4 classic battlefield maps re-made in frostbite 2 for Battlefield 3, it includes 10 new weapons, 4 vehicles, 1 new game-mode and 5 new trophies.

It is free to all players who bought the "Limited Edition" (new) free of charge or £11.99 for those who could not obtain one.

Developer: DICE

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Release Date: December 6th (source: link)

Maps:

Strike at Karkand:

Gulf of Oman:

Wake Island:

Sharqi Penninsula:

Game Modes:

Conquest Assualt:

The Attackers have more tickets than the defenders who hold all flags the attackers must take back enough flags to start a ticket bleed for the defenders in order to win.

Weapons:

Famas:

L85A2:

MP5:

PP-19:

QBZ-95B:

MG36:

QBB-95:

MK3A1:

L96:

QBU-88:

Vehicles:

• F-35B Jet
• BTR-90 IFV
• DPV Buggy
• Skidloader (Forklift)

Trophies:

Complete Warrior (Silver)

"Got a kill with the following weapons in a life: Assualt Rifle, Jet, Tank"

Like A Boss (Silver)

"Got a kill with the skidloader"

Jaws (Bronze)

"Took a swim in the Oman Hotel swimming pool"

Third Tour (Bronze)

"Got a kill with each of the following vehicles: the BTR-90, DPV and F-35"

Gunslinger (Bronze)

"Got 10 kills with each of the ten Back to Karkand weapons"

---

EA have now announced when we can expect to see the new maps, vehicles, and weapons that are all included in this add-on, and we won’t be waiting long.

December 6th is the date they gave us for both the Americas and Europe, although since the PlayStation Store updates a day later in Europe, it may actually be the 7th before it shows up in your region.

Speaking of the PlayStation Store, that’s the only place you’ll be able to find it for the first week of release, per the previously announced agreement EA made with Sony to release all add-ons on the PS3 first. You can expect the Xbox 360 and PC versions to launch the following week on the 13th. Regardless of platform, the expansion will be free if you purchased the Limited Edition of the Battlefield 3.

Has anyone had a chance to play the PC or PS3 versions of the game since the patch went live on those platforms?

Source: US PS Blog

So as you can see from the above screenshot, the game looks lovely. There are however some serious flaws in the multiplayer game.

Overall it’s still first and foremost a Battlefield game, it requires strategy and teamwork to complete and win a round, what ever flavour you play: Rush, Conquest, Squad Rush, Team Deathmatch, or Squad Death Metch. Big maps and upto 24 players per server can make for some astounding games, myself and RavingZombie have had some excellent rush and conquest games this weekend. Sometimes funny, sometimes frustrating, but never boring, and thanks to mine and Raving’s excellent gameplay, we’ve usually won.

The Game Godes:
Rush – my favourite
Gold Rush in Battlefield: Bad Company and Rush in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3 are game modes introduced in the Bad Company series. The objective of the game is for the attacking team to destroy the defending team’s crates (gold crates in Battlefield: Bad Company, M-COM Stations in Battlefield: Bad Company 2). Attackers receive reinforcement tickets at the start of the game and will lose if they run out of tickets. The reinforcement tickets are restored by destroying both crates at one defending base. Each defender team’s base has a pair of crates, and when both objectives have been destroyed, the map is expanded, making room for a new base with a new set of crates where the defenders have to fall back. This process is repeated until the last defending base is lost.

Conquest:
The aim of the Conquest game mode is to capture neutral (usually white or no-flag) or enemy flags and hold them. Once captured, flags serves as a spawn point for both infantry and vehicles. Teams must hold flags and kill opposing team members to reduce the enemy ticket count. Once a team ticket count is reduced to zero, the other team wins. In Battlefield 1942, ticket loss depends on the type of Conquest mode:

Head-On – Enemy tickets start reducing once a team holds over half of the map’s flags
Assault – Enemy tickets only reduce once every flag on a map has been captured by a team

Ticket Loss

Ticket loss, also referred to as ticket bleeding, is the state where a team constantly loses reinforcement tickets due to the opposing team holding more or all flags. This is a strategy employed by many teams in order to avoid lengthy periods of fighting, although if the current team re-captured flags, the ticket loss may be incurred on the opposing team.
History

