PC Game News

It looks like virtual soldiers–particularly those fond of unlockable content–will have plenty of swag to keep them coming back to Battlefield 3. Battlefield 2 was the first game in the series (and one of the first shooters, in general) to contain (the now nearly ubiquitous) persistent unlockable perks, and Battlefield 3 is poised to deliver a list of unlockables that’s an order of magnitude larger than that of it’s predecessor.

“Compared to Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Battlefield 3 will have more than 10 times the hardware unlocks spread over weapons, weapons attachments, gadgets,” notes the fifth entry to the Battlefield 3 Battleblog, “and a huge unlock tree for vehicles alone.”

Skill-based ribbons and medals are also in the mix, and based on what you’ve earned, other players can get a general glimpse into your relative level of badassery.

“On top of these ingame hardware items, players will also be richly rewarded with medals, ribbons and service stars displaying their skill, commitment, and teamplay prowess. You will be rewarded handsomely in Battlefield 3 for exemplary skill, such as capturing X amount of bases in one round. Excellent teamplayers who keep the team’s vehicles in mint condition and revive fallen comrades will not go unnoticed either. These type of skill-driven rewards are typically handed out in the form of ribbons, and good players can often get more than one ribbon in a single round.”

These awards are structured so that players can work toward achieving them without distracting from in-game battles, and some are even commitment-based, like the reward for “playing x amount of hours as a U.S. soldier.”

Service Stars are the crown-jewels of achievement, and though unlocked similarly to medals and ribbons, they’re described as “hardcore” achievements that apply to your “weapon skill badge, your vehicle, your kit, and your overall rank.” They’ll be very tough to earn.

The Battleblog notes:

“The ultimate bragging right would be for a player to be awarded the rank of Colonel with 100 Service Stars attached, and to have 100 stars in all weapons, kits, and vehicles. Getting there will be a massive task – consider that a challenge!”

Using a particular gun or vehicle kit will unlock progressive upgrades relative the weapon or kit being used, while accrued experience feeds into the player’s overall rank. Those experience points can then be used to “unlocks new weapons, specializations, and camouflages usable by any class.”

The announcement goes on to further tout Battlefield 3′s “play it your way” mentality, explaining that each of the game’s four classes (Assault, Engineer, Support, Recon) are highly customizable. They encourage players to carefully consider how they outfit themselves, given the specific parameters of the battle. Does one kit themselves out with healing equipment before rushing to the front-lines, or bring a 40mm grenade launcher attachment instead?

Battlefield 3 is planned for an October 25 release on PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. A public beta for the game is set to launch in September.

Source: ShackNews

Fan frenzy explodes, shatters EA pre-order records.

The heat of the battle intensifies today as DICE, an Electronic Arts Inc. studio (NASDAQ: ERTS) announces two editions of Battlefield 3 and the unique pre-order items available at participating retailers in North America. Soldiers and squads looking to claim battlefield superiority this Oct. 25, 2011 have an exciting array of options available when pre-ordering Battlefield 3 from select retailers. Fans worldwide are already gearing up to play in squads and are pre-ordering the game in record numbers. Battlefield 3 pre-orders are up more than 10x Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

Battlefield 3 is proving to be one of the most anticipated games of 2011, having already earned over 50 awards including ‘Best Action Game’ and ‘Best Online Multiplayer Game.’ Critics praise the game for its intense gameplay experience, powered by the Frostbite™ 2 state-of-the-art game engine that delivers superior performance in character animation, visual rendering, audio and physical destruction. To accompany the game, Orion Publishing will release a novel written by the highly decorated ex-SAS operator and best-selling author of Bravo Two Zero, Andy McNab, with co-author Peter Grimsdale. McNab is working with the creative team at DICE to ensure the authenticity and grittiness of today’s warfare is experienced in the single player, co-op and multiplayer campaigns.

