Battlefield 1943 is a downloadable game for the Xbox 360 and the PS3. It costs roughly $15 or the equivilant in Microsoft Points and its well worth it. You fight on either side (Japanese Imperial Navy ground forces or the US Marines).

Firstly, the maps. There are four of them including Iwo Jima, Wake Island and the recently unlocked Coral Sea for air combat. You start off at a base which could be on dry land or on the open sea on your team’s aircraft carrier. Should it be the latter, you can either clamber into a landing craft to storm the beaches or take to the skies in a fighter plane.

This is something I love about this game. Every vehicle you see from tanks to jeeps and fighters – you can drive. This is complimented by the sandbox style of the game which makes transport necessary. This isn’t like Call of Duty where you can run to the other side of the map in a minute or two.

The game play is fantastic. I remember approaching a bridge in a US Marine jeep with another jeep ahead of me and a tank behind. The gunner on the back of my jeep opened up when we heard the buzz of an approaching enemy fighter when the jeep in front was hit by a bomb from the fighter. The bridge collapsed – and so did our advance.

The dust and smoke cleared just in time for me to see and enemy tank flanked by six or seven enemy troops over the other side appear. We all bailed out of our vehicles before a barrage of tank shells, rockets and grenades rained in and destroyed them – along with our escape plan. A minute or two of fighting between the two sides and our advance was crushed into dust finer than the white sand down on the beaches.

We limped back to our initial base to either muster another attack or defend from theirs.

The realism of this game is stinking. Some sort of planning and cooperation to capture the enemy bases is a must.

The guns, which are almost identical on either side are a semi-automatic, high calibre rifle (M1 Garand), a sub machine gun or a sniper. These can be accompanied by any number or other weapons such as a grenade launcher attachment, a rocket launcher or satchel charges. They have kept the weapons simple which I liked. This isn’t supposed to be a highly detailed, historically accurate game. It’s a warfare game where you live long enough to see your killer as your side charges through enemy fire up a hill to capture a heavily defended base – you haven’t got the time worry about the absence of flame throwers, or the BAR machine gun.

You simply gather in jeeps and tanks along a road. Wait for the air bombing to cease and burse through the perimeter fencing of the enemy’s base. Job done.

Oh, and did I mention the destructable environment?