Conquest mode made its popular debut in Battlefield 1942 and featured as a staple online game mode, featuring in every Battlefield game. However, this trend was broken with the release of Battlefield: Bad Company, although a conquest mode was quickly released as a free downloadable content. It returned in Battlefield 1943 and as one of the many game modes of Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Along with rush, it is the premier game mode for Battlefield 3. Also, Conquest Assault will be included for maps in the Back to Karkand map pack for Battlefield 3 in December.
Trivia

Conquest was the only game mode in Battlefield games until “Capture The Flag” was introduced in Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, although there were several variants in Battlefield 2.
A variant of the Conquest game mode called “Titan” was introduced in Battlefield 2142, in which both teams compete to take and hold missile silos instead of flags. This change added a more story-like appearance to the gameplay of the Conquest game-mode, with desperate fighting inside the Titans ensuing once one team gains entry to the opposing team’s Titan.
Conquest mode in Battlefield Play4Free works much more differently than previous games. Instead of having “ticket bleeding” as in previous games, now there’s a score limit that one team must reach just by holding any number of flags, in which more flags held by one team earns them more points.

Squad Rush: My other Favourite
Same as Rush but smaller…
Up to 4 players per team (1 Squad).
1 M-COM Station per base.
Maps are much smaller than on Rush.
Only 20 reinforcement tickets for attackers.
Exclusion of any vehicles

Team Death Match:
This mode has a player cap of 24 on all platforms, meaning there will be two teams of 12 pitted against each other. The mode is entirely isolated from use of any vehicle, like Squad Rush. The objective of the game mode is to reach a certain amount of kills, like in Squad Deathmatch.

Squad Deathmatch:
In this game type, 4 squads (labeled Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta) will fight each other on a map. The first team to achieve 50 enemy kills wins the match. Instead of spawning in a set base like in Rush or Conquest, Squad Deathmatch has players spawn in either a random spawn point around the map or on their squadmates. There is also an IFV – always an M3A3 Bradley – in the center or near the center of the map and it is labeled on the HUD and the minimap with an icon marking its location.

Gameplay relies on good teamwork for each team to play their best. A well balanced squad that communicates well has the best chance at winning a round, where as a team full of Recon Kit wielders may suffer, but this is not always the case. The light tank proves very useful to the squad that decides to capture it as it has three machine gun (the top mounted M2 Browning and the two side-mounted firing ports) positions to cover the vehicle as the driver moves about toting the main 30mm chain gun. It is recommended that each squad-mate has a different Vehicle Specialization, with the driver having an active Specialization like the Alternate Weapon Package or the Smoke Countermeasures Package.

So now the important bit: The Problems With Battlefield 3

1. Unlocks:
The unlocks are great and add a huge amount of choice to the game, but it’s flawed and in a bad way.
You start out with a simple main weapon in all the varying classes, both the USA and PLR have different weapons too, making the range of availabe unlocks absolutely massive. The problem is that when you play as one side (USA assault for example), you’ll start to unlock some goodies like heavy barrel (increased damage and vertical recoil), red dot, holo scope, acog 4x scope, grenade launcher, sniper scope and more.
The problem is when you change sides to PLR, you have to unlock everything again! Change main weapon – yep you guessed it, you have to unlock everything again, change class… unlock everything again.
This makes for tens of thousands of weapon combinations, but it also makes changing weapon type or class very very frustrating.

2. Squad System:
Finding a decent server with space for one or more friends is a nightmare, try finding a server with free space for four people where you are all in the same squad, hell, getting on the same team is a challenge on it’s own. This is where squad play falls down, DICE would be better advised to rent servers to console owners, at least this way you can kick or switch players and make room for you and friends.

3. Voice chat:
Some improvements have been made since the realease of the game, but talking to friends in the same squad is sometimes impossible.

4. Lag:
Again improvements have been made by DICE to reduce the rubberbanding, but it’s still not entirely perfect, and the more players you join with (squad play) the more lag you will get.

5. Helicopters, Jets and land vehicles:
Helicopters were hard to control in Bad Company 2, and they’re even worse, much worse in Battlefield 3. It’s a common sight to see a pilot take off with a chopper full of people and crash within seconds killing everyone on board. Jets are easier to control, but are severly limited to basic weapons and gadgets until you get enough kills to add extra’s. It’s a similar system to the unlock system for various classes and loadouts. You have to unlock as much as you can for one vehicle, then do it all again for other vehicles. Same with tanks and IFV’s. The unlocks take time, then you have to do it for the other team.

