So my friend bought a new 'Gaming' PC

Battlefield 3 vs Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Its has been almost a year since Battlefield 3's release, we saw too many comparisons between Battlefield 3 vs Bad company 2, i was not sure that how would BC2 (bad company 2) would be better then BF3, i mean BF3 has so great graphics, Pocket ripping DLCs, JETS ! etc, so i decided to play BF3, got my friends copy thanks ashish and played BF3 for 3 months non-stop, i liked the game but wasn't fun at all, th 64 player conquest mode is very poorly designed compared to the classic Battlefield 2.

Lets discuss this in detail.

Cost and Multiplayer updates:
Bad company 2 just Rs.400 (7$)
Battlefield 3 Rs.1200 (12$)
P.S
[i couldn't download the game from Origin because my internet is crap thanks to MTNL, DL:60kbps]

BC2 had just one update of 1.6gigs (which can be downloaded separately via torrent) just install that update you in the game, whereas for BF3 you need to download almost 6.2gigs of updates and fixes before you jump into the game + Origin and Battlelog woes and downloading that 6gigs update from my 60kbps net was a pain in my arse.

Switching to graphics :
No doubt Battlefield 3 wins in every aspect, but there are some things DICE needs to fix it,
Sun flare : This sh*t has got me killed hundreds of times, sun-flare looks fine BC2 too has it but that doesn't blind you, in BF3 on 1st day it looks nice with a lot of eye candy, later it annoys.

Tactical Flashlight : BF3 flashlight attachment was a great idea which terribly went wrong, its not DICE's fault, the problem is with OP's using it to blind enemies and even team mates when they refuse to throw a ammo box, even in a broad daylight map like noshar canal or Caspian border you can too many noobs running around with flashlight and blinding other players.
However graphics in BC2 also uses DX11, the ambiance of the game is simply good, BC2 has a combination of realistic and stylized lights in every multiplayer map whereas Battlefield 3 has same kind of lighting in each and every map.

Destruction : as we all know BF3's environment is highly detailed and looks just awesome but there is very low amount of destruction compared to BC2, BC2 uses its own destruction engine known as Destruction 2.0 (Destruction 1.0 is in Bad company) whereas Battlefield 3 used Geomod (Destruction 3.0) which is the destruction engine right from Red faction: Guirella, now the difference between BF3 and BC2's destruction is that BF3's destruction highly detailed compared to BC2 say a 2 floor building in BC2 is made up of 25-30 meshes/parts right from the intact building to totally collapsed and Battlefield 3's 2 floor building is made up for some 75-100 parts but the buildings doesn't collapse you can only destroy 1/4 or 2/4 part of the building, of course there are some small warehouses which can be completely destroyed but if there is a person in there and the building collapses on him, he doesn't die like in BC2. However you can destroy small objects like fences with knife, trees, crates etc.

Textures :
Lets talk about the texture work in detail.
Battlefield 3 Texture resolution [PC]
Character : 2048
Vehicles : 1024
Enviornment : 512/1024.
In console version all the textures are in 512 and 256 with low-poly unrealistic models (bad luck console users)

Bad company 2 Texture resolution:
Character : 1024
Vehicles : 1024
Enviornment : 512/1024.

Both the games have same texture, BF3 has Texture tesellation enabled by default somehow you cannot turn it off.
For Texture work Battlefield 3 takes the edge.

Sound :
Both the game has Dolby Digital surround sound which supports 7.1 sound setup, but somehow i like the sounds in BC2 more
Reasons:
* BF3's each and every weapon sounds same and the tearing sound is pretty annoying.
* in BC2 you can actually listen the gushing sound of wind in a desert map, in BF3 you cant, although BF3 has that sound but it gets suppresed by background war sounds which is a map score not the ones which we are playing.
* in BC2 The american soldier speaks in english and Russian soldier speaks in Russian, in BF3 the Russian also speaks in english but with an russian accent, what difference does it make ? It does, you can actually listen the sound and make out there is an american/russian soldier around you.
* C4's sound, in BF3 you place a C4 and in BC2 you throw it, so suppose if you are in tank and some sneaky bastard tries to blow up your tank with C4, you can actually listen to the sound of C4's being sticked like *Clink*
But i like how sniper rifle sounds in BF3 its feels like real sniper rifle being fired, and the M95's sound in BC2 is terrible !

Sniping :
Those who have played both the games will surely agree that sniping in BC2 is way good than BF3,
Why ?
Bulletdrop :
Bulletdrop is when you fire a bullet for any gun the bullet drops after travelling to certain distance the bullet falls on the ground due to gravity, so in order to land a long range perfect shot you need to point the the barrel/scope slightly above the target and each gun had different bullet drops which took skill to master on. In Battlefield 3 the bullet drop is very minimal you dont need to aim high when you are taking a shot below 500 metres.

