End Game - CTF and more

[[JiF]zougathefist]

It seems that the battle lines have been drawn for next gen consoles - it is widely acknowledged that CoD is the poster child of the XBox generation whilst battlefield (either BFBC2 or BF3) is much more in tune with 'serious' gaming and therefore the PS3 (at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it)
This is born out by the tacit revelation that BF4 will be available for PS4 and whatever Microsoft come up with (the XBox 720?)
Link and Link

Which is an odd way of starting a thread with the title "End Game - CTF and more"

the reason being that End game released first on PS3 so I have had a chance to sample the delights of the latest DLC before many of you - although it took 3 tries and a total of 5 hours to D/L the 1.09 patch and the End Game expansion.

So initial thoughts - I have not had much gaming time this past week as I am busy inthe real world unfortunately and there has been some important football that has required watching (Grrr Liverpool!!) but I've had a run at CTF 3 times now: W 0 - L 2 - RQ 1

The closest loss was my first go and on the snow map, I joined late and we were 1 down with 8 mins to go, I jumped on a bike and by pure chance happened across the flag on a track with a burnt out jeep and some soon to be dead guys. hopped off the bike, machined gunned the two silly guys facing the (same) wrong way and grabbed it then bugged out to take stock - I had no idea of the geography but saw the flashing blue icon of our flag so headed that way - not realising that the indicator was for a bad guy, in his own base, trying to cap my flag but needing his own returned first - which I was doing my best to oblige by speeding merrily into the lions den like a simple minded, naive Daniel without the backing of a merciful and omnipotent creator.
thankfully I realised my error when I saw lots of my team hanging around our flag and killing the spawning in bad guys so I turned and high-tailed it out of there like the proverbial bat
Collecting your own flag when dropped by the enemy is no easy matter - you need to 'cap' it like a conquest objective - the more people you have around it the better - although I think it returns after a set period if no one picks it up.
Once my flag was back in place I headed home and drove round and round until I realised that I probably needed to get off the bike to capture the flag that was growing out of my rear like a peacock's tail. Accounting for the bad guys killed and the flag cap I rocketed into 1st place - scores were even with 6 minutes left.

I decided to try again and grabbing another bike headed back to the enemy flag - died - C4
Tried again - died - Tank
Tries again - died - Mines
ad naseum
realised that the enemy had managed to score twice whilst I was dashing my lives against the rocks of their defence

Decided that I was better at defence so grabbed a recon kit and hung out in the warehouse with my trusty TUG-S and P90 - killed a couple of bad guys and watched with satisfaction as my team mates capped the enemy flag again to bring the scores back to 2-3 and came close again when I managed to take down an enemy bike team who had nabbed our flag with some mines placed at random off road with my second spawn - but the enemy killed our flag carrier and regained their flag from our base (some guy with a bipod MG in the trees kept overwatch on our base most of the game) before we could get collect ours and make good the capture

As the round drew to a close we were 2-3 down, I looked around and the bad guys had gotten organised, they were coming in force with a tank, jeep and hordes of infantry (well 3 or 4) as we brought their flag back again but the screen went white and we lost narrowly, I finished top of my team but 6th overall - A breathless and exciting introduction to the mode that left me wanting more.

The next day I joined a CTF game at random - I spawned in and died, and again and again - teams were stupidly unbalanced 7 on our side against 12 on theirs, they had 2 tanks, an IFV and a chopper in our base and were raping the **** out of us - I spawned again and legged it into the trees that I had spotted as the life bled out of me the previous time I died. I saw that someone was tracking me on the minimap so spun round and nailed him, then ran a bit further and took a peek to see how badly the odds were stacked against us - very badly!
I nailed another bad guy who was repairing their tank as it massacred my team mates only to be instantly targeted by a Chopper and blown to pieces so far I was 2K-7D - spawned once more and died instantly so pulled the plug and RageQuit - went to play some Alborz TDM to calm and rescue my KDR

Played again last night and lost once more but it was closer than the scores suggested - we lost 4-1 in the end but actually scored first and were constantly grabbing their flag whilst they kept getting ours teams were 8 each but then an uber squad of very organised guys joined them en masse with about 7 minutes left and tied at 1-1, they had one guy laying C4 all over the flag, one in a tank watching their flag and an awesome chopper pilot who dropped a guy off in our base then would RV with him, take out our chasing defenders and ferry him to their base. My team lost spirit and soon it was 12 vs 5 for them and they scored 3 caps in 4 mins. I did manage to kill a tank by dropping C4 from a 'chute which was the highlight, getting roadkilled by the chopper twice was however a very very low point

I have also played two conquest rounds and am pretty impressed - the maps are quite small and the bikes are awesome for getting around, dropping an IFV from the transport is quite cool but the choppers and planes make it very hard to survive for any period of time in a vehicle if they are any way skilled. 2 jets, a Littlebird/ZW11 and Cobra/HIND each in a small map means the air battle is constant and frantic - the only plus side for ground forces are the Humvees with twin AA missiles. Find a good spot to park up and you can put even the most skilled pilot off long enough to benefit your team.

I'm gonna play again later so will add more thoughts as I explore and learn more

[[JiF]phantomx]

Played for the first time last night and I can say that my first impression is not good. I actually did not like CTF. I found the maps to cluttered no one seemed to be playing the objective and on the 64 man servers almost unplayable. I have not tried Air Superiority as I am a horrible pilot but I have not heard good things about it. I tried a few rush and conquest on the new maps and this seems a little better, but am not too impressed. I have loved this game from the beginning and play it whenever I can, but in my humble opinion this is the weakest DLC of them all.

I will give the CTF maps a try again tonight (maybe it is just me and not being familiar with the maps). It might be also that I don't have many JiF friends playing anymore (PC). Mini came on last night with me but the maps we chose where insande.

my two cents anyways....