While not meant to be a hard-core military sim, Battlefield 2 has much richer and more convincing visuals and physics than its predecessors, even at this sneak peek stage. EA parked a bunch of troops and vehicles atop a massive dam/bridge to bomb the hell out of it from various angles of attack. First they drove an ordinary civilian truck through an open tunnel at the base of it, just to show off the industrial architecture; next, an Abrams tank cranked off a few shells at troops garrisoning the bridge, causing many soldier bodies to fly in glorious Havoc-powered physics.

They also called in an F-15-launched missile strike, which -- after a preliminary staged dogfight, which included seeking-missile fire and the dumping of defensive flare/chaff countermeasures to defeat it -- took out sizeable chunk of the dam, thereby also showing off the game's new semi-destructible environments.