My good friend and fellow bloggerist Herby wrote a very good initial take on the new Battlefield 3 DLC "Armoured Kill" which you should read. It's located here. I haven't played the new DLC as much as Herby has, so my views won't be as in-depth as his, nor would you want to read the same thing twice.
First impressions... it's decent. My main fear for this DLC would be the size of the maps ruining the console experience, and to some extent this is true. 24 players just doesn't work for Conquest on maps with this much scale to them. There's too much emptiness to the battles, as people focus on the flag that has access to the AC130 (which is what I expected), leaving the other four flags to be a battle between a couple of guys from each side. With a good team on your side you can easily dominate the game by capturing the remaining flags and ignoring the AC130 as it does little to affect the battle in Conquest. The way the flags are laid out leads me to think that there will be a smaller, 3-flag version of Conquest made available for 24 player servers in the near future, which will certainly make things different... hopefully in a good way.
As for the maps, I think they all have their pluses and minuses, but overall they're good. I've played a fair bit on all four of the maps and my favourite so far is definitely "Armoured Shield", which I seem to be in the minority in thinking. I had a very good Rush match on this map, although that mode is flawed which I will get more into later, and left the match feeling like I had just played "Oasis" on Bad Company 2. "Bandar Desert" is only okay in my opinion, the vastness between the flag areas leaves a lot to be desired on console, but with more game time on it I could perhaps come around to it more. I only played Rush briefly on this map, and it seemed like it had a nice flow to it and had potential for some good games... if it wasn't for that dastardly AC130. "Alborz Mountain" is a map I have hardly played, and I'm pretty sure I have touched in it Conquest. It looks great, but it has too many rocks for me to crash into. Rush seems like it could be the most balanced on this map, as the defenders get the high ground while the attackers get the air support. "Death Valley" is the map I have played the most in Conquest, and it's below average. The night time setting is good, although the moon is too bright, but the map layout just doesn't feel 'great' to me. Perhaps over time it will grow on me, but early signs aren't too promising.
As I've said above, Conquest feels too empty on 24 man console servers which would lead me to play Rush more, except there's one big problem. The AC130. The attacking team get access to the AC130 which leads to a huge balance issue. Not only do they have ground vehicles in the form of tanks, they also have air superiority in the form of a massive, take no prisoners, cannon. With the location and close proximity of the MCOMMs the AC130 cannot be ignored. It takes around 4-5 stingers to be shot down, more if flares are used well, and it does devastating damage to the ground troops who will be focused on shooting it down thus leaving them to be shot in the back and the MCOMM to be planted with ease. The AC130 needs a nerf of some sorts in Rush, perhaps limiting it to only 2 flights per base or significantly increasing the respawn time of it. A good team can hold it off, but a good gunner can outclass any defenders.
I haven't touched on Tank Superiority, but in my brief encounter with that mode it seems a fairly decent addition and will be good for a change of pace from the regular game modes. Perhaps the flag capture area needs to be larger, but other than that it's a good addition.
Overall I think the new DLC is decent enough and adds some more depth to an already deep game. I would find it difficult to recommend it to a friend or foe; but to a dedicated BF3 gamer who has already splashed out on the Premium upgrade for the game, I'm sure they will gain many more hours of pleasure from the new additions.
The best addition to BF3 though? The new patch that was released on the same day.
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