6. Bullet Damage:
This is far too high, and more often than not you’ll die and not know where the kill came from, let alone have time to react and defend yourself. So be prepared to die… A LOT.
This causes a problem in that people will camp rather than run/rush around trying to support team members.

Overall:
While the game is still fun to play, it’s very frustrating for all the reasons listed above, and the biggest problem… issues 1, 5 and 6 will never be fixed, DICE wanted the game this way and this is how it will stay.
This wont stop me from playing the game, but I definitely wont play it as much as Bad Company 1 or 2, and if I dont play it as much, most other people will loose interest too.

Over and out. Dazbobaby: Die hard battlefield fan.

Over the weekend, hardware specifications for one of the PC’s most anticipated games of 2011 appeared on GameStop’s website. They’ve since been removed, but the internet never forgets.

The specifications, which may or may not be final, read as follows:

Minimum

Hard Drive Space: 15 GB for disc version or 10 GB for digital version

OS: Windows Vista or Windows 7

Processor: Core 2 Duo @ 2.0GHzRAM2GB

Video Card: DirectX 10 or 11 compatible Nvidia or AMD ATI card

Recommended

Hard Drive Space: 15 GB for disc version or 10 GB for digital version

OS: Windows 7 64-bit

Processor: Quad-core Intel or AMD CPURAM 4GB

Video Card: DirectX 11 Nvidia or AMD ATI card, GeForce GTX 460, Radeon Radeon HD 6850

For something that looks so amazing with the detail cranked up, if these are legit those recommended specs are indeed a little steep. The minimums, though? Not bad. Unless you’ve got an old graphics card that can’t do DirectX 10. But then, there’s always a game that comes along which forces people to upgrade, and this may well be it.

Seeing as these appeared on a retailer listing and not as part of an official announcement, we’ve contacted EA for confirmation on these, and will update if we hear back.

GameStop lists minimum and recommended specs for BF3 on PC [VG247]

EA has posted the official list of all the pre-order bonus items for the Battlefield 3: Limited Edition, which is set for simultaneous release with the regular version of the game. The company says that every item on the list will be available by August.

Due to the complaints it received for the Physical Warfare Pack exclusive some time ago, EA has since changed the availability of the DLC by allowing every player (including those who do not pre-order it) to gain access to it at a later date at absolutely no charge.

Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand

• What it is: An entire themed expansion pack the size of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam.
• Where to get: You will be eligible to download this expansion pack (once it is released) if you pre-order Battlefield 3: Limited Edition at any retailer all over the world.
• Available: Release date of Back to Karkand TBC. This expansion pack is not on the disc and is not available day one.
• Value: At no extra charge with every pre-order of Battlefield 3: Limited Edition. You will be able to buy it separately if you don’t pre-order (date and price TBC).
• More info: In this blog post. More to come.

Physical Warfare Pack

• What it is: A set of three time-based exclusive items and one early weapon unlock for Battlefield 3.
• Where to get: At select retailers all over the world when you pre-order Battlefield 3: Limited Edition.
• Available: Day 1 if you pre-order. If you do not pre-order, you will get access to this content at no extra charge at a later date.
• Value: At no extra charge with your pre-order at select retailers.
• More info: In this blog post.

SPECACT Kit Upgrade

• What it is: A set of 8 multiplayer skins, one for each class and side in Battlefield 3.
• Where to get: At select retailers all over the world when you pre-order Battlefield 3: Limited Edition.
• Available: Day 1.
• Value: At no extra charge with your pre-order at select retailers.

Dog Tag Pack

• What it is: A set of 5 unique in-game dog tags to choose from. Dog tags in Battlefield 3 serve as your in-game signature, displayed on screen every time you defeat an enemy. You can also claim the dog tag of your enemies via skillful stealth knife takedowns. This pre-order exclusive pack gives you 5 unique dog tag designs to complement the standard range in the game.
• Where to get: At select retailers all over the world when you pre-order Battlefield 3: Limited Edition.
• Available: Day 1.
• Value: At no extra charge with your pre-order at select retailers.

Avatar Battlefield 3 Gear

• What it is: Battlefield 3 gear for your Xbox 360 avatar.
• Where to get: At select retailers all over the world when you pre-order Battlefield 3: Limited Edition.
• Available: Day 1.
• Value: At no extra charge with your pre-order at select retailers.

