In his Vietnam masterpiece Platoon, Oliver Stone came to the conclusion that the first casualty of war was innocence. The first victim of Battlefield 3’s conflict is identity.

So desperate is developer DICE to close the ground on genre king Call of Duty’s commercial dominance that it’s seemingly adopted the strategy: if you can’t beat ’em, then just try to be ’em.

As a result, BF3’s confused campaign mode largely foregoes the wide screen shock-and-awe aesthetic for some cramped corridor shooter set pieces hampered by suspect squad mate AI and random QTEs. Sure, the stunning new Frostbite 2 graphics engine eclipses anything before it, but almost everything else, down to the sub-Bravo Two Zero story line, apes Activision’s cash cow.

It’s particularly galling because the all-too-few occasions when BF3’s single-player broadens its scope – the vehicle levels where you take part in an airborne bombing raid for example – show what might have been if the game had stuck to its guns.

Thankfully, BF3’s multiplayer mode does just that – and then some. The emphasis on tactics and teamwork over camping and killstreaks remains its biggest strength. But a myriad of improvements to loadouts and levelling up make it even more enjoyable for vets and virgins alike. With its deliriously destructible environments and heavy emphasis on heavy artillery and armoured vehicles – not to mention the reintroduction of jet fighters – new recruits will not know what hit them (figuratively and, initially at least, literally).

But stick with it and you’ll discover not only a richly rewarding squad-based shooter, but also the brilliant Rush mode which, with its dramatic and drawn-out large-scale conflicts, is for my money the best multiplayer mode of any military shooter.

As a complete package, Battlefield 3 clearly isn’t the COD killer that many were hoping for. But in the multiplayer stakes, it’s still a force to be reckoned with.