I've played Battlefield 6's campaign - it could be one of the very best of all time

I've been lucky enough to play through three missions from the Battlefield 6 single-player campaign - and it's shaping up to be one of the best first-person shooter campaigns I've ever played.

Let's cut to the chase and set the scene - the year is 2027 and NATO is in disarray as a private military corporation known as Pax Armata has risen to take advantage of the chaos.

You play as members of the elite marine raiders unit Dagger 13 as they go on a series of missions to fight against Pax Armata's grab for power.

In the demo, I played a handful of missions set across Gibraltar, the US and Tajikistan.

Going chronologically and starting with the Gibraltar mission, called Operation Gladius which is the third mission in the game, you control Dylan Murphy, an Engineer.

It starts with a tank beach landing on the shores of Gibraltar and you play as the gunner, fighting your way through the beach and heavily fortified areas.

The action through this sequence is fairly fluid throughout, although there are some static moments where you need your head on a swivel to take out a load of enemies.

It's immediately apparent the level of destruction has carried over superbly into the campaign. It looks and feels like a dangerous battlefield from the off.

Soon after this is a tighter street section with enemies stationed in windows where you have to escort the tank to a nearby city hall.

You'll have to grab ammo from enemies and find stashes around the map. Launchers are dotted around to take out heavily armoured vehicles too. It's fast and frantic but if you rush out rashly, it's a guaranteed death. The Battlefield formula is well and truly alive here.

There was the occasional moment where I cleared out an area ahead of the tank, went back to repair it but was met with a message saying I was outside the combat area and needed to return - so I had to briefly go towards where I was just to come back again but that was the only time during my whole experience so far where the sense of immersion was broken.

Reaching the city hall, enemies are stationed everywhere and it quickly becomes a battleground - it may feel like there are too many enemies to take out at first but your AI teammates do a noticeable and strong job of taking out enemies in other areas you're not initially targeting.

You converge at the city hall which itself feels like a shooting gallery of enemies around each corner. You have to be on your toes at all times and react quickly or else you'll get caught out at both close and long range.

Playing on PC, the graphics and performance were both top notch and never faltered once.

Operation Gladius starts off with a beach landing on the shores of Gibraltar/ EA

Next up is the US with the fifth mission, No Sleep, which is set on the streets of Brooklyn. This time, you play as Haz Carter, an Assault class.

After setting up the mission, you go through Brooklyn townhouses with an assault rifle with a thermal scope and sledgehammer that gives one hit melee kills and possibilities to smash through walls and floors.

This was incredibly fun using the element of surprise to catch enemies off guard.

After clearing through some houses, there is a really fun rooftop battle where you have to clear out enemies from an adjacent building and they can only be seen using the thermal scope. Careful precision is required here and it was so incredibly satisfying pulling it off.

You then go through more buildings but instead of going up, this time you're heading down and this gives a lot more verticality as the sledgehammer really comes into play.

You can smash through floors, again to surprise enemies or just take them out that way. It's so fun using different techniques and the game allows to create your own unscripted moments even though you're on a prescribed path towards an objective.

Eventually, you then come to a thrilling chase through the NYC subway. You control a vehicle, chasing a train loaded with transmitters for missile strikes but it gets away, forcing you to find a way out of the tunnels to find a helicopter.

One of the city's iconic bridges is then bombed to stop the train and its transmitters from getting away. Despite this, the transmitters are still active and you then have to battle through the train wreckage on what's left of the bridge and remaining enemies to get to the transmitters.

This section in particular is thrilling as it focuses on close quarters combat and enemies themselves are disorientated at what has happened. You go through wrecked train carriages and sections of bridge hanging by a thread.

It's thrilling battling on the streets of Brooklyn / EA

Finally, in Tajikistan, having reached the Old Fort in Operation Ember Strike deep behind enemy lines, the task is to take out Pax Armata's SAM network.

This time, you play as Simone 'Gecko' Espina, who is Recon. She is armed with a sniper rifle and a drone in this more open mission.

You have to send the drone up and scout out areas to find out where enemies are, what firepower they have and what reinforcements there are. Patience and precision really is key and taking long range headshots on an unassuming enemies is very satisfying, along with drone strikes taking out clusters of enemies.

This is key to gaining the upper hand and not becoming overwhelmed while going across the map and taking out the SAMs with explosives. Especially as a lot of enemies have either snipers themselves or RPGs here.

You can try and go all guns blazing but it will more often than not end in disaster.

There is an ideal way to do it, with objectives Alpha, Beta and Charlie, but they can be done in any order of the player's choosing. As mentioned previously, the possibility for unscripted moments especially shines through here and you'll very likely have a different experience every single time you play through this section.

After taking out the three SAMs, you then have to take out one final one. This goes into a more linear second section of the mission but it's still brimming with fun, new and engaging things to do.

For example, you have to control missiles to take out heavily armoured vehicles to stop their advance on you. There's a heavily armoured base to tackle with a few surprises thrown in which will catch you off guard unless you're well equipped.

During this, there's a personal moment where you have to check on a teammate to see if they're okay. I didn't get to dig too deep into the backstories of the soldiers in this demo but it offered a glimpse into their journey which I'm sure will become more apparent in a full playthrough. It really grounds things well.

You then have to fight your way across, up and around a dam having destroyed the four SAMs as it becomes clear the dam needs to be destroyed to fully stop the SAMs from rebooting.

And in typical Battlefield fashion, things don't quite go to plan yet it ends spectacularly with the destruction of the dam as you narrowly escape. Cue the final battle... For another day.

Destruction really shines through in the eighth mission Operation Ember Strike / EA

My main feeling after playing through these missions was that I felt like a cog within a team that needs everyone to do their bit in order to succeed and the stories behind the soldiers you play as will be intriguing.

It didn't feel like a hero shooter, which some first-person shooters fall into the trap of, as playing out my specific role at all times was crucial, whether I was assault, engineer or recon. My AI companions held up their roles very well too.

Experiencing the specific toolsets of each Class within the campaign so far has been incredibly rewarding. I haven't yet played as a medic.

I'm hoping these three missions aren't just the flagship ones that EA wanted us to play because if the rest are anywhere near as good as these, we could be looking at one of the best first-person shooter campaigns of all time - and maybe even the very best if it all falls into place.

To note, there are nine missions in total and playing through these three took me around two hours at a fairly leisurely pace.

A code was provided by the publisher and I played through this Battlefield 6 demo on PC through Steam using an Acer Predator Helios 16 AI with Intel Core Ultra 9 processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti GPU and 32GB of RAM.

Battlefield 6 releases on 10 October on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC through Steam, the Epic Games Store and EA App.

Elsewhere from indy100:

• Battlefield 6 gameplay leak reveals popular gameplay feature is returning - and fans are loving it
• I've played Battlefield 6 - this is what makes it the best in years

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