They added some cool new stuff, but took away too much.
But even the destructible environment is kinda wack because thats all the game really is. If your in a vehicle (and many times when not) you dont even have to acquire targets. Just spray likely hiding spots and wait for kills. Still not getting them? Just keep flattening the level and they wont have anywhere to hide. Just keep shooting. You got infinite ammo, and even the minigun doesnt overheat. You can also kill the Rush objectives with ordinance meaning defenders are always facing a hopeless battle to the point of why bother?
There is no prone or laying down. There is no leaning around a corner. The guns they start you off with can not even be considered weapons (their that bad) plus it takes ages and ages to get the decent stuff. Every map ive seen so far is one big choke point, and we're talking a single barren road that tends to be about 200m long with maybe some crappy foliage for cover is all. Many maps have sections that wide out, but even those include multiple huge single lane choke points usually, and/or that micro village that usually just gets flattened anyway.
Many will argue the maps are very large, and they can be, but you are quarantined inside small sections of it at a time at best, and you cant maneuver except down the one maybe two lanes of travel at any given time.
People i know called this game a 'realistic shooter.' This is bs to the core. The game play can be entertaining, but this is another arcade shooter but with overly destructible environments, and the amount of health you receive is something to laugh at. People can regularly stand 7-8 shots with many weapons to the vitals especially when equipped with armor (my shotgun usually takes 3-5 rounds to take someone down at point blank with armor).
I tried out the other kits recently and have found that you can repair and hide behind a tank faster then several people can kill it. Medics are less overpowered, but when you combine the fact that you can spawn on top of anyone in your squad at anytime, the combat starts becoming wack a mole real quick (usually the mole gets the whack tho). Not like these roles werent blatantly overpowered in previous bf's, but now you can spawn on anyone in your squad.
So if you like to have immortal cheese tanks and constantly reviving zombie players its still there in spades. Its gotta be something like 75% of all kills come from spawning, killing something, then getting shot. I really cant think of a way to be farther away from realism with this stupid game mechanic and this where way too many casualties come from. I almost cant play the game at all because of this feature. Its the COD spawn system all over again, and i despise it. It destroys the gameplay.
This is what i get for buying another ea game. I said never again, but bf2 was awesome (until the patching borked it to fark). This isnt half as good as that was. So yet once again: EA EMBARGO BACK ON!!!
EDIT: ive already gotten my first hate mail for giving this review a bad name by a kid who gives it a 10, and gave halo and pokemon, farcry etc wicked high scores. You kids are exactly who im talking about when i say, you guys need to play some better games. You just dont know what quality is and jsut watch commercials and buy whatever is big at the time and will say its uber no matter how lame. Try games which requires more then muscle memory reactions and take some actual thought. This game is playable, but nowhere near a 10, and lacking mechanics found in games 10-15 years old. Cmon now!!.
Oh and i heard it was bad on release, but so far ive been more or less bug free. Hooray for belated patching and me waiting till the game is cheap hehe.
2nd EDIT: and ive been doing some reasearch and im now convinced that 90% of all games active at any time have at least one or more hackers. People REGULARLY will start shooting at your wall before you ever come around it. Look up 'Lambert and chams' hacks for bf 2 bad company and see just how many results you come up with. This should be enough right here to dissuade you from purchasing this game unless you like to hack yourself. If your going to try it, get it for the console, and get it used.