Bullet timing:
It does'nt need an explaination, when you shoot someone the bullet does'nt hit the moment when you click, it takes time to travel and you need to shoot by your judgement for example if the target is moving from left to right you need to shoot a little far from the target's direction and above it (bulletdrop) and these both is'nt present in all COD series and seems like BF3 is also following the same tradition.
It took me nearly 40 hours to master on snipers in BC2 whereas in BF3 it just took me 6 hours to master on snipers.

IRNV (Thermal scope)
Thermal scope ? Are you f*cking serious DICE ? Another OP attachment prefered by campers and COD noobs, its was one of the reasons why i left COD, now not again, the situation is same here seems like COD kids have just started playing BF3 with IRNV on Saiga shotty, snipers and assault even on broad daylight maps like caspian border and noshahr canal canal, the specs ops camo helps a bit.

Classes:
BF3's class system is a bit mismatched from BC2's class system, in BC2 Assault force supplies with Ammo and Heavy gunner is a Medic whereas in BF3 Assault force is a Medic and Support team supplies Ammo, which is pretty illogical, lets forget about game and talk generally, A heavygunner is 2nd most heaviest person on the battlefield due to his gear, he cannot carry extra ammo packs as his gun itself weighs above 15-16 pounds including extra MG mags, technically he can carry a small medic kit with defibrillators, and assault force is lightest persons of the field as he only has an assault rifle with just grenade launcher ammo, he can carry extra ammo kits, and Mortar is given to Support class so you can see many mortar guys with unlimited ammo noobing around the map, mortar with assault force would be bit logical atleast it would'nt give them unlimited ammo. *screw logic*

- BF3 has only 9 maps (which are not so big) whereas BC2 has around 20 maps (including Vietnam) which does'nt look alike.
So Rs.1200 (21$) for just 9 maps
Rs.400 (7$) for 20 maps. (got Vietnam for free)

Hackers !
Yes there are too many hackers its still not fixed, i remember when i entered the BF3 server on 1st day it was filled with tons and tons of aimbotters, however PB managed to kick them after 6 hours, but today still you can find hackers in pubs, and in BC2 i had only encountered a hacker once which later got permanently banned from BC2.

in my opinion BC2 is way better then BF3.

 

Problems with today's gaming industry (Part - I)

Over the last decade or so we have seen
new features creep there way into the
gaming industry which are justified by devs/publishers to stop piracy or to
 generate more revenue out of the  consumers. Out of the list below what do you think has been the worst "feature" to  be introduced so far?

1) DRM (Digital rights: management) to curb piracy, so far DRM has been unsuccessful to stop video game piracy, the worst part about DRM that you always need to be online even if you want to play Singleplayer games, it clearly stats no internet = no games, ubisoft's Uplay is the best example of DRM, well ubisoft claimed that it would stop pc game piracy but however yesterday evening (05/09/2012) they reported the 93 to 95% of games that gamers play are pirated. Ya now we see DRM is very successful !

2) DLC (Downloadable content) :
DRM can be good in some ways but this DLC sh*t is worst part in gaming industry ever, its the thing that is being made along with the game and also present in your Disc but you need to pay to unlock the level/modes, so technically you are paying not NOTHING ! In early times the DLC's were called expansion packs but they were out of the box, you can even buy a physical copy of expansion packs that is kind of good, but today its like DLCs are part of the game, no game releases without sh*tty DLCs, best example is recently released Battlefield 3 Premium which costs 50$ (Rs.2700 india and Rs.3299 from flipkart)
What does premium includes:
Few new maps, couple of new weapons and vehicles) which is definitely not worth Rs.2699. (50$)

* MOH Warfighter Limited edition =Rs.1499 (27$)
* Crysis 3 Limited Edition = Rs.1499 (27$)

Hence Crysis 3 +MOH Warfighter (both
limited editions)=Rs 2988 (54$),
Which is almost same price as that of BF3  Premium so above is better deal , I will go
for above two games then BF3 Premium.

As we know EA games is a fat greedy pig who just cares about money they proudly say DLC's are future of gaming. So in near future we can expect only 5 game levels are unlocked out of 9 levels and you need to pay for every level to unlock, seriously bullsh*t !
i don't hate DLCs but i hate their costs it costs as much as new game, like Skyrim dawnguard, BF3 premium, Mw3 chaos pack, spec ops pack etc etc etc...

