In Flashpoint 2, when you need to attack a village, you must first approach it, and given that the game world is a 25-mile long island, you can approach it from any direction you want. This is a game with realistic engagement ranges; in most shooters, you're busy blasting away at enemy soldiers yards away from you. In this one, you might come under fire hundreds of yards away from the objective, with the tracers keeping your head down as you scramble for cover.

The designers were kind enough to let me take the 360 gamepad and try it out for myself. (Rest assured, it's coming to the PC, as well as the PS3). Leading my fire team of four soldiers, I issued an order for the guys to fall into line as we ran toward the village, trying to keep a bunch of trees between the bad guys and us. Since this was a demo, they had turned invulnerability on for me , which is probably for the best considering otherwise I would have died about eight times. I issued an order for the guys to lay down suppressing fire while I got closer to the enemies defending the village. I sprinted closer, and then dove for the ground, hoping the tall grasses would conceal me from the Chinese infantry firing.

Using binoculars, I called in a JDAM strike on a heavy weapons emplacement, and then used my M203 grenade launcher to pop grenades at squads of Chinese infantry. I then ordered my squad to move up while I sprinted into the village to engage in some house-to-house clearing. Yes, just like in Operation Flashpoint every building in the game can be entered. It makes urban combat just that much more nerve-wracking since the enemy can appear in any window. We're told the AI behavior is good enough that the designers didn't even bother trying to predict what the enemy would do. The good news is that if you're the kind of shooter player who hates squad orders, you can get through the game without giving orders to your squad; the AI will take care of everything.