Medal of Honor Multiplayer

The menu may be basic, but the meals are still rich with potential, and that's largely thanks to the tasty maps they're served on. Garmzir Town is a rural gathering of clay huts of varying heights, with a river running through it and a couple of bridges. There are lots of shady rooms with exciting sight lines for snipers, and dumb Riflemen seem to enjoy funnelling along those bridges.

Then there's Diwagal Camp, an outpost on top of a hill, bordered by rat runs constructed from supply crates and mesh netting and perfect for close-quarters combat - something many felt Bad Company 2 did poorly, and something at which Medal of Honor seems to be much better. We pick up a good few knife kills here when the shotgun doesn't solve the problem.

Kandahar Marketplace, meanwhile, is a suburban hamlet, flat and strewn with rubble and detritus. Again, there are long sight lines, but this time snipers find it harder to escape violent censure with so many angles of approach to each pocket of cover.

Kunar Base is an old army base piled high with broken down old Soviet tanks and abandoned Coalition goodies, and it goes in phases - great for snipers initially, as one side tries to break through a roadblock with support (though not playable support) from a tank, before things become more intimate in a hangar and then exposed again on an airstrip.

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Attribution

Shahikot Mountains, the fifth and final map, is our venue for Combat Mission. It's a long, snakelike strip of a battlefield, all snow and rock, where Coalition forces have to secure and evacuate a downed chinook at the far end, traversing narrow mountain paths, caves and frozen rivers on the way. Snipers will dine out on it for as long as it takes someone to start throwing smoke grenades.

12 on 12 feels like the right number of players for each, and most modes are available across all five arenas. With limited time we don't get to mix it up that much, but the diversity and quality of the level design is already apparent - each map likely to draw different strategies from fans of each class, which should have you spreading your experience across all three and levelling up equally along the way.

The difference between Medal of Honor and other multiplayer shooters - even DICE's own Bad Company 2 - may be in balance and simplicity. As you progress through the game's levelling arc, your range of options increases horizontally rather than vertically, so a skilled newcomer should still be able to take down an impulsive veteran.

There are still some tweaks ahead - we spawn right into the muzzle of an enemy gun a few times - but this isn't quite final code, and in any event DICE clearly has the patience and appetite to amend its work if feedback suggests it's worth doing. It has done so far anyway.

Does it do enough to drag people away from Bad Company 2, and distract people from the prospect of multiplayer in Call of Duty: Black Ops, which already looks substantial? We shall have to wait and see, but if a fast-moving meritocracy is what you're after rather than killstreaks, then this is worth keeping an eye on.