Overall impressions from "The Old Republic" beta weekend - Adopt, Adapt and Improve

I've already dipped into my experiences with the beta weekend for Star Wars: The Old Republic, firstly by touching on the space combat missions and secondly by describing how I enjoyed my time with the Bounty Hunter class.
Today I'm going to give my overall thoughts on how I found the game and tell you if my expectations are still the size of an Imperial Star Destroyer or if they've been slaughtered like Sand People by an angry Jedi.

First up let me give you a bit of background on how much time I had with the beta and what I used my time on. I got in a good 25 hours or so, and in that time I leveled a Bounty Hunter to level 17 and a Sith Inquisitor and Warrior both up to level 10. I also dabbled very briefly with a Jedi Knight, but only got up to level 4 before the lure of the Sith Empire overwhelmed me.
My travels took me through Nal Hutta and Korriban, and I also finished up Dromund Kaas with my Bounty Hunter and just got my feet wet on Balmorra. I also played through the "Black Talon" flashpoint, so I got a taste of the "dungeons".

The first stop in my SWTOR experience was the character creator. Compared to what World of Warcraft offers there is an incredible wealth of choice on offer. I do however have two significant gripes with character creation.
Firstly I am disappointed by the race selection that BioWare has decided on. You really only have human and "variations of humans with slightly different coloration". I do appreciate the inclusion of the Chiss, which I have always thought were a very cool race ever since I saw Grand Admiral Thrawn in "Tie Fighter", but Cyborgs are nothing but humans with a few bits of metal stuck to their face and Miraluka are just humans with a veil over their eyes... Really BioWare?!

Miralukans. They're like humans... BUT! No eyes! Mind = Blown!

There are so many other interesting races that they could have chosen. The old Star Wars MMO "Star Wars Galaxies" offered a much wider choice including Wookies, Trandoshans and Rodians. I don't know if BioWare simply thought that people did not want to play anything that looks more alien than a red human with some small horns on his head, but I am really disappointed that we're getting treated to these "Star Trek" aliens.
I also found that the "body type" selection is too extreme with the available options. You go from skinny short guy to super Schwarzenegger and then to big fatty Mcfat with no steps in between. The end result is that pretty much 90% of the male characters that I saw in the game were all using the pumped bodybuilder body type, which is a big shame. There needs to be a more "normal" body type available that is neither skinny nor steroid filled.

On to the game itself then. Every class starts the game with the classic "Star Wars crawl" that sets the scene for your situation and finishes off with a cutscene that shows your character arriving on the relevant starting planet. It's a great way to set the mood and feels appropriately Star Wars.
You'll immediately be thrown into a conversation with a story NPC and be introduced to the voiced conversations and the dialogue wheel. Pretty much throughout my beta testing time I found the quality of the voice work to be really good and the conversations were interesting to follow. I did encounter several instances though, where I would be talking to an alien character speaking in their native tongue and their spoken lines would take only a second or two even though the lines they were speaking were two or three complete sentences, which was a bit jarring.

Battlefield 3 Beta on PC opens for Caspian Border map (Vehicles!!!)

So if you remember back to my piece on my initial impressions on the Battlefield 3 multiplayer beta, then you know that the thing that I was really missing from the beta was vehicles.

It was therefore with great delight and gleeful schoolgirl screaming that I found out that this weekend Dice has opened up the Caspian Border map for PC players in the beta.

This map features a ton of vehicles, including jets, choppers, jeeps and tanks.

I've taken it for a spin and I can only say that *this* is the Battlefield I was looking for!

Got jets? Got f**king jets!

Climbing a rolling hill, watching a jet dogfight in the skies above.

Shouldering your RPG and taking a potshot at the passing enemy tank down on the road, praying it will not spot you and turn you into a red splotch on the grass.

This is the mayhem and large scale battle that I was looking for.

I grabbed a few mins of footage of me playing, sitting in the machine gun of a tank and also taking on an enemy APC on foot with an RPG.

Battlefield 3 beta impressions -"Shiny!"

The Battlefield 3 beta for multiplayer started up yesterday for people that have preordered the game.

As I happen to be one of these select few couple of million individuals with more money than sense, who were willing to put down money up front for a game that has not even been published yet, I am now part of this beta.

Commuters are getting more and more aggressive these days

I have only had time to play for a few hours but I think that I have a good feel of the basics of the game, within the confines that are set in the beta (i.e. only one map and one multiplayer mode)

Below I'll share the good and bad points that have stuck with me so far:

Battlefield 3 early beta access starting tomorrow. Start polishing your guns!

I do not normally play a lot of FPS games.

Although I have played first person shooters ever since Wolfenstein 3D, I must admit that as I have gotten older I find them less and less appealing, except for ones that feature heavy story and RPG elements (like Deus Ex).

But Battlefield 1942 really grabbed me when it came out, with its vehicular carnage that gave you a feeling of being in the middle of a scene from Saving Private Ryan (sans the silly brotherhood bonding parts, of course).

Don't look now, Johnny, but half of your torso is on fire again

Therefore I am actually really looking forward to Battlefield 3 in a way that I have not looked forward to a military FPS in a long time.
And I have even installed the misshapen abortion that is Origins onto my computer and placed a preorder.

That means that I will be able to start playing the multiplayer beta with a massive two (yes, 2!) day head start on the rest of the world. Schmocks!

Anyway, should you also be interested in trying out the multiplayer war glorifying phenomenon that is Battlefield 3, then you can place your preorder and start playing tomorrow.
Or, if you have near infinite amounts of patience, you can wait until Thursday and nab it without the obligation of such preorderingness.

For more info on the beta you can check out EA's official page on it here

See you in the warzone!

Diablo 3 closed beta begins

Okay, so it's not exactly a sci-fi videogame but as I do have the original Diablo on my all time top 10 video games list I will go ahead and make a post about it anyway, 'cause frankly I am looking forward to this the way Greece is looking forward to fiscal stability.

Starting yesterday the closed beta testing for Diablo 3 is now underway.
Sadly I am not one of those lucky enough to have gotten a beta invitation but here's to hoping I'll get one at some point.

If you *really* only like sci-fi themed games just squint at the screenshot and pretend the wizard is shooting a laser beam. *zzzap!*

The real reason I am excited about this is because it shows that the game is getting pretty close to release (probably 3-5 months if previous Blizzard beta periods are anything to go by).
With a little luck we might even get a diabolical little christmas present with release in 2011.

That would be awesome, although I am getting a little tired of using my planned christmas vacation to play Blizzard games, like I did with Cataclysm and Wrath of the Lich King before that...

Unlike most betas, but *like* most Blizzard betas, there is no NDA in effect for the Diablo 3 beta, so expect people everywhere flashing screens and videos on the internet and smothering us with the pixellated goodness of the game.

To anyone lucky enough to have already gotten a beta invite I wish you happy beta testing and to all the rest of us who are crossing our fingers I wish good luck. Mostly for myself of course.