So yeah, on October 4th, the floodgates open and every dirty peon can go play Battlefield 4 Open Beta (up until the 15th). What's to be expected from that experience?

Well, as this helpful video explains, Beta is not the final product. I know, shocking, but with gamer audiences increasing, it's also getting increasingly stupid. It's a wonder they don't have to explain "press W to walk forward - in the game, not in the video, silly!" Anyways, letting all of the people loose in the game let's DICE iron out the biggest cock ups they might notice during the Beta. From my short time playing, I sure did notice some! But that's for a preview later on...

Of the 10 maps present in the game, we only get Shanghai, the one with the ultramegaawesometurbosweettotallyradwickedsick sky scraper collapse. It pits Americans against the Chinese (I like to say PRC or PLA). The four classes - Assault, Recon, Support and Engineer - are present and you can already see what DICE has planned for them. You'll also get to use a pair of guns in each category as well as try most of the vehicle types in the game (sorry, no jets). You'll notice that PLA Assault looks like the Russian one from BF3 and PLA Support just looks stupid (a running theme with Support classes). Assault heals, Engineers RPG and fix stuff, Support try to pretend that the airburst grenade launcher is a good replacement for their C4 and Recon are the regular camping sniper dicks. Spawning is handled as usual - spawn on team mates, in their vehicles, as well as the usual captured points (and - don't tell them I told you - vacant vehicles near spawns).

Only two game modes are available at present. Conquest is classic battlefield - capturing points on the maps, bleeding the enemy's pool of respawns (called "tickets") and running crazy with tanks and boats. Domination is like that, but sans vehicles, thus immediately makes Engineers sad and Recon just a tad too happy.

Yep, that pretty much covers it all.