3) Constant patching :
Releasing unfinished games results in constant patching, almost all games released nowadays are  unfinished due to deadlines like skyrim, rage and BF3 the best, its the most annoying thing like when you turn your pc/console to kick some a** in multiplayers the game starts to update and it takes forever, i remember i borrowed a friends BF3 copy just to know whether the game is worth buying or not, first time BF3 downloaded a f*ckin 4GBs on updates ! Which took a whole day to download as my internet is shite (70kbps download speed), multiplayer experience was horrible 10 year olds camping with snipers and mortars, tons and tons of glitches and bugs, small maps compared to classic BF2 and BC2, back to topic, after a week playing BF3, Dice decided to screw us once again another update/patch released of 3GBs this time i didn't care to update just returned the copy to my friend and decided not to even take Battlefield 3 for free, whereas Battlefield : Bad company 2 predecessor of Battlefield 3 had just 1 update and that too of just 1.2GBs which included some minor bug fixes and BC2: Vietnam DLC which was FREE, All hail to Vietnam ! Best DLC ever, BC2 was a fully completed game, same thing was with Need for speed: Most wanted and call of duty 4: modern warfare which almost in all 8 back to back updates, it happens mostly with multiplayer games,
Developers Y U NO release completed games ?

4) Good graphics, no story :
Max Payne 2, Indigo prophecy, Ashen (N-gage), call of duty 4, Farcry 2, Black ops and many more were the games which didn't had that DX11 ultra, hyper, tessellated graphics but are popular due to their good storyline and excellent game design. However Game devs today concentrate more on graphics instead of story there are only few games which have good graphics and good story as well, Graphics is secondary, a good game design and story is what matters, its like beauty with brains, most of games are'nt balanced, games like Crysis series doesn't have that good story people like it due to realistic graphics, in android gaming too there are games with decent graphics but good story is missing, now just don't tell that mobile games are not made for story etc etc, 10 years ago the games released on Nokia's N-gage platforms like Elder scrolls, Ashen, splinter cell: chaos theory were simple awesome, shame on developers they still cannot create games that on N-gage for Android platform, another example Battlefield 3, now i am not purposely targeting battlefield 3 for each and every problem but BF3 is whole package of annoying sh*t and stuff, BF3's campaign was horrible 'a copy of COD' however Multiplayer is a copy of COD as well, a common story in video game nowadays, Russia and gulf countries are countries of terrorists they are planning to nuke America, how bad might be the graphics of COD, how silly might be its multiplayer, but story is logical and critically acclaimed especially black ops.

5) Digital downloads : i personally hate this one, not because my internet speed is low or something but it kills the actual joy and satisfaction of physical copies.

(1) Broadband sucker : Purchasing games digitally is a nightmare for people with limited data usage internet and nowadays the game size is massive
Max Payne 3 - 26GBs
L.A noire - 17GBs
Battlefield 3 - 13GBs
plus their huge updates. even if we get games cheaper than retail stores we are still in loss. one of my friends told me 'by downloading games digitally i don't have to wait in queues out of game-shop during game release' that doesn't seems to be helping at the time release the downloads gets slower due to server load.

(2) No resell: for gamers on budget used games might be the only way they can afford to play some of their favorite games. Should they be denied the
joy of getting a new a game just because
they cannot spend the money for a new copy ?

(3) Price Control In The Hands Of One : If console games are sold digitally, right from the console, that leaves all the  pricing decisions in the hands of the platform holder. In theory, they could  raise the prices of games, and it would be  out of our control. If a particular retailer decides to charge too much for a game, we just buy it somewhere else. If there is no retailer, either we pay the price or we do not buy the game. Steam does a great job of having
sales frequently, so that at least gives me hope that we will not be ripped off.
Not everyone has a good internet or credit card/paypal to buy game online lets not forget only there are only 36% of internet users in India and 58% in America, but still people play games even though they don't have internet, so here its the same logic as DRM 'no internet = no games' (not to mention games purchased digitally requires net to start even to start singleplayer after purchasing)

What is your opinion of these problems overall? Do you think it  lead to the demise of
 video games? Let us know in the
 comments!

Leaked images of Battlefield 3 Tyrannosaurus from Last DLC

NEW iCEnhancer 2.2 [Work in progress]

VIDEO:

 

Improve your lighting skills with Virtual lighting studio.

Here’s a fun Saturday morning activity for you – try your hand at lighting a virtual model in this Virtual Lighting Studio. It’s pretty simple, and very addicting. For each light, you’ll choose the source – a bare strobe, softbox, or ringlight. Then just decide the power, gel colors, placement and distance. Maybe for the next version the virtual model won’t be so creepy. I agree with David Hobby’s sentiment – “On the one hand, I just blew 20 mins playing with this thing. 

 Try yourself! (link) :
Virtual lighting studio

Battlefield 3 Premium Artbook