Battlefield 3 - Alpha Trail Preview

Last week I got an invitation from EA to try the Alpha Trail version of BF3’s multiplayer map & I took privilege to give it a try and see. I had only a few minutes to spare on the game but I ended up playing it for a couple of hours. It’s that good but since that this is an early version of the game, I encountered some points to name a few in details:

• By starting the game, it asked me to update my NVIDIA GeForce GT 240. Though I ignored the notification and still ran the game. 
• It only has one screen resolution as “windowed” but none the less major improvements of the graphical details are much appreciated and see things better for the eyes. 
• The classes are now segregated into four. The Assault is back but instead of carrying additional ammo, it carries a defibrillator to revive fallen allies. Secondly, the support has the ammo and uses light machine guns. The third class is the recon which is also back on duty and with the help of graphical improvements, sniping will be a lovable class for open field map area to add that it has the ability to call in artillery strikes. And finally we have the engineer. Lets face it, Battlefield won’t be complete without vehicles and a class to maintain them in battle.

The experience:

Just like the Rush mode in BC2, you start at what it seems to be a park in a city or in a subway station. Two maps has different approach in the game from fighting in an open area which are likely to be in favored for snipers or in an underground subway station which will be favorable mostly on Assault units.

The controls were top notch and to add the new things I discovered as follows:

• You can run over small obstacles and see how you maneuver them over like a “Mirror’s Edge” game. 
• In addition to duck from the previous game, you can now crawl down for better stealth approach and to avoid sniper detection.  
• A successful stab in the back will execute a deathblow however, 
• The control keys were a little hard for me to command (the duck and crawl keys were too close from each other for me) so I hope that they will allow us to customize them by the time it hits the shelf.

Combat system is pretty solid, it delivers the feel from BC2 but a lot better with improved controls and the new graphics Engine. As a personal tip, the game will be best played on a higher resolution screen weather its HDTV or HD monitor (I’m using HPs 21” HD Monitor) and a considerable stronger CPU (My current specs are Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, Intel Core 2 Quad 2.5 GHz, 4 gig of RAM, NVDA GeForce GT 240 of 1 gig graphics memory and a 1 TB hard drive).

So is it an MW3 killer?

Possible, but by playing both previous games it’s actually goes down to whatever the consumer feels like playing; they are two FPS game but has a different style of gameplay. COD is known to their fast phased interface while BF talks about semi realistic and team based approach.

Conclusion:

Currently, the alpha trial version is about showing us the idea of its online multiplayer, and I’m happy to report that I had fun and will play more of it.