Firstly, I'll say as a comparison I really liked CoDMW2's single player but found the multiplayer sucked. I mention this as I draw some comparison in the single player modes. The very beginning has the now stereotypical intro scene where you can look around but not move (like halflife) The initial chapter sees you in 1944 and servers as a tutorial mission. I'd began to think certain keys (shift to run for example) weren't working only to find that they were disabled at the start and (in the case of shift) unlocked without notification later on.
My settings were running with everything as high as it would go and things ran smoothly on both Windows XP (DX9) and Windows 7 (DX11). Comparing the graphics, I barely could tell any differnce (dx10&1 have very slightly better shadow rendering) so for now I'll stick with XP.
The game has lots of pretty stuff (explosions, weather etc.,) going on. As with CODmw2 it feels like you are being channelled through specific routes on the maps. That being said the maps are nicely laid out and I found some of the bolivia jungle levels reminded me of crysis.. only better.(except haven't found any chickens to throw at people) Nice variety with where each mission is located and what you're doing e.g. flying stuff, driving boats etc.,.
Multiplayer: I personally thing the map used in the beta is one of the weaker on selection. Conquest maps are quite small considering the 32 player server sizes. The game modes are conquest, rush, squad conquest and squad rush (the squad based games are probably suited to clan v clan). Apart from an incredibly annoying siren that sounds near the end of round (think of the end of round heartbeat in BF2 but replace it with a really annoying sound) my main issue is the game time for conquest. Respawn immunity makes flags capping a pain - someone is capping a flag and just as you're about to kill them a squad member spawns on them and has a second or two of invulnerability....just enough to spray you with bullets and drop their sack on your face.
The conqest teams have 100 tickets, the ticket ratios are not currently adjustable like they were in BF2. I've been told that the ratios are the same in the console game - however PC has 32 players instead of the console 24. Since tickets bleed by kills with a third more players it means the games end a third faster. I've seen conquest last 5-15 minutes and without option to tweak it, this is not good. There's no Flag by Flag option.
Damage in multiplayer has increased across the board by 25%, so things are a little less spongy then they were in the demo. There's still no option for preventing crates being blown by C4 noobs
One area that's still cack is the frontend (server browser) - still no decent sorting, you can't connect by IP and the filters often lie e.g. give you a PB disabled server when enabled is ticked. The browser is slow as hell although it is obviously rather busy at the moment.
AI in single player is pretty good, One cheeky enemy did indeed knife me after I missed him, AI will run away from or kick away grenades unless they are pinned by supression fire. Your team mates have a tendancy to get in your way though
I've spent some time moaning about things that aren't good, however the game itself is graphically excellent, has decent single player story mode, the multiplayer has some very good maps and the balance seems pretty good so far where I can't see any issues with long term replayability, Depending on what gets fixed over the next few days, this game could very well be excellent and I could see it providing enough replayability to not get boring after many a hard session (unlike the likes of l4d2
)Sound: Never been particularily moved by FPS sounds/music, so meh. The sound was also a bit wonky - some of the speech wasn't played back properly (might be my soundcard though)
Graphics: No graphics bugs, scenary very very pretty. No major difference between dx 9,10,11
AI: Decent enough, certainly compared to the team of 'tards in bf2. One cheeky enemy did indeed knife me after I missed him, AI will run away from or kick away grenades unless they are pinned by supression fire
Stability: the game occasionally crashed to desktop without errors (when reloading after dying in sp for example)
Performance: everything ran fine on my computer
Multiplayer: Conquest over too quick, otherwise very good
Verdict: Excellent so far although still quite a few annoying bugs
