Battlefield 3 Hands-On Beta

Let’s get this straight, I love the Battlefield 3 beta. Ive been playing it every moment I’m not eating, sleeping, or working since it was released on Tuesday the 27th. I eagerly await the open beta that starts tomorrow to welcome a new whole crowd of players, both Battlefield veterans or just potentially interested gamers, into the experience. Since I started playing the Battlefield series with Battlefield 2 in a Gamefrog cafe that was located in a mall I have never stopped wanting more of the series and this beta, as a representation of what is to come with the final release of the game, delivers almost everything I could want or expect.

That all being said, there are quite a few things about the beta that I do not particularly enjoy, but many of those things are simply because it is a beta and is bound to have an approximate truck-load of problems. Some of the bothersome aspects would be the wide variety of bugs that you will experience while playing, sometimes the booming and glorious sound will all but disappear, other times you will get killed by what would appear to be the ground and then in the killcam you see their corpse bugging out through the floor and arms a-waving every with direction, and if you happen to crouch or go prone near a wall or a piece of cover you will often notice that either you or the wall/cover is bouncing. And what fps game beta with the ability to go prone would be complete without the bug of going into the ground? But as I said before, this is a beta so these kinds of things are not even remotely a surprise and they do not dampen the amount of fun there is to be had with the beta.

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Fate/Zero Anime Series to be Simulcast in Eight Languages Online

The newest addition to the popular Fate series, whose previous titles include the animated series Fate/Stay Night, will be simulcast to the world on October 2. Only one day behind its premier in Japan, Fate/Zero will be released online with subtitles in eight languages on the Nico Nico Douga video site. You will want to…

The Razor’s Edge of Balance.

There is a never-ending and ever emotional argument when it comes to many games regarding balance. Balance would be the game being fair and everyone having an even footing when it comes to actually playing the game. It is not an uncommon sight to visit a particular game’s forums and see someone talking about, or dare I say complaining, about how feature x or feature y is unbalanced or favoring their opponent.I believe that balance is something that has become so subjective that unless there is a significant and obvious difference between two things in a game that should be equal that we, the people playing the games, might have a less than objective perspective on balance .

Say for example that your opponent in a real time strategy game like Starcraft 2 is playing a certain faction and is beating you rather severely, my reaction could be any number of things but most likely would fall into either A) “Oh wow this opponent is good/Oh wow I’m awful at Starcraft 2.” or B) “Hmm maybe his faction is just overpowered/the faction I’m playing just isn’t very good 1v1 against his.” In that example I would go with option A as it is a fact that I’m not very good at SC2 but I think it provides a good example of the ranges of reactions.

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Elantris is a Magical Journey

Last week I talked about Brandon Sanderson’s awesome book Warbreaker. This week I address another stand alone novel by Sanderson: Elantris. Elantris was his debut onto the science-fiction novel scene and it is a great opening novel. The story is superbly written and has a wonderful plot that deals with religion, political subterfuge, and of course,…

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Comic Issues #33 – Going Digital with Free-to-Play

You can listen to this episode on our Comic Issues channel at Anchor.fm! With the New 52, DC rebooted its entire franchise to gain new readers. It seems that its online component, the DC Universe Online is taking note, as yet another MMO goes free-to-play. What will this mean for the end user? Will our…