In case you've been living in a deeper and darker cave than I have over the past few years, Battlefield is a massive combat first person shooter. Up to 64 players can play on the same server, forming two teams that fight across literally miles of terrain. Players can play different classes like Special Ops, Snipers and Medics, jump into vehicles, tanks and aircraft, and basically re-live all of those late afternoon summer games of "War" they used to play as a kid.

The original Battlefield 1942 was World War II themed, Battlefield: Vietnam was based around (duh) the Vietnam conflict, and Battlefield 2 is based in modern day. I have to say, I really dig the modern era genre and firepower over the "Nazi hunt" that's really just been played to death in recent years. While BF2 is nowhere as technical as say, America's Army, it does a fairly good job at representing the genre, and is going to be the game to beat.

Vehicles are a large part of BF2 and jets, helicopters, tanks, APCs, boats, jeeps, buggies all make their appearance in the demo, giving you lots of options for getting from point A to point B. And that's a good thing, because the larger map areas are literally miles across. I found that in some areas, if I couldn't get some wheels fast, it was easier and faster to just suicide and respawn closer to the action. If it weren't for a good map and radar system, you'd easily get lost out in the desert and court-marshaled for going AWOL. The levels really are that big.

Even though the game is huge with a lot of action going on, BF2 really excels with its command and control system. Instead of just leaving players on their own to come up with strategy on the fly, the game employs a hierarchy command system for those players that want to join it. Each side has a commander that can give orders and waypoints to his side by communicating those orders down to squads. A squad has up to 6 people on it and is lead by a squad leader who can also set objectives for his troops. In addition, if you belong to a squad, you can always spawn to where your squad leader is, saving long treks across dangerous ground to catch up with your mates. (Of course, if Sarge goes down, you'll have to start back at a normal spawn point, so protect your squad leader and always carry a medic.)

Because players have to expressly join a squad, there is at least some motivation to work together, and over the course of the several hours that I played I was fortunate to join a really great squad. The squad leader was intelligent about his tactics and a few players had headsets so we could strategize verbally, and the squad was well balanced with its classes. As a result, we worked together very well, and were able to quickly overtake our objectives, usually leading to victory for our side. Now, I doubt that I'll always be that lucky, but I'm still very impressed with the way squads work and they really create a sense that you are part of a large army and also part of a "band of brothers" that can affect the outcome of war. It's very difficult to describe, but it has to be the best game at creating the feeling that you are part of "something larger." This should grow when the final game is on the shelves because the game will feature "persistent character growth" to allow those with the dedication and strategic wherewithal to really shine.

Graphically, the game is on par, or a little above par than most other shooters out there. The level of detail is amazing, especially on the vehicles and the soldiers. I was quite impressed to be riding in a tank turret and noticing it detailed down to the radio whips bending back as we barreled over the landscape. The landscape and buildings are pretty well done, but on the whole nothing special. (Look how jaded we've become thanks to Half-life. Sigh.) On the other hand, the levels are definitely not dumbed-down to be able to support 64 players, in fact, I was pleasantly surprised at how well a full game ran and didn't notice any lag or dropout at all on my Comcast cable modem connection.

However, the real winner for me was the sound. I have a 4.1 Logitech THX system on an Audigy 2, and the sounds were amazing. You almost find yourself ducking when a low flying jet roars over. Sniper bullets whizzing by make you leap for cover, and explosions rock your world. The best moment of the game for me was riding in a chopper taking off from the USMC carrier, flying low over the water with the "whup-whup-whup" in my ears... just like being in a movie and still sends chills down my spine.

Of course, no game is perfect, and I have some major complaints about the control system. More specifically, the menu system that allows me to assign controls. I really hope they fixed this screen before the game went gold, or a prompt patch is coming, because the control assignment is horribly flawed. I have a rather eclectic keyboard config that I set up for my FPS games that I have been using since Doom 2. It's very hard for me to play any other way at this point, but that usually isn't an issue because every game lets you remap the keys and BF2 is no exception. Providing you don't want to use certain keys at certain times. For example, I use my left ctrl and left alt for my left and right strafing movement. Left ctrl was no problem, but the Common Controls screen would not let me map the left alt key to anything, saying that the key was in use. Even after clearing out all of the key mappings, the key just wasn't available. This left me using the left Windows key, of all things, and made my hand into a gnarled little claw.

To top it off, you have to map keys for each of the different vehicle types, land, aircraft, helo and boat. Your key mappings from the Common Controls screen don't carry over, leading to a tedious exercise of remapping every screen. And, to add insult to injury, some DIFFERENT keys cannot be mapped on those screens, leaving you to have to change up your config per vehicle type. Case in point, the land screen wouldn't let me map my left ctrl to left strafe, meaning that when I jumped into a vehicle I had to remember to switch to left shift. This caused me to drive right a lot. Finally, the screen has numerous usability issues that make the whole process painful, and it was only sheer force of will to not just exit the demo and go play something else.

My other menu beef is that the Internet game browser is incredibly slow and also painful to use. I think I'll end up just skipping it all together and use GameSpy or Xfire to launch my games. When it comes to game design and development, key mappings are easy. Menus are easy. Network lists are easy. Take a little extra time and make the easy bits just as good as the rest of the game - it will be worth it.

While the demo had both single player and multi-player, you'll be spending all of your time in multi-player. The single player game is good to learn the ropes and explore the maps, but the AI was terrible. I witnessed, several times, enemy AI running right in front of my squad, and not a shot was fired. This of course was not unexpected; the Battlefield series is built for online gameplay

Regardless of my frustrations with the control binding, I still pushed through and enjoyed the demo a lot, staying up WAY past my bedtime to play "just one more round." I've pre-ordered the game now, and am counting down the days until its released next week. If you are a FPS gamer with a decent Internet connection, this is a must have title. Go download the demo and start practicing now, because this is going to be huge for several years to come.