Battlefield 3 multiplayer is a unique beast. Its current incarnation is influenced by the massive success of Call of Duty, but plays and feels entirely differently. I’ve put my share of time into the series from the current Battlefield 3 beta all the way back to BF1942 and nothing quite feels the same. However, based the time we spent with BF3’s single-player campaign and co-op missions, we can’t say the same about them. Depending on who you are, that could be good or bad news.
Battlefield 3’s debut series of trailers, Fault Line, showed a game that distinguished itself from its looming competition by taking a more serious and realistic (but not too realistic) look at modern military combat — less Michael Bay and more Generation Kill. After playing through the Fault Line section in the campaign we can’t say this impression is wrong, but there’re more set pieces and Michael Bay left in the game than many people are expecting. The two of the three single-player missions we played were effectively the same game of terrorist whack-a-mole as Call of Duty.
