Battlefield 3 undoubtedly is one of the most anticipated games of
2011. Everyone is expecting a fantastic game and we truly hope that EA
Games will be able to deliver it. Today was the big day when we got our
hands on the open beta release of Battlefield 3. The download time
seemed to take forever (PC version is about 3GB, xbox is 1.3 gigs) but
when finally the game was downloaded we ran into the first problem and
then some more and more. Of course beta releases are made available for
the community to give feedback on the game and in that way get the best
results. So in this article we will try to gather all the bugs and
glitches we noticed on XBox360 and PC versions. This beta version comes
with with only one game mode called “rush”, an attack and defend type
game and one map called “Operation Métro” a parisian map with a park and
underground area.
Xbox 360 version
The xbox 360 version downloaded quickly from the demos section of the games marketplace. The file size is about average when talking about game demos (1.3 gb). I started it right up and connected to a quick match. I got right into the action barely having to wait a few seconds to connect to a game. The game itself ran really smoothly with a full house, did not experience one moment of lag throughout an hour and a half of game play. My only problem happened when i was tired of being the noob getting crushed by high levels in my game and tried to quit a game. Quitting the game sent me to a never ending load screen that i let play out for five minutes before restarting my xbox and loading the game up again. This same problem happened several times after winning a round and switching sides, all i got was endless load screen. Here is a list of really noticeable glitches I experienced during my play through.
- Pretty noticeable texture drop offs at times
- You will fall through the level geometry
- Had a bug where I could not use my rifle scope at some points in the game for no reason.
- Quick connection and no issues with finding a game was dropped only once
- Game froze three times on load screen and had to be restarted
- Odd flashing sometimes as if the video is cutting in and out (blue flashes)
- Muzzle flash from guns would get stuck in the air and not disappear causing a crazy jagged white line to hang in mid air
PC version
In PC version of Battlefield 3 Beta connecting to the servers is done via a web browser. It is done through http://battlelog.battlefield.com where all the game servers are listed as well as your stats and achievements. It is interesting and unusual that the game itself is launched through the web browser. And I have to add that it does not work that well. Not yet, at least.
The first and probably the most annoying bug in this beta release is connection process. Right after I downloaded the game I was unable to connect to any of the servers for about an hour. I looked through the Battlefield 3 Beta forum for some help. There I found that I am not the only one with such problems. One of the biggest threads on this problem has reached 1161 comments. As one of the most common reasons was mentioned a 64bit version of Windows 7 or Vista. For some reinstalling browser from 64bit version to 32bit helped to solve the problem.
But after the connection problem magically fixed itself and I was able to connect to a game, the connection issues didn’t end there. Multiple times I was dropped out of the game with a message “Your game session has expired, please log out and then log in again” and after that I had problems connecting to a game again, this time because of “A generic game error was reported, please try again.” After logging out and back into the website and refreshing the page a thousand times I was able to connect to a game.
Apart from those connection problems, there were more that I noticed:
- In 2 hours of playing the game froze 3 times. I had to close it through Task manager.
- My character started to spin uncontrollably and the only option was to quit the game.
- 4 times the camera was falling through map after I died
- Sometimes “move forward” button (w) stopped working when switching from crouch position to sprinting
- Odd flashing sometimes as if the video is cutting in and out (blue flashes)
It was quite difficult to experience the game while running into all of these problems. But beta versions are made for gamers to give feedback and make the final version better. We hope that the developers will listen to the feedback and fix all the current problems. The game looks incredibly good and runs surprisingly well on not even a high end computer. And one of the things that surprised us the most are the lightning fast loading times. It is incredible how fast this game can load its level.
We want to recommend for everyone to try out the game and help the developers to make Battlefield 3 live up to its expectations. The pc beta version is available here, and the xbox 360 and PS3 versions are available from their respective game marketplaces.
looks pretty great!