As only PS3 premium players can get it for now, thought I would give everyone else a bit of a heads up on what to expect.
This is all just opinion and i'm not going in depth as it's still BF3 after all.
Operation 925
This is an office block. Modern open plan, very destructable environments (not totally by any means though). Lots of plasterboard etc.
Masses of rooms and corridors. Easily big enough for 24 players imo.
I like this map, lots of destructable cover to make things iinteresting but masses of corridors and rooms to make an escape if you need to. The size of the map stops you getting shot in the back all the time and big enough to have to search for enemies from time to time.
Scrapmetal
An Industrial area with connecting warehouses with the battle fought high up so no ground and a drop to death between the two buildings. Cover is largely solid and can stop bullets. Often this is the two sides fighting each other over the no mans land drop. There are so many ways across the two buildings though that flanking isnt a problem. A nice touch is the machinery when hit by bullets will trigger the robotic mechanism. Possibly my fav map.
Donya Fortress
A cartell style villa. Masses of rooms and corridors again, with a mix of destructable and solid cover. Another good level my 2nd fav i think. Has a central courtyard with foliage and the battle is fought in the building mainly. Again the amount of routes make this more than capable of 24 players imo.
Ziba Tower
My least fav map and feels the smallest. Top of a hotel in the sky. Kind of horseshoe shaped level with the central bit being a courtyard of death. Has a very nasty camping spot in the middle of the map that can deal death to a wide area. If a few guys camp up there they can be hard to shift as they can see you before you see them (bad design). Because of their location though a coordinated effort would soon clear them with tubes and rpg's but that didn't happen with randoms. This is the shotty fest that I though the whole pack would be. Still haven't found it too annoying yet though.
Game modes
I think in general the game modes work quite well. You score more points and cap bases quicker so you will rank up quicker but when you are getting 230k points for the next level its not like you are going to suddenly fly up the rankings. The tdm modes seem to work better on these maps than the others and the random spawn is often the safest option rather than the random death it often was. Spawning on your team mates in a firefight in these maps is very dangerous.
I really dislike the 'gun game' mode. You can join a game and have a MP443 against guys running round with shotties and p90's. Not fun. Needs a srs tweek that I doubt it will get.
Weapons
Only used the L86 and I <3 it
Overall this is not the shitfest I feared it would be. Shotties and Lmg's are def very powerful but I did fine with everything except snipers. Ziba Tower I def did better with the DAO but the other maps I did better with the M27 or 16A3.
As for any comparison with cod, well it's more like cod than the other maps but i'm sorry cod wishes it was like this. If cod was like this I would play it more.
For those that say this isn't Battlefield I disagree. This is Battlefield, just with a new twist. If you don't move forward you die in this industry and I think this is just what BF3 needs. They could have done a different style of CQ map pack but they didn't and I am more than happy with the results. If you don't want to BF to move with the times, then to me you're a dinosaur. Yes it needs to keep its roots in the big arenas and vehicles and it still needs to be weighted more that way too. It also needs this though. Short intense gunfights in atmospheric destructible environments. Yes please.
This isn't without faults and it's still early days but imo. So far so good. Can't wait to get home from work to carry on.
This is a review by my friend skuh, I actually bought Premium after all and got to play the levels quite a bit and his thoughts echo my own fairly closely so I thought I may as well copy and paste his review.
The maps are really really fun.
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that your not on ps3 CK.
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