Battlefield 3 Standard Edition

In Battlefield 3, players step into the role of the elite U.S. Marines. As the first boots on the ground, players experience heart-pounding missions across diverse locations including Paris, Tehran and New York City. In the field, periods of tension and anticipation are punctuated by moments of complete chaos. As bullets whiz by, as walls crumble, as explosions force players to the ground, the battlefield feels more alive and interactive than ever before. To complement the single-player campaign, Battlefield 3 delivers 10 massive co-op maps and multiple multiplayer modes – a proven strength of DICE.

Battlefield 3 Limited Edition

Gamers who pre-order Battlefield 3 are assured a copy of the Limited Edition, which includes the deep and immersive Back to Karkand post-launch digital expansion pack at no extra charge. With Back to Karkand, players can wage all-out war on four of the most celebrated maps from Battlefield 2™ including Strike at Karkand, Gulf of Oman and the Sharqi Peninsula, all stunningly re-created using the power of Frostbite 2. Gamers who choose to purchase the digital expansion separately can do so for $14.99.

Select retailers are also offering Battlefield 3 pre-order customers the following promotional items:

•Physical Warfare Pack — Storm the battlefield armed with a set of three exclusive weapons in the Physical Warfare Pack including: 1) the Type 88 light machine gun with bipod for deadly firepower and total zone control; 2) the SKS sniper rifle flash suppressor that provides increased stealth abilities for Recon soldiers; and 3) the lethal armor-piercing flechette ammo for the DAO-12 semi-automatic shotgun that will tear through anything in its path. Each weapon will be available for a limited time in-game, and will later become available to all players. Also unlocked is instant access to the highly versatile DAO-12 semi-automatic shotgun.

•SPECACT Kit — Players can expand their customizable options in Battlefield 3 with a set of eight unique multiplayer skins, one for each class in Battlefield 3.

•Dog Tag Pack — In Battlefield 3, dog tags serve as the player’s in-game signature, allowing gamers to customize their soldiers. Dog tags are displayed on screen every time a player takes down an enemy or claims an opponent’s dog tags. This pre-order exclusive item comes with five new, unique dog tags.

Participating retailers may vary. For more information on pre-order item availability, please visit www.battlefield.com.

It’s standard practice for nearly all AAA (and not-so-AAA) games to come with a variety of retailer-exclusive pre-order bonuses. Battlefield 3, however, outdoes most with a number of offers. Some offers, like the Physical Warfare DLC pack, will be made available for purchase later on. Others, however, seem to be genuinely exclusive to the retailer.

So far, three retailers have outed their pre-order offerings for DICE’s upcoming military shooter.

All pre-orders of the game will include the Back to Karkand expansion pack for free–regardless of which retailer you buy the game from. The expansion includes classic Battlefield maps from throughout the franchise, and will be available after the game launches. A voucher included in the box will entitle you to a free download once the DLC releases.

Retailers will be offering specific bonuses on top of the Back to Karkand expansion:

■Gamestop is offering the Physical Warfare pack, which unlocks these weapons for use in multiplayer: DAO-12 Shotgun, Flash Suppressor, Type 88 LMG, and Flachette Ammo. In addition, Battlefield 3 Blog reports that PowerUp Rewards members will get a Prima strategy guide for free, as well.

■Amazon is offering an exclusive “Dog Tag Pack,” for use in multiplayer.

■Best Buy is offering the “SPECACT Kit,” a package that offers eight multiplayer weapons and uniform skins.

■Finally, EA’s Origin store is offering the Physical Warfare pack, bonus items for Battlefield Play4Free, and access to the Battlefield 3 open beta.

Other retailers, like Direct2Drive, are simply offering the game at a discount, instead of offering a pre-order bonus. Make sure you think about exactly what bonus you want to take advantage of before making a deposit.

Source: ShackNews

Get the lowdown from Fredrick Loving

EA and DICE have released more details on Battlefield 3′s Battlelog.

They come fresh from the fingers of Fredrick Loving (kudos on the name), Battlelog producer at DICE.

