Too Different to actual BF games for my taste. (Haven't played BC so I can't speak for that) but from my meagre experience in CoD, it does take more thinking than that.
I like the flashlights. At close quarters, they are quite evil to enemies; completely blinding them, whilst at long range all they do is give away your position to a sniper.
The animations are sometimes good, other times I hate them. Being able to slide across the width of a train carriage in one press of a button, and only taking about a second to do it is good, but not being able to shoot whilst I start proning, making it useless unless you are staying proned before combat, is just annoying for me. I barely use it any more, except when my BF2 instincts kick in, instead I crouch as it achieves much the same thing, but I can shoot during the transition.
The map, is alright. Definitely not Showcasing BF, and they should have included vehicles as I doubt they'll be 100% bug free, and this is the beta, so it is something they should be checking. The map itself is actually a reasonable size, as we would see if we played a proper assault style instead of rush. Each of the 4 sections is actually completely connected to the rest of the map. Unfortunately, its a rather linear map, and quite confined except for its length, but it is larger than first impressions indicate.
I like how they have put emphasis on teamwork, with the spotting and team spawning bonuses, and you do sometimes get players who can act as a team, but usually your best bet is to join a clan's team, and then your usually somewhat left out as they will have skype or something open talking strategy whilst you try to follow them.
I have always had a problem with games that make more experienced players more powerful with perks for guns and such. An assault can 1 hit body kill me with a weapon he unlocked as he's a rank 44 or something, meanwhilst I'm left with the starting rifles. It is very unbalanced in this aspect, and needs a good matchmaker (One that works, as opposed to forcing you to pick a server yourself due to a 'generic error' (Seriously EA, you can't even tell us what the problem is?)).
Bugs, I have occasional graphical issues with random black lines connecting from the centre of my screen to the control points, but that is about the extent of it. One thing I'm hoping is a bug though, is the inability to use 'esc' unless your spawned, and if you die whilst editting your options, it just tears you to your death screen rather than letting you continue to tweak them. That needs fixing ASAP. I want to be able to quit a game at any time, not just when I spawn outside of combat, after the time between matches, hoping there is no spawn campers to drag me away from my menus.
On the PC, the browser match maker isn't too bad. I'm slightly troubled that it had campaign there, but I'm assuming that is for a co-op campaign, and you can play single player campaign without the browser.
The game looks great, even on the lowest settings (I haven't actually had much time in the menus to be able to change my resolution so I can play with better settings >.>).
There is an emphasis on cover as well, this isn't a run and gun type game, you stay out of cover in the open for more than 5 seconds, you will die. crouching and proning will prolong this, but you need to get to cover ASAP and stay there, hoping someone's RPG doesn't blow it up.
Its better than I had expected from a 'CoD killer', but worse than I had hoped.
