Our European friends over at YourGamingTeam probably violated their agreement contracts with DICE with the leaking of these Battlefield 3 alpha videos, but they’re doing so for our viewing pleasure. Doesn’t that make it okay? Putting aside one’s moral compass, these videos highlight some of the weapon customization you’ll be getting when Battlefield 3 ships this October. The videos clearly show that the game is not yet perfect and there are actually quite a few evident glitches that can be seen throughout. Still, BF3 is not even in its beta stage yet, so considering, the game is looking pretty darn good.
The first video displays the classes that will be present in the game and they are pretty similar to the one’s featured in Bad Company 2. You have your assault, engineer, support (the defibrillator paddles of which look very cool), and recon classes which all have their respective customizations. After your class is chosen, you can then select your primary and secondary weapon as well as their attachments, a couple of gadgets -similar to “equipment” in CoD, and a specialization for that class like “sprint boost” (think of the “perks” featured in CoD). I may often criticize the Call of Duty series for what I see as reiterations of the same game from year to year, but you can’t blame DICE for following a very similar customization replica. The system that Infinity Ward and Activision created with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was fantastic and directly inspired every online FPS that came after it. After all, DICE is trying to create a “CoD killer”, and it’ll probably be easier for CoD fans to play BF3 if they know they’ll be playing with a familiar customization scheme. Also, at 6:35 in the video, you can see the realistic grenades of BF3 in action and the subsequent environment destruction.
The second video does not greatly differ from the first, but it does show a bit more combat gameplay. At 2:30, you can see that the engineer’s ability to repair tanks featured in Bad Company 2 is back in full force. The demoer fires a rocket at a tank to damage it, gets to work repairing it, and then hops in. That just makes the subsequent destruction done with that tank so much rewarding.
Note: the videos below are still from the PC version. Sorry, console fans.