I've played the beta, and it's the worst battlefield game ever made. While the game is ascetically pleasing and charming to look at, it plays clumsy, has poor design, and is downright irritating.

The game is "free", but you'll need to pay for "Battlefield Points" to acquire new clothes, weapons, emotes, etcetera. So that whole bit about EA seeing a new way to do business -- as seen in a certain magazine article (Games for Windows, I'm looking at you) -- sheer garbage. EA not only has space reserved during the beta for ads, but it's willing to make you pay for anything remotely interesting about the game.

When you play the actual game, you will discover that planes are now even harder to control, lag spikes are all too common (this is a beta--so this can be fixed with fewer people on the servers), crouching does nothing in terms of avoiding damage, and sprinting seems disabled.

The most irritating part of this game comes in the form of its RPG-like elements. Players have levels which enable them to receive all sorts of bonuses --the only problem is some of these bonuses seem to make players virtually invulnerable. Killing a level 30+ player with a level 5 and under character was pretty much impossible (and believe me, I'm not what you call lousy at shooters).

The game breaks down three classes: soldier,
commando, and something else I didn't care about.

I chose the commando.

Sniping the enemy was as effective as throwing rice at them, facing the wrong way in a wind storm. Though red numbers appeared above the heads of the enemies I tried so desperately to pick off, they would merely lumber about, taking their time to find me, absorb 3 or more hits to the body region, and miraculously kill me a 100 yards away with a machine gun.

Stabbing is equally ineffectual. I may as well try to chop a tree down with a butter knife as kill a high level player with a commando knife. I felt like I was an actor in a B-rated remake of the movie Psycho, hacking at my prey repeatedly before my prey decided it hadn't really been hurt that bad, run away, or turn around, and kill me with a shotgun.

In player chat, the topic frequently became about whether or not "good" players (usually higher 30+ level) were cheating or not. One considerate fellow made it his job to run fraps to be sure -- he failed to find any cheating.

The problem with this game is that it's much more RPG than it is shooter, and for an RPG -- it sucks. You're not finding loot, you're paying for it, with real digital money.

If you however, enjoy touting over your friends how much better you are because of how much time you've speant playing a game which isn't any fun, and enjoy creating better characters not based on any fantasy world achievements, but on real world success -- this game may just be your thing. But don't expect your friends to stick around, or to like you for anything more than that fat lump in your pants -- that is, your wallet.

I didn't stick around either, I quit playing when I realized that 5 tank shells later, I still couldn't kill a high level player.

Disclaimer: (This is an informal review, no research has been done of any kind, other than what I experienced first-hand. Errors may be plentiful. *Hell, it hasn't even been proofread or edited.)