Frostbite 2 engine looks great. But underneath it all is just lazy code and broken multiplayer with no fix for months.
The good:
Frostbite 2 engine is beautiful. The best way to describe the graphics would be... Clean. The only downside is the annoying lights and the sun glare. Some maps have too much glare making you completely blind facing one part of the map. COME ON!!! Seriously? There is a fine line between trying to be realistic and just being ridiculous. The blinding lights in some buildings and the glare from the sun is just part of the maps that make the game so annoying that I try my best to avoid that part of the map at all times. The only time to get the glare out of your face is using the scope. But then your a sitting duck in the open.
See I want to say good things about this game but I can't. This game has been out since October 2011. It's been 3 months to fix these bugs and annoyances.
The Bad:
Your cross hair disappears randomly.
Sound cuts out completely randomly.
Major lag issues with the hit boxes of your character. Ever been shot at only once then dropped down behind a car or forklift, completely out of sight just to have those bullets suddenly hit you? Lag would be the culprit in this. But when your playing from USA and the map is from USA and all the pings are under 100? I don't think lag has to do with it.
Knife kills are bugged. Knife kills will sometimes not do the animation leaving you vulnerable. Knife animation is also way to slow after a failed attempt to recover your weapon and defend your self.
Jumping over obstacles is also bugged. Sometimes you won't be able to jump over that center divider. Or jump over that pallet with white boxes. Or leap on the hood of that car and use it to get on top of more boxes just to have the animation propel you forward missing your mark. There is jump in the game but it's not used to jump onto things since you have a system that is some times broken to make you leap or climb things. The jump can also launch you forward slightly faster then sprinting. I don't know why....
Other thoughts:
The maps are awesome in multiplayer. The are constructed very well. It's not like Counter-Strike where there is only A and B to go to. You basically get the whole alphabet. Some of the guns need tweaking. A light machine gun should do devastating damage at close range. But the gun does very little at that. The accuracy of the light machine guns are great in small bursts but the longer the gun fires the less accurate the gun gets. This can effect a number of situations from ranges that you know is a safe distant to spray the gun just to have it hit the first few bullets then hit nothing after that. The control and recoil just overwhelms you. And to steady the gun you have to let go of your spray which then the guns recoil made your aim so off, the time it takes for the cross hair to line up again takes way too long. I found personally taping left mouse button kept a nice steady accurate and actually devastating blows to the enemy. The medic class has assault rifles that are so bad. There is no even balance to any gun I would unlock. I never got a gun that I was happy with and the only reason I kept playing the class was the hope to unlock a new weapon that didn't suck. Weapon after weapon I would get guns with 1 advantage and 1 disadvantage. No gun felt even. Even with forgrip handle, laser sight, scopes. The guns feel like this.. You would get a gun that would have a high rate of fire but couldn't hit nothing far distances. Then if you had a gun that would hit far distances the recoil would be so bad and the reload times so bad it wasn't worth it because at close range your rate of fire is too low. There was no even balance. Switching between single fire to get a more accurate shot with these high rate of fire guns is just stupid since you need to fire quick before they disappear behind something. The sub machine guns for the engineers are actually good. You get a consistency to each gun. The damage is perfect for what the gun can do. The guns for engineer are not accurate at long ranges but they have such a low recoil that spraying the gun at medium and long ranges is effective enough with minor adjusting. The reload times are fast as well. The only negative the sub machine guns have is their ammo capacity. Rocket launchers reload way too slow for how slow a missile launches. The missiles will go at a snails pace. But the bullet drop is reduced from bad company 2. The sniper rifles actually are interesting. I just don't know that much about them since it's the least class I play. There are plenty of semi auto non bolt action ones and bolt action rifles. It doesn't matter the rifle. Just pick the one you feel that works.
Origin and the ranking system.
When you launch BF3 it uses Origin which just opens your default web browser and takes you to the Origin page. From there you pick a game mode. Single, multiplayer, Co-op. All this is done online from your web browser. It also launches the game from the website as well. The progression to unlock new weapons and kits is just retarded. There is no way to view a full list of unlocks on there website. I had to go through a 3rd party website to see when I unlock the .44 Magnum pistol. You can only see what you will unlock next. Nothing after. The guns that you unlock are not in order. You will unlock a new gun then find it in front of the default gun but then find the gun you been using after that then after that a gun you unlocked last rank up. The guns have no indicator of damage or accuracy. Like in BC2 you can see a bar that tells you how accurate and how much damage the gun does. In this game it only will show... Rate of fire.. How many bullets it fires. Firing modes. Burst, single, auto. What type of ammo it fires. And how much ammo per clip. That is all. Nothing that tells you which gun is better. I guess they want you to find the gun that feels good to you and stick with it? This is just stupid. What is the point of unlocking new weapons if one isn't better then the other? Another thing that EA does is keep special guns for people who have earned them. Some of the guns requiring playing a part of the game that some people have no interest in playing. Like Co-op. Or Conquest games. I personally only play Team Death Match. I find that these games gives me more action and fairness to the game. All people do in conquest and rush is drive tanks and jets and snipe with sniper rifles. But since your can't call a mortar strikes on a tank anymore I found sniping useless since every person was in a tank or jet there was no one to snipe. I felt like if I wasn't a engineer I couldn't help my team because no one wanted to be a engineer and blow the tank up.
Team Death Match was just so bad though. The spawn location were random but they were FIXED RANDOM. If your team was respawning by the train tracks and the enemy on the other side of the map it would spawn you in that spawn location based on if a player was in the spawn location. What that means is, if you wanted you can hang back out of the spawn location to not trigger location so that the enemy can spawn there and take them out as they spawn from a distance. This made spawn camping and spawn dying way to often in the game. There was no fix spawn locations but if you know how it works after a while you can manipulate the playing field. It just became a cat and mouse game.
Summary:
So basically the game has bugs. How long will these bugs be fixed? I have no idea. The guns have strengths and weaknesses. Trying to find a balance is just a pain. Interface for unlock profession is terrible.
Ending:
I wanted to like this game. I still play it just because there are things to unlock. Nothing more. The game has too many bugs that makes the game so annoying. The lag sometimes makes games unplayable. The interface for my character sucks. I don't want to go to a website to see my stats. I want it all in the game. This game is such a disappointment.