With the single player completed I took on the co-op level with another attendee. The mission was to rescue a VIP and escort him to safety. The starting weapons given were a silenced pistol and a LMG with an infrared scope.

The mission started with you and your partner entering an apartment and dispatching the first 2 soldiers and I took their shotgun. Now I won’t go through this word for word because the co-op level has been seen already.

The shotgun seemed to be a good idea as the narrow corridors made enemies easy pickings. After reaching the VIP and before leaving with him I noticed he had a stare that felt he was looking into my very soul and a TV on that appeared to show a plan carpet bombing (was difficult to tell with the blurry TV).

After we got back to the army convoy and dropped off the VIP we had to escort it and to my dismay my weapons were automatically taken away and I was given back the starting LMG and pistol. Luckily there was a pile of weapons you could select and I took the only sensible weapons a sniper with 121 rounds with an IR scope and an assault rifle with an ACOG scope and now began the escorting.

The enemies were up in the houses shooting down, but they were easy to get rid of as we both took one side each. After clearing the first wave we had to clear a gate which the escort cars did by driving into it. Now we were in a construction site with magic RPGs because as we entered an RPG came out of a wall (never could find the shooter behind the wall (it was fired at ground level and in a place that could be accessed). The site was easy to clear just snipe off the people in the building. After this both my partner and had to take gunnery positions on 2 of the cars.

Going on the lead car hit an IED (Improvised explosive device) and we got ambushed and as we drove on I noticed some of the enemies were still alive and then they simply vanished.

Continuing on we reached a gate and had to get out and blow up a door with C4 and this is where co-op play is needed because waves of enemies starting arriving as you go to place the C4. So what we did was have one of us place the C4 and other deal with the waves. After this was completed the game broke. Yes that is right what was behind the door constantly caused the game to freeze.

The freezing in the co-op mission would happen randomly at any point and so no one ever saw what mysteries were on the other side of the door.

Here is the video of the co-op level from Gamescom.

I must say this again before wrapping up. This was an old unfinished build and so issues brought up will likely be fixed before launch and may have been fixed already.

To sum up Battlefield 3 I would say it isn’t a bad game. Getting past the engine issues and bugs it was solid and fun and at the event I wanted to play the game again and again. The linearity and scripting of the single player mission was annoying but that is becoming the norm for single player FPS campaigns. The co-op past the freezing issue was rather enjoyable especially during the escort even through it was just shooting at waves of enemies.

I would say give Battlefield 3 a shot when it comes out later this month.

Battlefield 3 is due out October 25, 2011 (NA) and October 28, 2011 (EU) on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.