The day I received an email informing me that EA Games was having an open beta for Battlefield 3, I knew what had to be done. I proceeded think of ways to drain my kids of all their energy so that they would actual sleep during their allotted nap time, instead of the usual shenanigans that occur i.e.; demands for water, the occasional bum change or crying due to an owie after a failed attempt to fly across the room as Buzz Lightyear.
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| Buzz Lightyear from the movie Toy Story 1, 2 & 3 |
The best way to drain these perpetual motion kids, would be to take them to the park and let loose the little gremlins so that they could do all the work themselves, all the while sitting on the park bench and sipping my coffee. Lady luck was not on my side that day, it was cold and raining and I seriously doubted my wife would let me take the kids to the park no matter how much I protested. This meant I would have to rely on my imagination. So I pretended to be a hungry tiger and chased the kids around the house catching them and eating them up. A half-hour of munching on bellybuttons and ribs it was time for phase two. Then for an hour I became a sleeping bear that would not wake up as they clambered all over me. Then we had lunch, a quick bum change and then I whisked them off to bed for their nap. By the time I had gotten downstairs and had the video monitor turned on, both angels were snoring away loud and clear. They get the snoring from their mother in case anyone was wondering.
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| Sleeping Bear |
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Now that I had managed to get the kids to sleep, I quickly began to get everything setup for some gaming time. I grabbed some fresh AAA batteries and installed them in my Turtle Beach head phones, a fresh battery pack for my controller and get everything up and running. I signed in to Xbox live and initiated the download of the 4-gig beta file. While the file was downloading I took the opportunity refill my water bottle and check the monitor again ensuring that they were still asleep and not just trying to set me up for bitter disappointment. Both of them still sleeping and whistling resonantly through their noses, I head back to the couch and wait impatiently for the beta file to finish downloading.
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| BF3 Campaign | |
12 minutes later I start the game and head straight to the online portion. I then stare at the loading screen for 8 minutes before I decide to dashboard and try it again, third times a charm and I am in the game. I manage to do pretty well and get a damn nice kill death ration. I just kept going for the objectives and kill people left and right winning most of my engagements. On my third round of total game play the servers crash and gaming time was over.
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| Battle Field 3 |
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A few days later I manage to drain the little munchkins again and get online and see if the BF3 serves are up and running again. I only had to wait 3 minutes to get into a game this time. Then began the loathsome task of playing this sniper-infested game. This is the first version of Battlefield where you can lay prone, which in turn allows someone to lie down in a bush 900 feet away with an unobstructed view of most of the map and pick you off till the cows come home. Then I also had to endure the tedious ramblings of two 11 year old kids arguing about who is more awesome at this game, all the while someone else has their crappy music blaring into their microphone and no options on how to mute these maroons. Needless to say I ended my Battlefield 3 experience there.
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| More BF3 game play |
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The graphics are little rough and the game play is a little choppy, you sometimes clip right thru the bottom of the map and they didn't even have any vehicles to drive around. But this a beta, or is it? I played the beta for BF2 last year and when I purchased the actual game it was an exact copy of what the beta was. I personally believe this was a demo, making it the worst marketing ploy I have seen this year. The game is being released October 25th, how much can they change in 1 month and will they bother?
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| Joy |
I am happy I took the time to download and play the beta, it afforded me the opportunity to try out a game I most definitely will not be purchasing. For those who are loyal to the Battlefield genre I am sure you will get it and enjoy every minute you play. For me this game is not my cup of tea. I am sure if I had the time to invest in learning the massive maps, figure out how to effectively operate the vehicles and had a bunch of friends who would actually play this game, I might consider picking this game up and giving it a chance. But right now Austin is tossing the contents of his crib onto the floor while giggling to himself. Erika is shouting at the top of her voice; "DADDY I'M READY!". Game time is over and now begins playtime.
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| Happiness |
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