Move out Marines!

I'm back. I was slipping out of my old routine and slacking, so am here to attempt to get back into things. There is only one thing to blame, really (other than myself of course), and that is Battlefield 3. What a glorious, epic game that is. It lives up to all my expectations and surpasses some. The single player is an intriguing story, and although the overall length of the game is a little shorter than most would like, I found it reasonable. The action is intense and varied, thanks to the mechanism of switching between several characters to tell different parts of the same story, with brilliant building of suspense during cut scenes and plot moments.

I think this game wows mainly because of the graphics and effects. The Frostbite 2 engine used by DICE is absolutely breathtaking. The sheer beauty of the world allows you to overlook pretty much any flaw. With lens flare glinting off the spray-flecked glass canopy of your F-18 as you take off from the deck of U.S.S George H W Bush in the Persian Gulf on a stormy, moody day, streaking through clouds towards an Iranian airbase, you really feel part of something on a huge scale, and you absolutely do not care about anything other than nailing those bogeys.

LOOK AT THE SHINY!

The lighting, the shadows, the smoothness of the soldiers' uniforms, their animations, the detail on vehicles, the environment, on your weapon.. everything. It's phenomenal.

Multiplayer is where the game really shines. The maps are great and offer everything from close-quarters inner city combat with tight alleys (The Grand Bazaar, Seine Crossing) to long range vehicle warfare (Caspian Border, Kharg Island), with variations on each map depending on game mode. The weapons are suitably meaty, sound effects are great (especially player call-outs, when they are pinned down or out of ammo), ground vehicles are easy to pick up, difficult to master, whereas helicopters and jets are just... difficult.

There are a few flaws. Some menus are difficult to navigate, and a glaring omission is the ability to quit between games.. you have to wait for the map to load before exiting the game, which does get annoying. Sometimes changes you make to your kit or solider aren't saved between sessions, and EA's whole 'Buy an online pass' thing is a horrific money-grabbing scheme that means BF3 is going to be more expensive as a second-hand game, due to having to buy a new code for online play. There is no manual included with the game so unless you can find the controls in the menus or remember them from the tutorials forever, good luck. Ridiculous.

Still, those technical faults aside, I think this is a truly brilliant game, and one I am not ashamed to be wasting my days playing.

Freshness

I have a new computer!

It's a rather impressive beast, the main tower unit is roughly half as big again, (if not more) as my old one, all matt black metal, plastic and hexagonal fan vents. My old PC was a faithful if tired old companion, having been with me for four years or so. During that time he had multiple nervous breakdowns, a pretty serious one leaving him somewhat crippled a few months ago. The version of XP was corrupted... somehow... so the hard drive had to be split up and a clean new version put on beside it - it worked, but he was never the same after that. He got slower and slower, and had repeated issues with memory running out and so on.

It was time for a new one, and I am very, very grateful to my partner for hooking me up with my lovely new machine. The old one is going to be put in the living room with a new hard drive and hooked up to the TV as a media PC, which is cool, but I'm not sure how much use it will get, considering we have an Xbox 360 and the V+ Media box already hooked up.

My new PC is named Ceres, mostly after the dwarf planet that inhabits the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but then I soon realised that is also the name of the Roman Goddess of agriculture, grain crops and fertility. My huge, hulking computer is a girl!

Oh well. So far everything has been great. I'm loving Windows 7, and the ability to run more than two programs at once is refreshing. One thing I realised yesterday whilst transferring my most valuable files (music albums) across the network, was just how much clutter I had accumulated across various folders - things I had held onto because they might be useful or valuable someday - and when it came down to it, I realised they were useless and that I would not miss them. So I didn't transfer anything except my music collection, some photographs and a few stories and things I had written that I intend to work on again someday; I left 98% of the couple hundred GBs worth of stuff behind - and I was right - I don't miss it. I feel great having a clean, empty, fast computer that isn't bogged down by years of collected garbage.

Perhaps it would be good if we could upgrade our lives sometimes and leave all the baggage and trash behind us..