Having only completed a few missions on the single player I wasn't planing on reviewing Battlefield 3 so early but I felt the need to comment on the multiplayer side of things. After playing plenty of Battlefield Bad Company 2 I was all set to make Battlefield 3 my next shooter to play to death. Unfortunately, by playing Bad Company 2 so much it's actually greatly lowered my opinion of Battlefield 3's multiplayer. The thing is, Battlefield 3 has some incredibly frustrating bugs and mechanics that Bad Company 2 didn't have. 

Since deciding to write a multiplayer review I've continued to play online. Initially I was going to review Battlefield 3's multiplayer properly but the more I play it the more it's annoying me. And so this 'review' is in reality going to be a list of bugs and annoyances, starting with the least annoying items first. 

• The first annoyance was actually present in Bad Company 2 but still annoys me and takes away my valuable sleep. You cannot quit the current game between rounds. After a match is the prime time to leave as you give time for the match making system to find a replacement but you must load the new map, then leave. This causes me to forget I wanted to quit and forces me to play round after round when I should be counting sheep. Of course you can quit the game completely or turn of the console but I generally like to look at the new equipment I've unlocked and alter my classes accordingly. 
• Menus are too deep. To change your gun's attachments you have to navigate through level after level of menus. On the console it doesn't work well. The menus take for ages to navigate and some of the weirdest controls. It may work for PC but not console.
• No private servers on console. On day one PC players get this. I have no plans to open up a server and leave my PS3 on all the time but I would like to set up a server so I can practise flying and learn the maps. Rumour has it that this will be patched in at some point which is good but PC get's it day one? Thanks for forgetting us DICE.
• On a side note and not officially part of my list is the maximum number of players per server. On PC it's 32 (but can be 64) and on console it's only 24. Resistance 3 did 64 players on PS3. What gives? 
• Squads don't always keep together. When you invite a friend to your squad you generally want to play with them, not against (however, I thought having the option to evenly split up your squad would be nice so you could have half on one side, half on the other). This issue should be higher but DICE have recognised this as an issue with match making and are working on it. Thanks! 
• The input is laggy and inconsistent. If you played Killzone 3 you'll know what I mean but with Killzone it was intentional. Close quarters firefights are a mess. The controls also seem to have two areas of sensitivity. Small movements close to the centre of the analogue stick move the cross-hair slower and the further away you move the analogue stick from the centre the faster it moves. Having the ability to do smaller movements when aiming do the sights and faster movements when aiming from the hip sounds great but it's doesn't work right.
• One of the big features of the new Frostbite 2 engine is sound. Rounds skimming by your head, explosions making your round shake... are there to make you feel more in involved in the game but quite often the ambient sound cuts out. What happens is you'll be in the middle of a fierce battle with tanks in front of you, soldiers all around and jets and helicopters in skies above. That's a lot of sound. Then silence. All sound goes, except for your footsteps and when you fire your weapon. 
• In many of the maps the game play area is really small and it limits you too much. Flanking becomes hard (near impossible) and some areas of the map that seem accessible, aren't. Probably the worst example of this in the map Grand Bazaar on Rush. Attacking on this map is limited to small corridors that are easy to defend, hard to attack. Not all bad. It provides a more challenging assault and in real urban warfare you'd most likely get stuck in choke points. The issue is the alleyways only let you go half way down when the enemy can go all the way, preventing you chasing the them down or any attempts to flank them. 
• VoIP is terrible. It's impossible to understand your squad mates when they break up so much you hear only a third of what they say. I'd like to say it doesn't happen all the time but it happens ALL the time. It's rare to make it through a round without the VoIP messing up.
• And the number one most annoying part of Battlefield 3 goes too... not being able to jumping over small objects and in windows. By small objects I really mean small. Walls that aren't even as high as your knees will get you stuck and get you dead. Also, jumping through windows sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. 

So why all these issues? If you discount the issues with menus, small map areas and lighting as they are by design, then you are left with bugs. DICE openly say that PC is their lead platform (I watched this long video presentation about Frostbite 2 but cannot find the link) which in it's self shouldn't be a problem. However it appears DICE completed the PC version and rushed the console versions, probably to beat Modern Warfare 3 to the stores. This seems like the most likely reason to me, since MW3 is only around the corner. 

This post has been very negative. Battlefield 3 is a great game but the items I've outlined almost ruin it for me. So far the story mode is going well and as soon as I complete it I'll post a proper review.