The ‘Battlefeed’ will be your main window into Battlelog, showing current events around your network in real-time, explains the Battlelog rundown.

It will give you a live snapshot of what those in your network are doing in the world of Battlefield.

“The feed will encourage people to play even more,” adds Loving. “They will see their friends ranking up, receiving awards they don’t have yet, or getting the new cool guns they have been missing. It will increase the competitive edge. Everything you do on the battlefield is shared amongst your friends.”

You’ll be able to see when a friend unlocks a particularly difficult achievement and offer them kudos, the description continues on the Battlefield Blog.

“Another pal just joined a multiplayer Rush match in Operation Métro and is looking for some help – now you know, so you can quickly jump in and give them a hand.”

“If someone just nabbed your dog tag in multiplayer, they can shoot you a quick note to say thanks (or, more likely, use those newly anointed bragging rights). It’s all here in the real-time feed for you to share, comment and like.”

A fully-featured soldier progression section is also included, bringing full stats tracking for every shot fired and every action performed in your Battlefield career.

“Battlefield players love their statistics,” says Loving. “Now we will give them everything that they want while adding a social layer on top of that.”

Source: CVG

Retailer suggests that EA’s shooter might not appear on Steam.

EA’s hotly-anticipated Battlefield 3 may not come to Steam when it’s released later in the year, US retail giant GameStop has suggested.

Financial research firm Baird stated as much following a meeting with GameStop’s management team, saying that the “upcoming EA title Battlefield 3 will be sold as a download through GameStop, but not through Steam.”

It was confirmed to Develop that this news comes directly from company executives. The DICE shooter will come to other digital download services, however.

The Baird report continues: “Given Steam’s dominance – and insistence on users downloading a Steam client application – publishers are likely to be receptive to a competitive alternative,”

EA recently launched Origin, a digital download service set to rival Valve’s. And last month saw the EA-published Crysis 2 removed from Steam after a DLC exclusivity deal was signed with another service. EA claimed no responsibility for the removal or the deal.

It may well be missing out on Steam, but we’re still looking forward to Battlefield 3′s launch on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC on October 25 in the US, and three days later in Europe.

Source: IGN

Online stores listing mystery Battlefield book for release alongside the game

Retailers Amazon and Barnes & Noble are taking pre-orders for a Battlefield 3 book set for release on October 25, the same day EA’s FPS hits stores.

As spotted by Battlefield 3 Blog, the 400-page mystery offering has been penned by the game’s executive producer, Patrick Bach, and Andy McNab, the pseudonym of an English novelist and former SAS operative and soldier.

Has the single player campaign been adapted for a novel? Is it a ‘making of’ book?

It’s been public knowledge for some time that Andy McNab been helping DICE out with elements of Battlefield 3′s production. Bach told Edge last month: “Andy McNab has been working with us for quite some time now, talking to our writers about authenticity when it comes to mission structures.

“And he’s been involved in motion capture; since he’s been involved in, for instance, the movie Heat, consulting on gun handling matters, he knows what it takes to make his experience fit onto an entertainment product.”

DICE has talked up the technical prowess of its Frostbite 2 engine again this week, teasing the chaotic prospect of putting terrain-deforming earthquakes in Battlefield 3′s multiplayer modes.

Source: Battlefield Blog

DICE “looking into” ambient destruction for online modes

Battlefield 3 developer DICE has again talked up the technical prowess of its Frostbite 2 engine, and teased the chaotic prospect of putting terrain-deforming earthquakes into its new multiplayer mode.

Speaking to PSM3 magazine, lead multiplayer designer Lars Gustavsson confirmed the quakes seen in impressive single-player demos are “technically possible” in Battlefield 3 multiplayer games.

“We’re still looking into ambient destruction in multi-player; it’s still too early to say really,” he told the mag.