Shotgun and Beret for Battlefield Play4Free

• What it is: An 870S shotgun and a beret for in-game use in our play-for-free title Battlefield Play4Free.
• Where to get: By pre-ordering Battlefield 3: Limited Edition on Origin.
• Available: Day 1.
• Value: At no extra charge with your pre-order on Origin.

via ea

Let’s start with the good news for Activision and EA; Only 3.66% of voters said they would keeping their wallets firmly in the their pockets and would not be purchasing either game, that means a whopping 96.34% of TSA voters would be purchasing at least one of the title we asked you about on Friday.

Of these voters, an impressive 21.59%  are planning to buy both games and spend every waking moment shooting millions of digital soldiers, all of which seem to be a ten year old American kid who swears like a trucker.

Now we come to the two important statistics, how many of you are buying Battlefield 3 and how many will stay loyal to the Call Of Duty franchise?

Before I reveal the final result, a quick word about the voting. Within ten minutes of the poll opening, the percentage of vote was split as below. During the entire voting period the percentages did not move more than plus or minus three percent from the final result.  There were no wild swings towards either game which would indicate someone was trying to influence the poll, the votes were uniformly cast.

With 1,802 votes cast, the results show that 66.59% of voters will  be purchasing Battlefield 3 and 8.16% will buy Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

That is not a typo, the results really are  66% vs 8%, Battlefield 3 has crushed Call Of Duty. That’s a huge surprise and it will be very interesting to see how it plays out in November when the two titles really do go head to head for sales.

According to the magazines huge feature on the game, players get a ten-level two player co-op campaign which is seperate from the main campaign.

Elsewhere in the feature, DICE executive producer, Patrick Bach also gives his thoughts on the differences between Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefield 3 saying, “Everyone wants there to be a fight between us, and I understand that, but the problem is that if you say it’s a fight you’re assuming you’re competing at the same sport.

“We have so many things in our game that aren’t part of Modern Warfare, so it really comes down to personal preference. You choose based on the depth you want, the maturity level, your own personal taste…it’s all about how you get your fix,” Bach said.

“We’re building the game we want to play, and there are a lot of Battlefield fans who agree with us.”

It certainly sounds like both games will have something to offer, but one things for sure, whichever you choose you are going to be in for a treat.

There is no Battlefield canon. BF1942’s World War II doesn’t shape the sci-fi tundra battles of BF2142, and buying XP boosters as a cartoon Nazi has no bearing on Bad Company 2’s royal rumbles. The developers, DICE, go where they want, and after years of circle-strafing around the subject, it’s time for Battlefield 3

My first glimpse of it at DICE’s Stockholm HQ is a bit of a shock: singleplayer, urban. DICE briefly mention that there will be multiplayer on the same scale as Battlefield 2, but retreat from any specific talk of it. For now they’re showing the strides they’ve made with their wonderful Frostbite engine – now up to v2.0 – and demoing the setting and the singleplayer.

You’ll play Sgt Black, part of a four-man squad in a city on the Iran/ Iraq border, patrolling the streets for insurgents. As if that locale wasn’t unstable enough, it’s also built on a faultline. And it’s a towering, glittering city, not the dusty, clichéd Middle East tips we’re used to seeing. Cast in highcontrast blueish light, it’s gorgeous.

Black’s squad winds through the city listening to Johnny Cash’s ‘God’s Gonna Cut You Down’, proving that DICE are effortlessly cool. They disembark from their APC, and are following orders and cutting through alleys when a tremor shakes dust loose from the surrounding buildings. Knowing DICE, and the destructive capabilities of the Frostbite engine, I start to wonder. Bad Company 2 introduced dynamic destruction to the PC: small squat buildings that could be blasted full of holes or crumble under tank blasts. Nothing bigger than a few stories. But this is an updated engine, tailor made. A destructible city? They couldn’t… Could they?

The tremor subsides and the patrol continues, through a building and out into a makeshift carpark, just a small square between more buildings.

Perfect ambush territory. From a balcony overlooking the square, an insurgent fires down at the squad, dropping one of the men instantly and forcing the others to take cover behind cars. The square is suddenly alive with gunfire. Before there’s time to take stock, a terrorist squeezes in between Sgt Black and his men, and the game drops to slow-mo for a second, before the terrorist is headshot. The downed teammate calls for help, and Black drags him out of the fight and into cover. Rescue injured squaddies, take them out of the fight, and they have time to recover.

