From last nights experience of trying to connect to servers, i pretty much gave up and went to bed as the game would either CTD on the server browser or say the connection to the server has been lost after each attempt at connecting. But hey, its beta - tried again when got home this afternoon and gave it another shot:

Not had one crash to desktop as of yet today, the server list populated as it should - even tho the server browser is a little slow to sort itself out.

Trying to add friends to the friends list didnt seem to work - you could successfuly search and find who you wanted to add but upon them accepting the friends request they still did not appear in the list - however when this gets working itll be a handy "quick connect" tool to join the server your mates are on.

When in the game, its very pretty to look at and runs fine at custom high settings for me (Q6600, 4870 1gb, 8gb pc6400) and not so far run into any tearing issues or the like (6 tells me he has this on his 8800gts sometimes). The weather effects and explosions etc are fun to watch, as well as watching a wall being blown out or a few trees being crumpled.

Movement takes a little getting used to, e.g. you cant move left or right when sprinting, but this i can get used to.

It doesnt feel consoley to me, however i think theyve tried to be clever with the movement to mimic a real life soldier, e.g. when you jump the camera moves along with the soldier to make you almost feel like your jumping with him. When knifing someone (managed 2 in a row because i accidentally spawned in as a sniper as was so disgusted i went on a knifing spree ) you see the soldiers arm come flying out with the stab and the camera wobbles a little along with it. I like these touch's because they connect you with the soldier your playing with an bring you that little bit closer to the game.

The pace of the game so far seems good, you can get a few good kills in before you die, or you can end up getting slaughtered a few seconds after spawning - pretty much the same as bf2 as it depends where the current action is.

The weapons are good so far, the sounds are great and the recoil animation are more realistic and lean more towards say PR then they do bf2. Monkey will be happy to know its still possible to n00btube people from a fair distance as i luckily managed this today playing as assault class.

The last game i played i got dropped from the server at exactly the same time 6 did - even though we were both playing on different servers which was rather odd.

So far so good - i have high hopes for the final release with the extra game modes and single player aspect - however its not quite polished yet and there are many bugs yet to fix before itll be a smooth ride.

Agreed

Superb..Im sold!!!

I've played for a few hours this morning and again just now. I thought I'd post a short review without reading the others (and hence being influenced, so apologies if I repeat stuff)

First impressions... well it's a beta, some of the stuff like the server bowser is bad e.g. it lists servers alphabetically with no means of sorting them by say ping. Usefully the best UK server are multiplays, so they're easy enough to find. The friend list thing isn't working at the moment, but was a frature that should have been in the original bf2 and should be handy.

Connecting to server was flawless for me.. I've heard reports of crashes etc., however I've not had any problems so far.

Gamewise I had everything on max and it handled it fine, although seemed a little slow. I mean in actual movement speed, the respawns are fast at 5 or 6 seconds or so. Turned everything to low, also handled the same.. I threfore assume the pace of the game is a little slower than I expected, although this is made up by the lack of waiting for respawns. The 4 classes in the game, recon (sniper), assault (noobtube!), engineer (Anti-tank) and Medic. All seems fairly straight forward the engineer class is basically a merging of AT/Engineer, while the the assault class takes the ammo bags of the bf2 support class.

The noobtube only carries 2 rounds (but at least assault can drop an ammo box). It does however have no discernable range limitations and no yaw to the shots.. meaning I managed to noobtube a building while parachuting in and also from a hill managed to noobtube an unfortunate at the far edge of my draw distance. Only a few hours of playing and being accused of cheating already. Bah.

After being hit your health recharges, like halo. Medics are only there to revive, therefore limiting their usefulness

Effectswise, it's all very pretty. While epic explosions are very nice I did find it a little on the busy side; stuff smoking and blowing up all around me, was difficult to find actual people to kill. When I did find people perhaps my aim really is balls, but I didn't find the hit reg to be particularily good, especially using the machine gun on a tank.. just couldn't seem to kill anyone with that.

The noobtube fires a bit like mw2, this'll take a bit of getting used to. As will the running - can't run and move sideways, unlike bf2. Basically this is first impressions, at the moment I feel the balance is off in the favour of snipers - they can actually kill things, whereas assault seem to empty clips without killing... foreseeing a whole bunch of people on the EA forums moaning about hit reg.

