Going hands on with one of the biggest games of E3 2011 features a few huge surprises. One of which being the games PC only presentation. After sitting through a media presentataion, which awarded me a pair of dog tags, we were taken to the demo play-through area.

Despite multiple request, Dice declined my attempt to photograph the setup for Battlefield 3, However, I did end up getting a shoot of it during our interview. Once inside the exclusive booth and after escaping the hour long lines, I took my seat in front of an extremely high powered PC. The hardware was not visible, but it had to be some type of alien technology, (wink, wink).

The Dice guys handling the experience were coy about what type of technology the game was running on, but they did say the demo was running on middle of the road PC's. As good at that sounds, its hard to believe a game looking that good was running on a middle of the road PC. However, that might be why the multiplayer demo took 10 minutes to restart. Which, could also be an explaination for the extremely long lines most had to endure just to get their hands on the game. Durring our time with the multiplayer play through, no info on the story was revealed. The play-through did allow us to experience almost all the features available in the game, when it launches this holiday. Dog tags, destructible environments, and map progress were all present in the demo.

The destruction in Battlefield 3 is a treat. Particle effects are everywhere, the crumbling walls look great, and the shrapnel from explosion have the potential to have you respawning quicker than you expected. The battle started in Opertaion Metro, a map that begins on an open field. As you progress through the map your enemies are progressing towards you. The first objective durring the demo was to clear out the AA-Guns, once completed the boomers blow a crater in the ground opening up access to the subway.

Moving through the subway features some cool users created explosions that blow cars off their tracks, and leads to the office building. The fight in the office building shows off what FrostBite 2 can do to different elements. Shooting through the glass and watching the metal furniture collapse and bend from being riddled with bullets, made the battle feel extremely intense. The office furniture was falling apart, walls bursting from frag grenades, sometimes creating cover for you. There were a huge amounts of the environmental destruction, and some epic audio to accompany them.

Once I completed the third objective, I noticed the complete entrance to the office building had been destroyed. A powerful explosion will blow holes in walls, burst open fire hydrants, and even rip down trees. Since Battlefield was only shown on PC I can’t directly say how the game handled from a controller perspective. Form a PC perspective, Dice had the controls configured perfectly, I felt right at home with the mouse and key board; once I figured out what the keys were. We will cover the epic graphics of Battlefield soon, also look out for our interview with Dice in the coming weeks.