BF3 Alpha Impressions

[Bones]

Ok so I have spent about 2 hours in the Pre-Alpha so far. Overall I like it, to me it feels more like vanilla BF2 then a simple COD clone.

PROS:
- Even in Pre-Alpha the Frostbite 2.0 Engine looks amazing
- Sound design is really great
- The Battlelog website is a nice touch for that all important stat tracking
- Gameplay is smooth, responsive, and most important FUN!!!!

CONS:
- Some weapons/kits feel unbalanced
- The destructibility of the environments is not up to par with what DICE has made us believe
- October now seems so far away!!!

Please, if you have access and played in the Pre-Alpha sound off with your likes/dislikes. I am curious as to what others think of it so far.

[=VG= SemlerPDX]

As one who doesn't have it, I want to know about any large vehicular base maps like ol' Kashan, if you get to play any in that version.
!eatmyuzi
How do the tanks feel? Anyone flown one of them new Jets? Can they lock on? !cp

[=VG= LittleTortiaBoy]

my biggest con IS the battlelog website, seems to only favor those who use chrome cause it hasn't even let me play it at all, and I'm not gonna download chrome to play a game...

[Bones]

=VG= SemlerPDX LAN_WROTE ...

As one who doesn't have it, I want to know about any large vehicular base maps like ol' Kashan, if you get to play any in that version.
!eatmyuzi
How do the tanks feel? Anyone flown one of them new Jets? Can they lock on? !cp

The one map that is included in the Pre-Alpha is "Operation Metro", the map itself is quite large. There is only one vehicle in this round of testing and that is the Lav-25, IMO it feels identical to the one found in BF2.

[Bones]

LittleTortiaBoy LAN_WROTE ...

my biggest con IS the battlelog website, seems to only favor those who use chrome cause it hasn't even let me play it at all, and I'm not gonna download chrome to play a game...

Weird, works fine for me in both IE and Firefox. Are you sure you have got the Battlelog plugin installed?

[PITN]

Battlelog requires a plug-in?

Is this plug-in required to play the game?

[Bones]

PITN LAN_WROTE ...

Battlelog requires a plug-in?

Is this plug-in required to play the game?

As far as I know it is required to launch the client. I could be wrong though. i just know that when I launch the game through Origin, it opens up a web browser window where I have to log into my EA master account. From there you have to click find match. The first time I did that it had to install the browser plug-in.

[PITN]

Okay, it may just be related to the Alpha trials. But if the game forces Origin membership EA can go !fuk itself.

[Bones]

You are probably correct as the Alpha is strictly handled via Origin. that is unless once the game ships, you still have to install Origin and create an account like a lot of Steam titles.