Battlefield 3 expansions revealed

EA have just announced information on the next two Battlefield 3 expansions. Battlefield 3 Close Quarters is to be the first released, followed this fall by Battlefield 3 Armored Kill. While I am excited for Armored Kill as it contains lots more of the typical Battlefield arsenal, (vehicle combat, large maps and so forth), Close Quarters actually fills me with a bit of worry.

When Battlefield 3 came out, one of the biggest complaints that I saw was about the maps. People complained that they were too enclosed, and there just wasn't enough space for proper vehicular combat. The levels Metro and Seine Crossing were commonly complained about due to their urban setting, something people felt belonged more in Call of Duty. I personally agreed with such comments at the time, and still do. What Battlefield has always had is its own niche of combining infantry and vehicular combat almost flawlessly.

In todays current gaming selection, modern combat is taking over. Nearly every game is either modern combat, or bases itself very closely to the Call of Duty formula. What Battlefield 3 did was push itself away from this by giving people the option of vast environments, which they could happily destroy with tanks, jets and other forms of armored weaponry. With the release of BF3CQ they are planning on moving more towards that CoD formula, which is something they really don't need to do. On the BF3CQ preview page they mention the word competitive. This is something that most likely won't exist in Battlefield.

Battlefield has struggled to make a huge impact in the past at events, and I believe that it will continue to struggle. The problem is that while Battlefield 3 is a great game, it requires far to many players to actually form a team, so organisations aren't willing to sponsor teams as often. By reducing it to Close Quarters they are now allowing for making teams smaller (Something we could have already done anyway with Squad Deathmatch and Rush), which makes it easier for teams to form and organisations to send teams to events. However by doing this they are now losing the niche and entering the 4v4 or 5v5 area of competitive FPS, a scene dominated by Counter Strike and Call of Duty 4 on the PC and Halo and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 on the Xbox, and personally I don't think that it can compete.

Battlefield 3 was never made with competition in mind, it was made for the huge maps and 32-64 player games. Trying to bring that formula down to 8-10 player servers is only going to ruin the experience. They would be best leaving Battlefield as it is, and actually do something with Medal of Honor if competition is where they want to go. The last iteration of Medal of Honor was forgotten in just a few weeks, and failed to make a big impact on the gaming world at all. Battlefield Expansions are gaining far more discussion than Medal of Honor is, which is something EA need to change if they want to continue spending money on the series. Now personally I would love to see them go to Medal of Honor with competition in mind, and take it back to WW2 and it's Allied Assault roots on the PC. Even today MoH:AA is still one of the finest PC games made, and still has quite a healthy community.

EA has the money, and certainly the talent, within their company if they wish to make a truly incredible competitive game. Turning Battlefield into EAs flagship competitive game, and moving it towards CQC will only upset the hardcore Battlefield players and be yet another question to the long list of "Why does MoH actually exist?".

Halo 4 details released. How does it fair up for competitive play?

The first thing I need to mention here, is this is my opinion based on the information released so far. The information comes from the following sources;

Halo 4 First Look Video
11 Things we've learned about Halo 4

In the video we can see at a few occasions that sprint will be back in the game. However there is no visible sign of a sprint bar, so this may just be default now as opposed to being an armor ability. This doesn't instantly make the game un-competitive as quite a few games are using sprint features today. However it did have some downsides on Halo Reach due to the long kill times. It meant that escaping a bad situation was far to easy, so players weren't punished for making bad decisions. We can also see the Battle Rifle has returned, while it's difficult to tell completely it looks like the BR Spread is coming back. When we have the inconsistency of the Battle Rifle combined with sprint, the kill times on Halo 4 could be far too long and player's could easily escape a bad decision they have made. When you get to the higher level of play, players are used to doing everything pretty much step by step perfection. So then it becomes a case of the better team is the one who can punish mistakes the most. When mistakes are hard to punish this removes a lot of excitement from the crowd when they yet again fail to see a team make that Extermination all because the other team just ran away. Now don't get me wrong running away is a legitimate tactic, but it has it's limits.

If we take a look at the 11 things we have learned page, there are a lot of things that don't bother me so much. Things like a new bad guy for the single player, the Nazi Zombies designer now working with 343i and also Mechs. These things shouldn't in anyway affect the multiplayer so they should be of no worries for us. There are a few things that need to be changed, however I don't see it happening. The game running at 30 FPS yet again, but having better graphics than Halo Reach. Reach already had a fair amount of screen lag on some maps, especially forge maps, so increasing the graphics is just going to slow the game down even more. Large "feel good" Text is something that I'm unsure of. I have no problem it making the player feel like they have done something good, providing that it doesn't end up like Call of Duty where your screen is flooded with numbers and icons every time you turn the corner.

The ability to customize load-outs and also improve your character in more ways that cosmetic is something that I am on the fence about. I can see it leading to interesting game play choices if they manage to balance the weapons out. Having a weaker but more mobile player who uses range weapons? Sounds fun. Having a slower but more tanky player who enjoys shotgunning or assault rifling things up close? Again sounds fun. These ideas can also make the game play a lot different, something we know Halo is in dire need of as it's starting to get a little stale. However balance in previous games has been nothing short of awful. There are so many weapons that just have completely no use what so ever. Interesting guns such as the Focus Rifle have been made redundant because it has a cool down of about a second before you can fire it again. Had they lowered it's range and removed this cool down it could have been an amazing tool. Running round destroying shields while your team mates clean up with precision weapons. Having a tool like this on the previously mentioned tanky guy while your squishy ranged team mates pick-up the kills from range sounds like a huge twist in console FPS. This would be stepping the system more towards the style of TF2, which would certainly be the way to go as opposed to CoD. So as I mentioned before, until we see more information I am on the edge. Balance would be a huge factor for this to work, and it's Halos rapid decline in terms of a balanced sandbox that has me worried. 343i are now at the helm though, so I will give them the benefit of the doubt and I look forward to seeing what they can come up with.

The final two things I want to briefly touch on are having on screen icons for weapon placements and weapons respawning on random timers. Having icons on screen should act like Tutorial Tooltips for newer players. We should be able to turn them off if we wish. No player should have any reason to complain about this, as after a few games everyone knows where weapons spawn anyway. The only thing could be when a player drops a weapon you can see it, but again in more competitive games people communicate this information anyway. However weapons respawning on random timers is bad for everyone. All it will do is promote camping, as players won't want to move from the area of the power-ups / power weapons. Halo already lacks reasons to move around the map as it is, lets not give them more reasons to sit around and wait. This won't help new player's in anyway sadly, as the better players will still be able to out shoot them anyway. Also this will mess up competitive games as it will start to promote a random element. The best way to stop better players stomping on newer players is to actually great a decent matchmaking system. The one used in Reach was awful and put a lot of players off as it matched anyone with everyone.

To conclude Halo 4 has quite a few issues with it right now which can totally affect competitive play. However with a few tweaks and some solid work on balancing the sandbox, Halo 4 has some serious potential. As a Halo fan would I be worried right now? No not at all. I wouldn't, however, be full of confidence either. If 343i decide to step even closer to Call of Duty then I can see Halo 4 being a mismatch of games that feels nothing like Halo or Call of Duty and just turns gamers away.