In any other game it would be an effort to dig the terrorist on the balcony out, but Battlefield’s destructible scenery changes the way you think about cover. Concentrated fire on the concrete chips away a hole, exposing him. He flees. Destruction is a lot more subtle in Frostbite 2.0.

With the ambusher gone, it gives the squad more room to manoeuvre. Little ground-level battles weave in and out of the parked cars. When it’s over, Black’s squad pushes on.

It’s significant how DICE are handling the story bookending all this action. Battlefield 2 was the original over-the-top modern combat game. With the arrival of the Modern Warfare series, they could easily have re-engineered their game as a political blockbuster, but the story of Battlefield 3 goes in a different direction.

Karl-Magnus Troedsson, DICE’s general manager, explains. “I don’t think we have, like, some arty-farty agenda. I’m not saying that they have, don’t quote me on that! Sometimes I get the feeling that some developers make a game because they want to make a statement. It might be compared to writing a book, or writing an idea on a blog, or something like that. We make games because we love playing games. We still make Battlefield games because we still love to play our Battlefield games. It’s like cops and robbers, cowboys and indians, it’s like shooting around when you’re a neighbourhood kid and you were playing on the street.

“The setting we choose is more about how we can gain enough interest, and we know that a healthy level of controversy and realism always gets people’s attention, and that’s the kind of space we want to be in. Do we want to go over the top and raise people’s eyebrows and get people to ban the game and get attention? No, that’s not really what we do.”

The demo cuts to a rooftop a few minutes later. The squad are now under fire from a single sniper who, in a neat reversal of the previous action, is blasting away chunks of their own cover. One by one they crawl (you can go prone!) to the edge of the building, to a concrete lip that provides some shelter. Even so, it’s crumbling under the sniper’s attention: each huge, concussive bullet blast sends chunks of wall spilling over the rooftop. Black collects a rocket launcher, the team blindfires over the wall, and he pops up and launches. He’s not entirely accurate, but it doesn’t matter. The entire facade of the building the sniper was stationed in shivers, then falls off. Dust billows out from each storey, and the floors crumble, making the exposed inside of the building frown like big, sad face. Yeah, he’s dead.

Black barely needed to aim: as long as he hit the building that sniper was going to suffer, and I now know a lot more about the subtleties of scenery destruction in Frosbite 2.0: it works on a both a smaller scale than in Bad Company 2, and a larger. The building they just destroyed was much bigger than those of BC2, yet it didn’t collapse all the way. It was later confirmed to me that while you can do a lot of damage to the city structures, only prescribed ones will be able to fully collapse. The rest will just turn into swiss cheese, at least enabling new hollows of cover to be carved out of their husks.

It’s not all wanton destruction. The next section brings a surprising change of pace: Black is alone in a building, following a wire to a bomb. This disarming sequence is interrupted by an insurgent, and there’s a brutal quicktime event, left and right mouse buttons controlling his fisty pummelling. Ordinarily I would be wary of filler material like this, but it comes as a welcome respite from the firefights and carnage. It’s also amusing that in a game built for large-scale destruction, Black is actually stopping a bomb from going off.

The calm doesn’t last. Black runs out into a large battle on the city streets, abandoned cars and military vehicles providing cover. Rather than freeform, it feels tightly scripted: he moves through it to a bridge overlooking the road, firing down onto the rushing insurgents, thinning their assault. The ratatat of his rifle is drowned out by the whumph of the helicopter that backs him up. Even so, the insurgents rush under the bridge and over to the other side. Black retreats from the bridge to the street, to the abandoned military vehicle. Again, it feels more like a scripted event than an emergent battle, but it has a point. He’s holding off the insurgents, rattling off bullets as the support helicopter comes back for a second strafing run at the enemies.

Then a full-on earthquake hits.

It shows just what DICE are capable of with their engine. The ground rips and tips. Giant, ragged tears appear in the concrete. The buildings begin a slow, inexorable collapse. One takes out the helicopter, others fall into each other. In about five seconds, the whole city has changed: the ground is at odd angles, tilted underfoot. Buildings are lying on their sides, broken and ragged. I imagine scrambling through them, trying to escape insurgents while worrying about the inevitable aftershocks. The scale of the destruction is astonishing. Everything as far as the eye can see has shifted, the air is full of dust, the towering cityscape that impressed me at the start of the game just doesn’t exist anymore. This is why DICE have been building the Frosbite 2.0 engine.