While I'm no fan of the origin software client or the strongarm tactics that electronic arts uses to force you to use their interface / store, at least this game is worth enduring their efforts. Bear in mind that the free offer is only good for a week and after that it goes back to $20. Give me a shout if you do end up playing! *thumbs up*

Oh sweet! Thanks for the heads up!

My pleasure!

Keep meaning to get into this game. Had it on my Origin account for a while, but I thought the single player campaign was pretty lame (and the laptop I had to use at the time chugged with that game) so I didn't continue with multiplayer. I hear it's fun though.

I'm in total agreement with you about the single player campaign, -that irritated the hell out of me. Previous Battlefield games had laughable single player experiences but they at least let you run around and have fun with the toys that you're provided instead of kicking you in the ass and telling you walk this way, now this way, now that way, stand still, kill that guy, and so on. Multiplayer though, -that's the real sweetness. Very fun.

BF3 is a first person shooter like CoD, but there's quite a jump between Call of Duty 1 and Battlefield 3, although if you've already had some experience with Battlefield 2 then the jump isn't quite so steep. BF3 is like BF2 but with more attention to the fluidity movement and more skill and complexity to the gun combat, and compared to Call of Duty the big thing Battlefield has going for it is the vehicular combat which CoD just has no match for at all. Everything in BF3 can be customized: your character can pick between a huge variety of guns that can each be modified with different attachments to improve range, accuracy, hipfire, scope view, you can change out your uniform to suit different environments, vehicles can be outfitted with different weapon configurations and countermeasures, and it all has an effect on what happens when you face off against other people. The drawback is that all the customization is locked behind progressive achievements which means you have to invest a lot of time in the game before you can use some of the tools available.

There's also a lot of different ways to play the game: classic deathmatch, team deathmatch (my favorite), conquest mode where you have several stationary objectives on the (huge) maps that you have to control and defend to keep the upper hand, and rush mode which is a variation on conquest where you play on the same maps but you have to advance from one set of objectives to the next in order making the combat areas more focused.

Excellent!

Got it so now I got it for my 3 systems. XD Even though right now I'm playing BF4 broken as it is.

Yeah, just got started with BF4 as well in the past week and trying to decide how I feel about it. BF3 certainly runs better online and I think I prefer the maps better as well... more horizontal open areas for vehicular attention... the maps I've been able to play on so far are really infantry focused with claustrophobic areas for armored navigation.

BF3 definitely is much less buggy than BF4. Especially when you run around a corner away from bullets, throw a medpack down, and just die. Pretty much the servers do whatever they want to. I much prefer the hit detection and less lagginess of BF3 to BF4. Hopefully, with everyone downloading BF3 there will be more people on there, but I'd need a serious upgrade before I could play on PC.

Aw man, they said it was going to be available through june 3rd. June 3rd is not over but it's not free anymore. I didn't have time to download it. Ah well. Luckily modern warfare isn't really my thing anyway. :^