Two things. BF4 at its current state deserves no recommendation. internal memo leaked last week showed that EA rushed the release to beat COD Ghost, as a result, they did little to no QA at all. their most recent so called server update have made it even more impossible to stay in a game without constant crashes and blue screen. it deserves no commendation. these guys are shady beyond a doubt. to top it off. many folks who pre-ordered the game under the advertised "Premium expansion pack" were given no explanation that their so called premium expansion pack did not mean "premium account" but rather just one lousy map pack called China Rising. had they just called it "china rising" by itself it wouldn't be a problem. but consider the history of the franchise, the word premium was typically associated with all the upcoming DLC, they made no attempt to explain the newly differentiated changes during the promotional pre-order period, no asteric, hyperlink, or disclaimer on the pre-order page. countless websites, forums, and gamers out there pre-ordered the game under the assumption that it came with premium account, only to be disappointed and asking where their premium account was. EA later quietly changed the wording of their promotion from "plus premium expansion pack" to "plus China Rising expansion pack" towards the final release date. but countless users who pre-ordered it under the false pretense are still asking where the bonus premium account was.
secondly, after trying out the last Assassin's creed III, I am a bit cautious on trying this fourth one. consider the problematic engine optimization. the amount of draw calls that's used on the CPU is ridiculous. users with decent quad core rigs see only 30~40% GPU utilization through the game, with the exception of most modern high end quad core i7 rigs.
I just thought that these are the cautionary tales that users should be made aware of going into this holiday shopping season, so one won't be disappointed.