The world of MotorStorm is a racing and music festival that travels the world to find the crazies places to races almost all types of race machines. For MotorStorm Apocalypse this place is an unnamed American city which is experiencing earth quakes on an apocalyptic scale. Everyone has evacuated the city. All that remains are the remains of sky scrapes, fly overs, homes and some crazy mofos who wanna race.

Festival Mode

The story is very much what you'd expect from a racing game, simple. It's split into three parts that take place simultaneously over the three day festival of MotorStorm. Rookie, Pro and Veteran. Each has it's own little plot that overlap slightly but is nothing more than distraction to make the game seem longer. The stories all follow the same structure, you become a character, you have a personal battle with something or someone, race, cut scene, race, cut scene,...,  the end. Stepping away from the individual characters you play there's the festival that's going on (on an aircraft carrier) and a war between MotorStorm, Dustlite and the Crazies. Dustlite are a private military company who are hired to look after the city. Complete non-sense when you see the city in ruins from day one. The Crazies are the people who didn't evacuate. I like to compare the Crazies to zombies, they are there just to be ran over. All three of the sides hate the other two, so when racing you're always under fire directly or indirectly. The "story" will keep your attention for only a few seconds at a time. Luckily the story is told using animated comic strips which are quite entertaining. In any case, does anyone buy a racing game for the story? It fills in the gaps between races nicely, giving your throttle finger a rest.

When it comes to the racing MotorStorm deliveries. The broken city setting provides a fantastic variety of tracks (and routes within each track) to make each race different. On top of that the city is moving. The quakes are happening all the time, causing buildings to topple, roads to collapse and be forced upwards and pretty much everything else explodes. All these events happen in a scripted way but I've noticed not always at the same point. Some events will just be visual but others will change the track by blocking off routes or revealing new ones in the debris. There's also a war raging around you. Helicopters and harriers over head, and soldiers and tanks on the ground. They all shot at you with machine guns and RPGs, another source of explosions. Early on in the game these shots won't do anything but as you get further in they can cause you to explode if you've maxed out your boost. Helicopters regularly crash on the track, like the scenery, causing routes to be blocked and revealed. Putting all these events together makes MotorStorm looks spectacular. 

While dealing with the ever changing environments you also have to contend with 15 other races through out the story mode. Pretty much every race has a mix of vehicle types, ranging from motorbikes to super cars and quad bikes to big rigs. 

MotorStorm's races can be greatly satisfying or ridiculously infuriating. Unlike most racing games, contact is not only allowed but makes up 90% of the strategy for each race. The other 10% being split between "shall I go left, right or straight on?" and timing your boosts. The frustration in MotorStorm comes from the other racers. If you think you can stick to a racing line, you are wrong. The other racers will have something to say about that and will act. So, always be prepared to take an alternate route. Take this as an example: imagine you're in first place, you're driving your pick up truck superbly, then a motorbike on full boost smashes straight into the back of you, goes under your truck, you to lose all control and you crash. It happens all to often. The AI seems to have no sense or desire to win.  It's like they are programed to crash into you and take away your glory. Which to be honest is how it should be in MotorStorm, they've done it right, but when it happens it doesn't half piss you off.

The racing in the story mode aren't all that hard really. Gaining the position to progress is easily done on the first or second attempt. A few more attempts may be required to get first on every race or to pick up all the MotorStorm playing cards. Apart from the straight out racing, there is the elimination mode. It's simple, whoever is in last place is eliminated every 15 seconds until there's one man standing. 

Beyond The Story and Multi-player

The story mode isn't too long but is plenty long enough. After completing the story there is surprisingly a lot more to do. For every race you won in the story you unlock hardcore mode, involving harder competitors and target time. Also, there's time trials for each track. Weekly challenges and downloadable events make up the rest. Weekly challenges provides 3 new time limited challenges per week and downloadable events (there's 7 in total and 4 are free to download from the PS Store) which have several races each. Most of the offline game modes let you earn coins to level up which I'm assuming unlocks items for customising your vehicles.  Unfortunately, at this moment in time it seems there's no one playing online. That's a shame because it doesn't allow me to review this aspect of the game and I remember the original MotorStorm's online multi-player being quite fun. 

Overall MotorStorm is a great racing game. I wouldn't have paid full price for it but it's an absolute bargin second hand.