TGS: Battlefield 3's Campaign Carnage

DICE has already shown off sections of Battlefield 3's multiplayer and co-op modes, and today on the first day of TGS the game that would topple Call of Duty finally had its campaign mode put into the eager hands of the press. Well, roughly 10 minutes of it anyway.

Apparently taking place about halfway through the game's campaign, the single-player demonstration kicked off on the outskirts of Tehran in Iran, on top of a hill at the break of dawn. I stepped behind the rifle sights of Sergeant Blackburn of the US Marines, just one of the several different soldiers that the player will take control of over the course of the game.

Smoke blanketed the sky above and anti-aircraft fire emanated from the horizon and disappeared into the heavens. On the signal of a fellow soldier myself and the half dozen or so of the rest of the platoon stormed down the hillside, with the objective of securing an apartment block at the bottom. After legging it past mortar rounds that erupted in the earth, toppling trees and leaving craters in the terrain courtesy of the Frostbite 2.0 engine, I was then tasked with setting up a mortar and launching an illuminating round into the skies above the apartment to make our approach clearer, and enemies easier to spot.

After receiving a boost over a tall wall from a fellow soldier the action started properly, as a handful of enemies on an overpass opened fire and were met by several carefully placed rounds from my assault rifle. Once down into a shallow canal, it soon became apparent that crouching and going prone is pretty essential in order to survive Battlefield 3's campaign skirmishes – if you stand tall and out in the open you're going to eat more lead than a pencil sharpener.

Once out of the canal the US marine squad mounted an attack on two machine gun nests guarding the rear of the targeted apartment block. Again it was time for the Frostbite 2.0 engine to do its thing, as a couple of well-placed grenade tosses violently tore the sandbagged nests apart like wind through dandelion spores. After taking down a few snipers shadowing the windows of the apartment block my squad finally made its way to the back door, at which point one of my fellow marines tossed a cheeky grenade through the doorway and the group of enemies inside were explosively evacuated out through the windows – one of them who was clearly standing too close to the blast remained on fire long after the explosion had rung.

Once into the apartment block there was time for an obligatory cinematic door breach which allowed me to savour a shotgun blast to an insurgent's face in slow motion, before finally rendezvousing with a convoy of hummers on the other side of the apartment block at which point the demonstration ended.

I had fun playing this short stretch of Battlefield 3's single-player mode, but to be honest it didn't quite blow me away as I'd hoped. Certainly after watching the early videos of the game that involved levelling tall buildings with rocket launchers and seeing seismic waves ripple through bitumen-covered roads, this Tehran level was comparatively sedate. I was impressed with how well the game looked given that it was actually the console version of the game rather than the PC, although because of the early dawn setting most of the game environment was bathed in darkness so it was hard to get a true representation of the visual fidelity on offer.

However, this was just 10 minutes of the game, and as Battlefield community manager Daniel Matros stressed to me, Battlefield 3's campaign is all about building tension and releasing it – and there's every chance that the level immediately after the one I played is some massive action set piece that features fighter jets and razed city blocks. (Matros also pointed out that "the Frostbite 2.0 engine doesn't really have any limitations - we could have earthquakes in every level of the game if we wanted to, but we're trying to tell a story so the events need to fit the scope of it.").

Certainly it seems to be how DICE intends on differentiating Battlefield 3's campaign from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3's:Battlefield 3 is trying to deliver the authentic experience of being a soldier and the more deliberate pacing to each conflict that comes with it, whereas Modern Warfare 3 is like getting into the passenger seat with a coked up Charlie Sheen at the wheel – it's got one speed: go.

Matros agrees: "We don't want these huge explosions all the time, we don't really go for those kinds of gimmicks. We really want the experience to be atmospheric, we want the player to be really swept up in the experience."

Which method you'd prefer is up to you, but at the end of the day both the campaign modes in Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 are intended to be the gateway drugs that lure you into their respective online modes, and clearly that's where this particular blockbuster FPS showdown is going to be won or lost. Bring it on.