By Dylan Moran
Remember before Battlefield 3 came out, when it was announced the Back to Karkand expansion would be free to those who pre-ordered and give weapons and bonuses and the like?
Remember the online fallout with people claiming they’d cancel their pre-order and never purchase games from EA/DICE ever again?
Well, I hope they’re having fun in Modern Warfare 3 because the new maps have finally dropped and they’re awesome. (On a related note – MW3 players are still waiting for an announcement date on any DLC, let alone actually getting any new maps)
Back to Karkand brings with it ‘new’ maps, ‘new’ weapons and new vehicles. The maps are rejigged versions of the Battlefield 2 versions and the weapons are mostly ones which have been available in previous iterations, while the vehicles haven’t been seen in a while.
The most notable new vehicle is the F-35, a jet which appears on Wake Island conquest assault and Gulf of Oman conquest.
The F-35 revives that steep learning curve everyone had the first time they jumped into an air vehicle on Battlefield 3. In fact, that learning curve is exacerbated in the F-35 because most pilots jump into it and go right after the enemy Subflankers.
I’ll tell you a little secret: The F-35 is an extra helicopter. Treat it as such. Don’t roll out with heatseekers equipped as to fly the F-35 you should be good enough to take a plane out with your cannons anyway. Don’t go after the jets until they go after you – use the guided missile or TV missile to take out the enemy ground vehicles in this particular order: Mobile AA, tanks, then any buggies you may see. Do this and your team will love you.
If a rookie pilot on the other team does get on your tail, remember not only does the F-35 have superior top speed, it also has superior deceleration. There’s a great feeling that comes from having someone on your six, slamming on the brakes and heading into hover mode and raking his undercarriage with your cannon as he passes over, then turning on the afterburners to take him down.
Not many pilots are good in the F-35 yet so most games you’ll get a decent chance to get some flight hours in – this is the best I’ve managed to see on YouTube to date and he doesn’t even use the hover function:
The other vehicles are the BTR-90 APC, which is more or less just a better armoured LAV than the American LAV-25. This is negligible as every APC/LAV I’ve been in is empty or destroyed within 30 seconds anyway.
Then there’s the desert patrol vehicle, which is basically the BF3 version of the old quad bikes. It’s just a fast way to get you and two squad mates from objective to objective. It has a mounted machine gun but unless you’re stationary, it’s redundant, as you’ll be bouncing all over the place. Even when stationary, one RPG will kill the gunner so there’s not much point hanging around it while you capture an objective.
The last new vehicle is the skid loader, or Bobcat as most Kiwis would call it. It’s next to useless. There’s an achievement/trophy for getting a roadkill in the skid loader – get that and then never get in it again. Walking is faster.
All the maps have a massive amount of nostalgia associated with them but Wake Island has to be the best of the re-jigged maps. It’s important to remember that when this map first came into existence, adding trees and foliage to online maps simply wasn’t possible. Well, now it is, and the possibilities are endless. The flora can serve as a natural barrier against stingers and heatseekers when you’re in a helo, or to use when you’re trying to flank the enemy to capture B before A or C (since that’s where all the vehicles spawn).
It’s a map unlike the original BF3 pack, without clearly defined tactics which work every single time. And that’s the beauty of it – one round you can go 20-1 in a tank and the next 3-18 (though if you’re getting killed 18 times in a tank perhaps you should focus your efforts elsewhere... like in Call of Duty). A tip not many people seem to realise is that you can actually drive across the inlet from A to C in a tank, and you can land your chopper there if you’re in desperate need of repairs. You can also shell A from C in a tank, and vice versa. An open mind is your biggest asset on Wake Island.
Strike at Karkand is the opposite of this. It’s tight and twisty and unlike a lot of maps, tanks will struggle for room to maneuver. This is a technical urban environment with few good sight-lines and a lot of surprises as you round corners at the same time as your enemy.
Of course this all becomes redundant as players take up their new positions: as attackers, half the team will snipe from the rocks overlooking A, while the obligatory defender recons will climb to the top of the building at B but not actually jump down to defend the flag.
For the rest of the team, you can count on two players in the tank, one guy laying out mines and one watching the C4 he laid at the very last flag – leaving you and your two mates to fight three players on the other team.
Gulf of Oman and Sharqi Peninsula are better team-orientated maps, if only because they have so many vehicles everyone can roll around in armoured luxury.
Barring Wake Island, every map gets a small, three flag version and a big brother with five. The large maps are awesome, but their sparseness really shows up how small the 12-man console teams are, compared to the 64-man servers on PC. Battlefield started on PC but for some of us the intense lifestyle of keyboard-and-mouse gaming is simply unaffordable and an inconvenience - so dangling this carrot in front of us is tantamount to torture.
Conquest assault is brilliant and just as good as it always was. Unless you’re on a defending team more worried about KDR than winning – then it’s torture as you desperately try to hold the flags.
There are (finally) flags which can’t be captured in vehicles – something not seen since before Bad Company – and some which need to be captured in them as the only cover is a couple of boxes. As soon as you try to capture those on your own you get shredded from four directions.
By far the best addition which Back to Karkand has brought though is the massive list of bug fixes – too many to list so check them out at the source. Yes, 2gb is a massive patch download and yes my internet cap will be busted for the next month, but I don’t care – I’m busy working on my tan in the Arab desert.
3 News