After a long wait we finally got our hands on a copy of Battlefield 3, the highly hyped-up shooter from DICE. Much of the hype surrounded the claims by the makers that this will be the one that challenges heavyweights like Call Of Duty series and Medal of Honour. We put it to the test to see if they actually did it.

The single-player campaign is minuscule and any average gamer can shoot his way to the finale in a day or two (only if he is that busy with something or someone else!). There are 12 missions in total which are easy and do not make much of an impact as they are damn easy (in the easy mode) but they may prove a bit challenging in the advanced mode as it does not provide target-assistance (you are on your own to find and shoot). Other than that we were amazed by the level of detail and cinematic graphics found in the hardcore graphics mode. But there is a catch. You need a really really good graphics card to keep it running smooth like silk.

The real gaming begins in the multiplayer side. With 64 players on a network this surely is a big game with big maps and a lot of 0ptions to choose from. While we felt the bottleneck in the campaign we were overjoyed at the plethora of options that were thrown open on the multiplayer mode. You can learn a lot of new tricks in different maps as different persons in different roles. There are easy maps and there are difficult maps and they are big.

What is more awesome is the Frostbite 2 engine which gives the cinematic effect to the game though most mid-level cards can run it on medium graphics settings at most and good graphics cards can run on the hardcore, a real mesmerizing experience. It looks even more stunning in the night scenes. The lights and the sunlight look so real you will actually feel the sunlight piercing in and the lights in the alleys blinding you! And the visor looks real too, with dust speckles on the screen.

In the end, we felt the game is all about awesome graphics and a lot of pure multiplayer gaming. So get your copy today and start shooting while we catch Modern Warfare 3 and NFS THE RUN!