Genre: FPS
Publisher: EA Games
Developer: Digital Illusions
Release Date: November 1, 2005

EA's Battlefield series has been one of the better things to happen to first-person shooters in quite a few years. It reinvigorated the often-tired genre with support for up to 64 players on large, well-designed maps, complete with a plethora of vehicles (jeeps, tanks, fighter planes, etc.) that allowed players to significantly reduce travel time and increase their frag counts.

That's all well and good, but Battlefield was PC-exclusive so why should console gamers care? EA hopes to give them a reason with Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, which will be released for the PS2 and Xbox.

The demo features one Middle Eastern-themed urban map, Backstab, and the single game mode I got to take a look at is the meat and potatoes of all Battlefield games, conquest mode. Each team (either the Middle Eastern Coalition or the United States) starts a round with around 450 "tickets," with the goal being to control more of the six flagged checkpoints than your opponents do. Doing this causes their tickets to slowly decrease, with the round being over when one side's ticket count hits zero.

Five player classes were available to each player in the demo: assault, sniper, engineer, special forces, and support. The assault class is the basic soldier, good for most situations while not shining in any one area. The snipers, of course, have their scoped rifles, but they also come equipped with a GPS locator that is used to show opposing players on the radar in order to determine what general area to train their crosshairs. Engineers are anti-vehicle, with landmines for taking out buggies and tanks and stinger missile launchers for dealing with choppers. The special forces have devastating C4 charges and a silenced pistol. The fact that it's silenced really makes no difference in the scheme of things since so many things are blowing up all around you that it's difficult to hear specific bursts of gunfire. Finally, the support class can heal his teammates and call in artillery strikes when they control at least two checkpoints. The artillery is often a game breaker if used correctly (eradicating the opposing team in one strike) or incorrectly (eradicating your own team and hearing all about it the rest of the round from your teammates).

Vehicles in the demo included a machine-gun-equipped buggy, a tank, and the helicopter. The vehicles play a major factor both in getting you to a checkpoint before your opponents and in defending that checkpoint after a capture.

Modern Combat controls as well as anyone could want a console shooter to. Developer Digital Illusions has done a great job so far of mapping all of the commands to the Xbox controller, facilitated by the many context-sensitive actions (the same button that changes your position while driving a vehicle also deploys your parachute). Vehicles handle like a dream, thanks to the analog sticks. Flying the helicopter is a bit tricky, but most players should be raining down missiles on their enemies in no time.

Graphically, the game is progressing nicely. Everything from the damaged buildings to the tall grass to the water looks about as impressive as they can, while still keeping the framerate at the steady clip it maintains even in the heaviest firefights.

If Digital Illusions can deliver on the rest of the maps and the single player campaign the way they did with Backstab, Xbox owners may finally have a good reason to eject Halo 2 from their consoles this November and participate in Modern Combat's 24-player mayhem on Live.