Get the kettle on there's a war on

Hardly what I'd call the best kept secret in the world but EA's latest and greatest episode into the Battlefield series on PS3 and Xbox 360 gets its beta launch today. Yes indeed, access all areas and it'll mean more late nights, eating raw coffee from a jar or drinking copious amounts of Red Bull just to stay active in the kill zone.

In a matter of weeks EA's two biggest titles will be duking it out for the Christmas sales once again and capturing two segments of the playing market, namely footie fans for the next Fifa and FPS fans keen to get their gun on before Actvisions MW3 hits in November. The War of words between EA and Activison shows no sign of slowdown, on the one hand the sniping about who has the better product has been well documented across the specialist press sites but now that the May 7 court date for ex Infinity Ward members West and Zampella has been set they'll be a lot more mud being traded.

EA should rest assured though, from what I've seen Battlefield 3 is a much more tactical led gameplay style to the traditional run and gun of Activision's FPS series, Black Ops has always been a faster more rapid fire game, besides, other than its single player content Modern Warfare 2 was no different but larger maps and a different objective layout makes BF3 require more brain matter as to how you're playing each of the levels.
A slower more tactical process of identifying enemy targets and weaknesses within their position on a map rather than visually radar tracking your next takedown with an Uzi is a welcome difference when two of the largest FPS titles go head to head over a relatively short release timing from each other.

The Battlefield series is hugely rewarding, it's been well over 2 years since battlefield 1943 launched and I'm still playing it, diversity, map size and vehicle use help differentiate the product, obviously EA's Medal of Honor reboot was a slight hiccup despite strong sales but I just Know that Battlefield 3 will put the franchise firmly back on track with some stellar review scores and strong sales.