The game premise is that you’re in command of two fire teams of Allied troops, but you never actually get to take command of any one troop per say – you just tell them what to do and where to go (as a team), and they’ll carry out your orders to the best of their abilities. This might sound somewhat dry at first, and while you really never acquire any new abilities during the course of the game, being a military simulation, you can’t really expect anything more. It can get somewhat repetitive to be sure if you’re going it alone on the lower difficulty, but increasing that and playing with a friend make it truly an experience to remember.

Not by any means a long game, it’s still one that can be well enjoyed many times through with a pal, assuming of course that that pal has a copy of the game and an Xbox live account. This is where my main gripe with the game lies – while having co-op on the same box isn’t, perhaps, excessively feasible, at least some LAN (aka System Link) support would have been nice. That aside, while the co-op experience really seems to be what the game was designed around, going solo isn’t a half bad experience in itself.

After a series of tutorials which will take up roughly an hour of your life, you’ll be well acquainted with most all of your fire teams’ abilities, and as a rule of thumb the same principles apply in almost every firefight – use one team to distract and the other to flank. This isn’t always true, but more often than not is the case. Having said that, while it is kind of formulated gameplay, it’s never boring or lacking in excitement (aided partially by the excellent graphics, sound and AI) and the cinematic quality of the game never faulters. You always feel like you’re directing a very intense movie, and while the story may not be Oscar-worthy, the experience is what really needs to be… well, experienced.

A typical mission will have you hunting down enemies, securing and/or defending an area and often even clearing the path for backup, meaning that you’ll need a pretty heavy arsenal. Luckily, you have an M203 grenade launcher, an M249 heavy machine gun, your typical automatic rifles and a couple of hand grenades (frag and smoke, which is actually amazingly effective in this game). Additionally, in the event that you come across some heavy artillery, there are portions of the game where you can call in air or mortar strikes assuming you can get close enough to paint the target. You can also call in air reconnaissance at various points during a mission using your handheld GPS system, which is also useful for finding back alleys and hidden routes to help you flank an enemy or get to your objective.

While the game’s not generally excessively frustrating, you may occasionally lose a trooper or two. Losing two means game over (and you’ll have to "redeploy" to your last checkpoint, or one even earlier than that if you so choose) but losing only one troop means you can pick him up using another member from one of your fire teams and carry him to a Casevac site, where he’ll be healed and you can stock up on ammo. This is probably really the biggest stretch in realism for gameplay’s sake throughout the whole game, as it really is just THAT realistic.

The game’s AI is generally based upon in-game triggers, but once unleashed the enemies can be pretty smart and ruthless. They’ll stick to cover when possible, use RPG’s and grenades when available, and if exposed attempt to find better shelter. They don’t usually work in teams as much as one might expect which is in some ways a bit of a disappointment, but then again the game sets you in the middle of an urban war where combatants aren’t exactly excessively strong in numbers.

The AI really shows through, however, in your team members – if told to fire on the enemy they won’t spring from cover while being shot at, they’ll automatically go for cover if exposed, and they essentially act so realistically you’d almost think they were real people playing the game with you somewhere in the world. The chatter is at times obscene but almost always at least mildly humorous, and really adds just that much more depth to the game.

The game’s design is VERY well thought out, with numerous visual representations available to assist you – you’ll always know when your guys are fully or partially covered, who they’re engaging, what they’re doing, what your enemies are doing as far as your troops can see, and the list goes on and on. Choosing the fire command will present you with an area cursor which allows you to designate a firezone, grenade throws are predicted by an arc and you can tell your grenadier where to fire his M203 with a reticule. You can even determine what’s in your troops’ line of sight using the "real-time fog of war" which paints a 3D haze over any spot your troops aren’t paying attention to. You can, of course, tell individual team members to face different directions, and while this decreases your firepower in any one direction it’ll keep your flank better protected when needed.

Graphically, FSW shows what the Xbox is capable of beautifully, with no shortage of excellent models, textures and effects. The animations are all top notch and add lots of character to the game; the environments are appropriately gritty and broken down as well as wonderfully detailed; the particle and lighting effects are all extraordinary and I can truthfully say that there is nothing in this game that will visually deteriorate your immersion in the world of FSW. The immersion, however would not be complete with the audio tracks, and between the excellent ambient feeling music with haunting vocals and the incredibly realistic sound effects the illusion truly is complete. I dozed off late one night as a buddy was playing the game through and awoke completely convinced that my house had been raided and I was being shot at – the sound effects truly are that good.