Battlefield 2: Modern Combat [PS2]

At first blush, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat looks much like its namesake predecessor... but just watch for a minute or two, and you'll see that it's a much breezier, almost arcade-flavored outing with some glaring differences.

There's turmoil in a former Soviet satellite state, and both U.S.-led and Chinese forces scramble to "stabilize" the region. Each side does this differently, with players taking alternating sides throughout the course of the single-player campaign. The first and most obvious divergence from the PC's Battlefield 2 formula is that, well, there actually is a solid single-player experience here. As players make their way through the campaign, the battles are bookended by cinematics of television news broadcasts -- all heavily-spun to reflect the views of the respective governments, of course!

The second most obvious difference, and the tactical selling-point of the game, is the on-the-fly unit swapping. At any time, while controlling any soldier or friendly unit, you can instantly take control of any different friendly unit in your sights with the single touch of a button; there's a brief, out-of-body POV warp effect across the battlefield to the target unit, and then you're controlling it.

Perhaps you're doing sniper duty up on a rooftop, picking off enemy shooters on the street or in the buildings across the way, when you see an enemy tank rolling into a distant courtyard. Obviously, your sniping loadout won't do anything against that, even if you have the time to hoof the distance to the target... but instantly zipping into the body of a far-away soldier packing anti-armor weaponry is just what the general ordered. Obviously this function can also serve the purpose of rapid transit from place to place, dealing proper damage as only a live, thinking player can.

Modern Combat offers 5 classes of soldier (assault, sniper, spec ops, support, and engineer), 30 vehicles, and some 50+ weapons, plus a 20-mission single-player campaign in which to brush up on all of them. The mission types offer a lot of variety and sprawling battlegrounds with enough space to get a little crazy with the vehicles -- but only if you can handle the wonky, awkward control of some of said vehicles.