“It’s technically possible to have earthquakes in multi-player using Frostbite 2. We feel like kids walking into sweet shops with Frostbite – it has so many features we never knew we needed, and we’re still figuring out how best to use them.

“It’s just the start for this engine. So far, the only limit to the things we can do with it are our own creative restraints.”

The Swedish developer’s made no secret it wants to stick to the series fundamentals for Battlefield 3, saying it has “no urge to innovate for the sake of innovation.”

Some fans might be concerned by the decision to combine Medic and Assault classes then, but Gustavsson argues it’s the right move:

“Our main thinking with the medic class is that we want more people in the game, playing, than sat in the spawn menu,” he said. “So, the more chances we give team mates to help with things like revives, the better.

“We constantly evaluate where people are on the battlefield – and as we saw it in Bad Company 2, Medics were rarely equipped to be on the real frontline. It was the Assault class that people took to the front, so it seemed natural to combine the two.”

Source: CVG

Time to get your comparison glasses on

The first Battlefield 3 Battlelog screenshots have hit the net, giving you a glimpse at EA’s stat tracking service and its user interface.

Battlelog was unveiled by EA at E3 last month and was immediately put eye-to-eye with Activision’s own FPS multiplayer stat-tracker Call of Duty Elite.

While the COD service carries a subscription fee, however, Battlefield 3′s Battlelog was announced with a monthly fee of nothing at all.

Source: CVG

EA’s set to offer even more pre-order incentives for Battlefield 3, with a FOURTH pack spotted for the DICE first-person shooter.

Amazon’s gone live with a promotion that will see customers receive a code to download the Specact Kit DLC, a collection of “eight unique multiplayer skins”.

The Specact Kit joins Play.com’s bonus dog tags and the Back to Karkand Map Pack, a selection of multiplayer arenas remade from Battlefield 2, available to those who pre-order the Limited Edition version of Battlefield 3.

The fourth pack is GAME’s controversial Physical Warfare Pack, which got the community all aflutter because it offers Battlefield early birds a roster of exclusive guns that won’t be made available to Ordinary Joes at a later date.

Fans complained this would give certain players an unfair advantage, but EA quickly came out to assure the items “were specifically chosen not to be overpowered or imbalance or break the game in any way.”

Source: CVG

But EA is apparently not to blame.

EA has made it all too clear that it wants to slit the throat of the Call of Duty franchise, as it readies its impressive looking Battlefield 3 to go head to head with Modern Warfare 3 later this year. But today the publisher resorted to some dirty tactics, or so it seemed at first.

Gaming news sites and Twitter feeds lit up over the past 24 hours when it was discovered that the URL www.modernwarfare3.com was automatically redirecting to www.battlefield.com/battlefield3, EA’s official site for its upcoming shooter.

It was assumed by most that the forwarding URL had been set up by EA itself, as part of a cheap campaign to lure away unsuspecting Call of Duty fans, but website Net Media Now did some digging and discovered that the www.modernwarfare3.com site had previously been set up as some kind of “fishy beta sign up scheme” with no apparent ties to EA. Thanks to Google cache, an earlier version of the site was found complete with a video attacking one of the official Modern Warfare 3 trailers, and this caustic fine print:

“Modern Warfare is crap. On November 8, 2011, the most over-hyped first-person action series of all-time returns with the copy and paste sequel to the lackluster Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Check out the E3 2011 gameplay demo featuring the Black Tuesday level for a look at the epic fail of the campaign. Pre-Order Call of Duty MW3 Today for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC to secure exclusive bonuses only available online for Modern Warfare 3 fanboys who don’t know that Battlefield 3 is the better game.”

Hardly the sort of messaging that EA would employ despite the apparent fierceness of the competition between the two publishers, and given the potential legal ramifications at stake it’s likely just the work of a troublemaking fan.

Ultimately the most baffling part of the whole affair is this: games publishers typically register every possible domain name variation for each of their big game releases, so why on earth does Activision not own the www.modernwarfare3.com domain already?

Source: IGN