Killing's In The Name Of: Battlefield 3 Armored Kill
I have, I must admit, spent a worrisome number of hours pondering the exact nature of the phrase "Armored Kill." Is it a kill you score while wearing armor - perhaps in the fashion of a medieval knight who'd rather die than admit that, yeah, that's a tank? Or is the kill itself - the very act of forcibly removing another man from his mortal coil - clad in some form of armor? Am I, say, throwing pieces of armor at my unsuspecting foes, sort of like a weaponized Super Ghosts 'n' Ghouls? Or maybe I'm simply killing armor that's, like, been possessed by a ghost or something. Maybe it turns out there was no ghost at all, but that it was in fact Old Man Jenkins clearly running out of ideas. Fortunately, EA's sent along a new trailer of Battlefield 3: Armored Kill in which all questions are answered. (Hint: there are tanks. So I was sort of basically entirely correct. Yep.)
Among other things, this vehicle-focused map pack is said to feature the "biggest Battlefield map ever." It's called Bandar Desert, and here, according to DICE, is why it wins that distinction:
"In Conquest Large, Bandar Desert is stretching as far as 1,900 meters from U.S. to Russian deployment, not counting the airstrip at the very end of the ground forces combat area. This is even longer than Fushe Pass from Battlefield 2. Bandar Desert is about as wide as it is long at the middle flags - it measures 1,900 meters from the mountain base furthest from the sea all the way to the beach at the south edge of the map."
That is quite large - though I have to imagine users have, at some point, whipped up an even bigger playground for tanks, jets, and bears (oh my). Maybe it even had actual bears. Beyond that, you're looking at five new vehicles, 20 vehicle-specific unlocks, and a new vehicle-centric mode called Tank Superiority. That's all headed your way in September, provided we don't get another announcement from EA saying, "Oh yeah, oops, we actually launched Battlefield 4 three days ago and forgot to tell anyone about it. Our bad."