There is a process to playing the Battlefield 3 beta. First you have to open Origin, then select the game, which launches the Battlelog system in your browser. From there you can either select Quick Match to jump into a game, or check out the server browser and stats if you want to explore. You'll need to download a quick plugin for your browser, but since there's only one map and one game mode available for play, you won't have to fuss around much to find games.

Right now it takes a while to find a game, and once you find a slot on a server, it takes just as long to actually enter the game. To adjust the game's settings you need to be in a game—and alive. This makes it very easy to be killed while you're fiddling with resolutions, and I can't think of a good reason for this particular limitation.

There is nothing about Battlelog that is either user friendly or speedy in this beta; it is rough around the edges. But all is forgiven once you jump into the core game.

When talking about a multiplayer game in beta it's hard to separate the limitations of an early build from the gameplay itself. You can't choose which squad you'd like to be in, so it can be hard to stick with your friends on the map. It's difficult to unlock new weapons in the game or progress in levels because the servers keep crashing. I feel like I unlocked the same scope two or three times, only to lose it once again when the server crashed. When I earned my first ribbon for completing an entire round it felt like an accomplishment.

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That being said, the ability to go prone and the newly enhanced foliage make this a whole new game. It's easy to skulk around unnoticed, and it's not uncommon to be staring down your sights, only to have a knife slide across your virtual throat. The guns also feature bright muzzle flashes, and the glint from a sniper's scope is visible from across the map. The game has made it very easy to disappear, but doing something once you're out of sight tends to telegraph your location. It's a different rhythm than Bad Company 2, and it cranks up the tension between firefights to an almost unbearable level.

Grenades are powerful, but they take a while to go off, and there is no way to cook them. The weapons do as much damage as you would expect from a Battlefield game that's not in hardcore mode; you're going to have to put a few rounds into the bodies of the enemy to get them to go down. You do get a damage and point bonus for headshots, so aiming for the face is important. The assault class now has the health packs and defibrillators, creating a sort of combat medic, and you can choose to accept or decline a revive when someone tries to bring you back.

Expect to be fodder for the first hour or so of play—that's to be expected in any game with persistent characters and unlockable weapons—but the game does a great job of giving you points just for trying. If you lay down a ton of lead around an enemy and a teammate gets the kill, you still get a suppression bonus. If you put a few rounds into an enemy, but don't finish him off, you get a kill assist bonus that goes up and down depending on how much damage you've inflicted. You get points for healing people or providing them ammo, and you get points for those in your squad spawning to your position. If you finish the round, you get points. Players with higher skill levels will level up quicker than mediocre players, but if you give it the ol' college try you'll still move along at a good clip. The game always seems to have a weapon or gadget ready to reward you as you chug along.

The Frostbite 2 engine is very impressive, especially on higher-end hardware. Trees fall, your cover takes damage or disintegrates completely under fire, and the characters all move with lifelike animations. The particle effects around flames are impressive, as are the lighting effects; the tactical flashlight is an effective way to blind enemies and teammates alike. Knife kills are now a very slow affair, and you need to time your melee kills; the animation is long and leaves you incredibly vulnerable. One of my favorite moments was creeping up the stairs of the apartment buildings that look over the last two MCOM stations and knifing the three snipers who were killing my buddies.

Now I sleep with their dog tags under my pillow. Like a boss.

Friendly fire is turned on during the beta, and when you're playing on a public server with random people you can expect many, many team kills.

The one available map, Operation Metro, doesn't have any vehicles, and the design is linear: you fight outside, and then you fight inside, and then you fight outside again. The cramped firefights inside the subway station are a good change of pace, but the win is usually given to the team with the better organization, not just the better players. Find some friends, put on headsets, talk to each other, and you'll have a huge advantage.

This beta won't have nearly the staying power of the Wake demo from Battlefield 1942, but it doesn't have to; the game is coming out in under a month. It's more than enough to get us excited for the final product, even if the game makes a number of boneheaded decisions in the menus and user interface.

After playing for hours, I feel good about the game. It can be overwhelming at first, and you'll often feel like a wave crashing on the shore. Just when you're ready to give up you'll break through and have your own little action movie moment, and that's enough to keep you going. Certain areas of the map feel like a balled fist, a spot of potential energy just waiting to go erupt. You see the bottom half of your body as you vault over obstacles, and you hear the breath of your character as you sprint. Everything looks and feels heavy, and the sounds of gunfire can be terrifying with the right sound system. The best thing I can say about the game is that it feels distinct, for better or worse. It's a very different experience than Bad Company 2 and certainly different than the lone-wolf play of the Modern Warfare series.

If you haven't upgraded your PC recently, now is a good time to do so.