Battlefield V Gets Its Second Patch

The folks at Dice are still tinkering with Battlefield V and they have given us a second patch this January. This one is clearly not as big as the last update we got, but there are some interesting things.

The most notable one is the inclusion of a new vehicle, the Sturmgeschutz IV. This is a lower profile tank and with that comes some neat advantages. It is more nimble and quieter than a regular tank and you can also have a passenger manning another gun while you are trying to aim the main cannon. The drawback is you have to be facing the way you want the main cannon to go so you can be in trouble if you have a convoy coming up behind you.

If you take the time to read the patch notes you will notice that they have done a ton of little changes that while not major (well I think the footsteps one is) they do make the overall experience better. For example, load times in the campaign have been reduced on PC. Not being able to do the prone transition if you cannot go prone is pretty neat, it simply will not even allow you to attempt it.

No look kills are no longer an issue. Sometimes the enemy would be looking in the opposite direction of where they were shooting. It was always super annoying to get killed like this as it made you feel like they were cheating. Turns out they were not it was just a glitch in the game!

It is great to see the guys and girls at Dice putting a lot of work into Battlefield V to make it better and better.

My First Experience With Call of Duty

Today I thought that I would have a little bit of fun looking back at how I became familiar with the Call of Duty series. While it is one of the biggest video game series of all time, there was actually a period when Call of Duty was not around.

I remember grumblings about this new game called Call of Duty in various video game magazines back in 2003. During this time I actually worked in a video game store part time while I was at university. Back then we would get reps in from different companies and this one rep was in and he was talking about some upcoming games one of which was Call of Duty.

What was interesting about this “meeting” was that he was really selling the fact that this Call of Duty game was made by many of the people who worked on the Medal of Honor series and that they were sick of EA’s ways and wanted to start something new. Yes, there was a time when Activision was seen as the good guys!

This got me interested in the game and I kept an eye on that first Call of Duty. Unfortunately, I did not have a gaming PC at this time so I would have to wait a while for Call of Duty Finest Hour on the original Xbox. That right there is my first actual taste of Call of Duty action and while at the time the gaming press just talked about what a watered down version of the PC game it was. I loved every minute of it and it was a huge hit with me and my buddies as a multiplayer game.

I dabbled in the series, but the game that really blew me away and made me take notice of the series was Call of Duty 2 for the Xbox 360. This was one of the first games I got for my Xbox 360 and I was blown away at how “real” it was over what I had been playing on my PS2 and original Xbox. While I enjoyed Finest Hour, it was Call of Duty 2 that made me really stand up and take notice.

This ultimately led to Call of Duty becoming one of my favorite game franchises of all time and it is a series that I look forward to each and every year and I think for the most part I am happy with each game….. some more so than others, but I have not played a COD game that I hated.