Other points, the field of view is pretty limited on my temporary 4:3 monitor (my widescreen being repaired). The helicoptr took of like it has no weight or intertia which just felt.. wrong. I've only found crouch, doesn't appear to be a prone (which for snipers seems weird). At present you can't invite people to yrou squads

All in all, certainly nothing that would kill the game and has been fun so far. I'm interested in some squad work as I think this will really change the nature of things. Essentialyl the game is very promising so far (providing your system can handle it )

some things like health regenerating sound super ghey
whats up with only having 4 classes.. and them all being the support ones. is there not some kind of proper heavy machine gun type or even a mid-size machine gun type?
i mean shit if you want to get rid of some classes i heard the sniper class in all games blows.. just sayin!

glad you guys like it so far tho, hopefully that means i'll find something good to it

taken the plunge , pre-ordered !

medics are now the class with these, e.g. you start out with a pkm - which tbh doesnt interest me hence ive been playing assault

Agreed

that sounds ridiculous to me

however i wish i was there for 6's first play thru. "i'm only interested in the medic guns as i'm almost for sure going to play medic only". tard.

roflcopter with a side dish of lmaoplanz topped with a lulztrain

Esentially:

Recon Class: is a mix of sniper (sniper rifle) and spec ops (c4)
Medic Class: is a mix of medic (kits/revives) and has a PKM (old bf2 support gun)
Assault Class: Is a mix of assault (assault gun + noobtube) and support (ammo refill box)
Engineer Class: Is a mix of engineer (wrench.. or drill as it appears now) and AT - they have rockets.

Although on paper a medic with an LMG seems wrong, the balance is pretty good in that respect. If the medic had a pants gun, there would be little reason to play them

Additionally I've found the M9 pistol to be overpowered and have seen many players using that as primary weapon - hopefully dice will tweak it.

I hated the pkm sooooooo much

was quite suprised when I went looking for the prone option to find on the EA forums a lot of people ranting because there isn't one

I would suggest holding off buying it based on my own reviews - I still need to play a lot more of it yet to decide whether I love or hate it

I've also noticed what feels like input lag.. could just be me being new at the game, but something just doesn't feel right. Checking the EA forums for this issue, a few people are moaning about it. Basically will see over the next month if it's fixed, if not will cancel the pre-order. If this and a few other issues are fixed then it has a lot of potential.

So far so good though...depends how much dice work on it before it's released proper.

Pros: nootube, pretty, destructable environments
Cons: silly weapons/classes, laggy, hardware intensive, consoley, no prone, poor hitreg

cant wait till i get to check it out

is'nt prone for extreme campers?

usually when you go prone you plan on staying in the same spot for a while

clearly never played bf2 with us


and monkey, how many times have i said in the shoutbox that there is no prone, im suprised you only just found out.

from what ive played of it, prone is irrelevant anyway - i dont miss it.

wow when monkey does his summary review, it actually sounds quite shit.

i mean

i dont give a shit about the noobtube

nor do i care if its pretty

destructable environments are nice.. but not a deal breaker

and then the rest are cons.. yikes!

the old review made it sound better!

Have you still not managed to get on the BETA Raile?

no i havnt tried yet dude. working extreme hours right now and spending the rest with my g/f.
gonna try to get on sunday night

i have my code but i need to download it..

is there a quick SM download available?

http://monkeyfiend.com/BFBC2_PC_ClosedBeta_RC1_511270.zip

Monkey took the liberty of uploading it for our pleasure hope to see you on there soon!

ive just ordered my new headset too.. so i should have a mic by monday

awesome, which one did you go for?

have to say the 4 or so hours ive spent with it so far have been really good.

I guess not having spent any more than an hour or 2 in BF2 i don,t have anything to compare it to, sure its a beta and has a few bugs to iron out , but overall i am quite impressed and quite looking forward to the release now.

to me this doesn't feel like an obvious console port , not as much as R6 Vegas did anyway.

sennheiser pc350

Posted in a public forum?

oh, the bandwidth jedi's are going to feel this one

woooooooooooooops, my bad feel free to delete my post on account of me being a numpty

hehe, nah will be good to see just how long it takes for public to repost that link, then for the unwashed masses to bring down my site

besides it's good to wind up the web hosts once in a while

Have played another hour of BC2 today, still can't get the hang of aiming .. even close range. I do get the impression the unlock guns are better than stock ones having picked them up but haven't played anywhere near long enough to unlock them myself.

Day after tomorrow am off for 2 days so exepect to be caning it then

I had a really good few rounds last night, haven't tried picking up other guns or anything of the sort tbh. I've been enjoying it, agree with you about the hit boxes though, its caused me to use my knife more though in close combat

Double post, not a proud moment

in the brief few hours between arising from bed at 4pm and going to work at 6pm (including washing/dinner etc.,) I managed to get a few games in. Still can't seem to get the mouse movement verying between laggy or over-sensitive making aiming at longer ranges hard.

M9 pistol still seems ridiculously overpowered. On a noobtube perspective, the use of the ammo box means I can hang and somewhere and infinitely resupply my noobtube. The downside is after firing a noobtube, if you've missed it takes a very long time to switch toanother weapon; usually meaning you die. The noobtube is much less powerful than bf2 - althougth the range/deviation are good, there's very little splash damage so you need to hit people almost perfectly.

Have still yet to see a game where a squad works together. Not a fan of the assault iron sights, however the unlocks seem to have better aim and sights. I've also noticed you can change graphics settings in the config files that you cant change in game; such as turning off bloom effects etc., might be handy for decluttering the view or for performance tweaks

from my ps3 experience is say no prone is good. gets rid of faggy snipers. and best way to get points is to an engineer on a vehicles map.