After so much anticipation on DICE’s new Battlefield 3 update for the PS3, we have to say that our early impressions of the state of the game post-update are not good. We’re running into numerous problems with the game, including multiple system crashes which require a hard reset of the PS3.

While obviously there are some great new features to the game after installing the update – being able to quit a game now is one, we have been left very frustrated by some of the tactics employed by DICE after putting the update live in the game.

We have spoke about system crashes before after Back to Karkand released, but since this new patch we have found that our PS3 unit is crashing over and over again. The most iritating aspect of the crashes that we’ve seen is that they occur when re-downloading Back to Karkand for the second time, on DICE’s request. We already downloaded B2K last week when DICE said that they had fixed up the QBU-88 and MG36 weapon glitches.

Now though, we find some strange things going on in the server filter with only Gulf of Oman visible, with no other Back to Karkand maps available – where has Strike at Karkand, Wake Island and Sharqi gone? After attempting to re-download Back to Karkand yet again to see if this sorts out the problem, our system crashed.

Speaking of the server filter, it appears that DICE has lied about making the patch available in all regions on March 27. For some reason, the update still isn’t available in Asia, meaning that users have to play on other region servers while DICE get their act together. It appears that even Daniel Matros the Community Manager doesn’t have a clue what’s going on either – we saw a Tweet from him confirming that the update should be going out ‘globally’, but a post on the official BF blog, reveals that everyone has the update except Japan and that this won’t be happening until April 4th – bizarre.

Our attempts to contact EA via the Battlefield Twitter page were met with the common – ‘Have you contacted a game advisor’ reply, while Daniel Matros chose to ignore our Tweets regardless. We were really pumped up about trying out some of the changes, but the frequent crashes and lack of clarity regarding the Asia update has left us with a bitter taste in our mouths – it reminds us about the stunt EA tried to pull with Battlefield 1943.

Has your game been crashing as well since the update? Let us know your experiences with the game after the changes.

UPDATE: Ok here’s a tip for those of you who can only see Gulf of Oman. If like me you had only selected Conquest in the server filter, you’ll need to press R3 and uncheck this. In the update, DICE has separated Conquest and Conquest Assault into two different categories, so if you check CQ and CQA, you should see the other B2K maps appear as normal. Hope this helps some of you – bit annoying that DICE did not mention this.