Battlefield 3 released on Tuesday to massive audiences compared to their release of Battlefield Bad Company 2 in 2010. In fact, once I finally got around to playing it in the early evening, the servers were already creaking from the sheer numbers of gamers crashing them. The DICE team made known on Twitter that they were correcting the problem, and within an hour and a half it was much better. While waiting I got a fairly good taste of the single-player campaign, which I’ll talk about later, but nothing compares to Battlefield’s multiplayer.

First of all, Battlefield 3 is a pretty game, no doubt. However, it has suffered some “streamlining” in the console platform, and you may find some of the animations and backgrounds a little underwhelming compared the dazzling high-res graphics you may have seen from their promotional material (which were also from the high-end computer version). There were some lag and clipping issues, which I’m sure were a result of the overloaded servers rather than the game itself. Indeed, DICE provided the ability to surf servers and choose where to invest your bullets, which is incredibly handy when you’re looking to get into the right map, with the right number of people for your squad, etc. No more guessing! (Well, until after you beat that map and you’re randomly assigned another one.)

The campaign was underwhelming, unfortunately. It was pretty, and the game mechanics were still all there. I felt like whoever developed the single-player was pandering a bit too strongly to the Call of Duty crowd. The campaign is linear, with a very scripted sequence of events (cripes, they even had quick-time events straight out of Black Ops). The Battlefield prides itself on its open, tactically interesting scenarios with plenty of variety in one’s approach. You won’t get that in the Battlefield 3 campaign… but it’s, you know, pretty.

Battlefield 3’s shining asset is its new Frostbite 2 engine, which performs so incredibly fast that it feels like the hardwire might, at times, be struggling to keep up. The destruction in the game has been scaled down on the console and other limitations needed to be made so that the Xbox 360 can keep up with the new Frostbite’s incredible physics. There’s also the potential in the console version (didn’t see this is much on PC) for the physics to go wild, a player’s body being blown 20 meters across the map after succumbing to bullets. A tank rolling over some debris and firing it across the ground.

Despite some faults, Battlefield 3 is as pleasing a game as one can find on the market right now, and has plenty of time for tweaking to give Modern Warfare 3 a run for its money when it releases in November.