Holy shit Battlefield 3 has today shown its’ true colours, and they are bloody brilliant. Earlier today DICE opened up the Caspian Border map to everyone. The full 64-player conquest mode version of the map. It is good, damn good.

I had been having plenty of fun running around on Operation Metro in Rush mode, but I knew that was a diluted experience, it was the first few minutes of Battlefield 2’s Strike at Karkand over a full map. Caspian Border is more like Gulf of Oman with jeeps, tanks, jets and helicopters buzzing around and plenty of room for a spot of ground pounding.

I was slowly getting more convinced that Battlefield 3 was going to be a very strong multiplayer shooter, but having played the game mode everyone has been crying out for, I am starting to think that it might be more of a true successor to Battlefield 2 than I first imagined.

On my first spawn at the US base, I jumped into a jeep with someone who drove us to one of the control points which we were able to capture. That was until a bloody great tank showed up, now due to the automatic shouts when a target is spotted, I knew a tank was around. To see it bearing down on us in our feeble little jeep was a stark reminder of the variety of combat styles you will see in conquest mode Battlefield.

Skipping on ahead I was approaching a central control point situated on top of a small hill with a few team mates, we got close enough to start capturing the point and we all took aim at different parts of the hill top to ensure we eliminated any enemies promptly. It was a level of teamwork that I hadn’t seen on Operation Metro. Whether it was due to the nature of capturing control points compared to destroying MCOM stations or the style and size of the map, I don’t know. But it was a very enjoyable moment.

I’m going to have to play some more to get more detailed thoughts about Caspian Border and the Conquest mode, but the indications are positive.