1. Electronic Art recently released its long waited multiplayer sequel Battlefield 3, a few days back. There has rarely been a combative shooter's game that have gathered such enormous fanatic admiration from the original game to sequels as the EA's Battlefield franchise.

2. It is one thing to gather a frenzied following on a time-tested bell and whistle but it requires innate innovation, plenty of guts and lots of belief in order to repeatedly raise the benchmark for others to follow.

3. Battlefield comes from the stables of large format maps, still larger plausible game tactics in company with enormous range of vehicles and massive annihalation.

4. It is a six year gap between the second and the third sequel though it has been interspered with the Bad Company variations with its own dark humor to boot and it has everything in it to not displease those fanatics of the series though those hooked onto great campaigns would not find it upto mark.

5. Online mustiplayer being the star attraction in this genre has been well understood though the competitive multiplayer seems to be very limited, 3 in reality though 6 notionally.

6. One is where the teams compete to capture and control through three diffferent flags. The other is where they defend and destroy positions inorder to move to newer positions. And finally, there is the classic annihilation mode that allows for combats at close quarter, all within one of the 9 designer maps.

7. The highlight of this game though is undoubtedly the message of coopetition - cooperation as well as competition. The players are rewarded for teamwork - helping each other overcome obstacles is as rewarding as going for the brunt and mowing down enemies, a healthy balance for those wanting just to have jolly fun and those who aim to be winners only.

8. The graphics and the physics are simply outstanding - debris flying all around and wind penetrating across girthy trees.There has been immense effort put into make the game feel real with sound design even taking care of bullets rechociating with varying sounds from different surfaces or getting that exact trapped shallow sound emerging from inside concrete buildings.

9. There is though, a very obvious lacunae or maybe a deliberate attempt at weaning players away from playing solo in that the solo mode is a big letdown. It provides for only 6 hours gameplay which though is hardly value for money. The multiplayer version is so much better that for me it would have been better to not offer a solo mode rather than offer one that is crap.

10. All in all it's a game that has been worth the wait. All credits to Dice and EA for yet again delighting their fan(atics).

Also reviewed for Ciao UK under same name and titles