Battlefield 3: The Launch
I've been a bit slow on the uptake with Battlefield 3. I actually had the game thanks to Amazon's release day shipping which had the game to me on October 25th. However, I didn't get around to actually trying to install it till the following Friday. Trying is the operative word.
I guess I should have dug a bit deeper into the system requirements as I received a surprise when I went to install BF3 after updating EA's Origin Steam clone.
Unlike Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3 allows nothing lower than Windows Vista to install on the PC platform. This is because the Frostbite 2 engine requires nothing less than DirectX 11 which isn't possible on anything lower than Vista.
Here's the Wiki link on the game engine by the way...Wiki page on Frostbite
My desktop gaming rig is currently Windows XP. So, pardon the pun but No Dice...
That's not where the story ends, however...
The game rig that resides at a friend's house is Windows 7 on a slightly better hardware platform.
I'm not sure if it was just me not paying attention or that I'm getting old and think XP is going to last forever but I do know a change has to come. The change for the home game rig is an obvious need for an upgrade. That doesn't mean I've had to do without, well mostly.
It's almost amusing to admit but the last time I had to upgrade a game rig it was for another game in the franchise, Battlefield 2. I swore I wouldn't do that again for just one game but ultimately I ended up in a better place. So it is with Battlefield 3.
Since my experience at home was cut short I sought to redeem myself with my game rig at my friends house. I felt fortunate that I spent the extra 8 bucks on the physical media as the game install itself is 12 Gigabytes. I'd hate to waste half a day just to download a game. To Origin's credit, however, I was allowed to pre-authorize the game on my home XP rig which saved me trying to type 20 characters of weird algorithmic nonsense in the dark just to start the installation.
Continued on the next page
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