way out the door. That’s really the only way without a mike to tell someone to fucking get back in the game. Does it make me a poor sportsman? If you’re playing double in tennis and your partner has lapsed in a coma, isn’t it polite to bitch-slap him back to consciousness with a racket? I think so.

In another game, I was doing remarkably well, considering I suck, and especially since half the team had dropped out of the match and Halo doesn’t let new players hop on board. You’re expected to fight off up to eight enemy players solo for fifteen minutes and guard your base at the same time in some cases. In this case, I was mowing down everyone in my warthog and having a great time. I didn’t notice any real weirdness except for when some guy stopped dead in the middle of the map. I shot him from about half-the-map away. Afterwards, in the scoring, the other team went apeshit and accused our side of using a lag switch, or some shit, which would explain why I was doing so well. I don’t know if that’s even possible anymore. I always hear about bots and glitches and cheats people use, but I don’t even follow that shit anymore. Every game has it glitches, and I play too many to look into every possible exploit. There was one in SOCOM II where the enemy player could become invincible/invisible, which sucked donkey balls. Nowadays, people will fucking call the President if someone so much as shoots through a seemingly solid wall. Why do people still do this? Bragging rights pretty much go out the window when people find out you cheated.