Too flashy

User Rating: 7 | Battlefield 3 PC
First of all, this review is based on my first impression of the game as i have only been playing a couple of days. Also i will not be playing the single player campaign. I will keep it simple with a list of good, bad and mixed points.

Good:
- Huge and destructable arenas for battle.
- A nice variety of vehicles to smash these arenas, and each other of course, to smithereens.
- Good gravity physics, forcing you to think about your long range shots, and how you throw your chosen vehicle about.
- Great multiplayer game modes.
- Beautiful graphics and sound making for a very immersive and often very tense experience.

Mixed:
- Despite a lot of people moaning about having to launch the game from a web browser, i have found it to be pretty quick and trouble free (so far). I can get into a game within 2 minutes of deciding to play BF3. Although there doesn't seem to be an awful lot of servers for a game so popular (certainly nowhere near as many as BFBC2).
- This new method of getting over obstacles: in an attempt to do away with bunnyhopping (that's people jumping around in an attempt to make themselves harder targets), you now have a tiny, more realistic, jump. When you reach an obstacle you will now vault over it. This is not a bad idea, but can be a bit glitchy and shakes the camera around a bit. Also you can't get up a ledge any higher than about chest height, which is stupid.
- I'm not sure i like the new setup for the soldier classes. I liked how it was in Bad Company 2 - assault shouldn't be medics, they're busy assaulting. I don't like faffing around reviving people when i'm trying to kill the enemy.

Bad:
- Lense flare: in reality my eyes don't do this, why do they do it in this game. It's annoying, distracting and unrealistic. I have a hard enough time trying to see what's going on in this game anyway.
- People shining torches in my eyes: ok maybe this would blind you a bit at close range or in a dingy alley, but in broad daylight in a desert, from ten metres away... no. The same for red dots - i own one and for it to blind you it has to shine right in your eye, otherwise you hardly see them. Certainly not enough to fill your whole field of vision with red.
- Bad skill level balancing: even servers labelled "noob server" are chocked full of highly skilled, experienced and well equipped high level players who will headshot you with a sub-machine gun from a mile away. When you first start playing this you will die a lot!!
- Boring level design: don't get me wrong, the levels are huge and gorgeous, but none of them have made me think "this map is amazing" as some BFBC2 maps did. Also if you like to fly choppers there are not many hiding places like hills or valleys to duck behind or into. Once your up everyone on the ground can easily see you and fire their heat seekers. This can be infuriating as you dont start with any countermeasures and you've nowhere to hide.
- Spawning: i wont give the "awful spawn locations" gripe that other reviews have as i don't like team deathmatch (too much like CoD for my liking). I will say that maybe to incentivise staying alive a bit more we could have a longer wait to re-spawn. I know some people will think that's a rubbish idea, but maybe it would promote better teamwork knowing that when you die you wont be able to re-spawn in 3 seconds.
- Edges: i've lost count of the amount of times i've been behind a bit of scenery lining up a shot only to have the bullet stopped by an invisible extra chunk of rock or wall or whatever. It's also annoying when you see a 2 foot gap that you can't crawl under.

I will update this review after playing BF3 a lot more. Thanks for reading.