Matches are invariably a brisk five to fifteen minutes, and seldom descend into stalemate. Once you're rolling, you can happily and seamlessly run from one into the next without stopping, and get showered in XP to level up your hero while doing so. Despite its limitations, Battlefield Heroes is an addictive romp already - but it's very far from being ready.

Most of the things that make the game unusual aren't in it yet. The website it's launched from is basic and slow, and doesn't feature the campaign-map meta-game DICE has talked about, or any of the social functions you might expect either. Even the character creation tool is very simple, leaving costume customisation to be done within the game client. There's no friends or lobby system to speak of, and matchmaking is haphazard at best.

More seriously, the game's levelling system hasn't been fully implemented yet, and remains something of a mystery. Battlefield Heroes' three classes - Soldier (sub machine guns, healing), Gunner (machine guns, shields and lots of health) and Commando (stealth, traps and sniping) - can all gain XP as they play, and also spend Hero Points to power up abilities and buy new ones. Missions - achievement-style challenges to destroy a certain number of tanks in one round, for example - can be picked up after level 5 in the current version of the game, and award Hero Points.