'Battlefield 2: Modern Combat'

War may be hell.

But it sure isn't boring.

Battle hits consoles: Electronic Arts' frenzied "Battlefield" games have become a popular franchise for the company, with "Battlefield 2" recently storming the PC and console versions coming this fall.

While the PC version has been plagued by technical glitches, EA will probably have those fixed before too long and gamers can get back to obliterating each other in the highly acclaimed shooting title.

Until then, I'll stick with playing a demo version of "Battlefield 2: Modern Combat" for the Xbox that EA recently sent out. The game isn't scheduled for release for at least a few more months, so the demo is pretty barebones.

Multiplayer shootout: But it's not hard to see why this game is so addictive. It's primarily an online multiplayer firefight.

Up to 24 players can duke it out on each level in two teams. The game is structured to encourage teammates to fight cooperatively, with a commander issuing orders to his squad of infantry, snipers, special forces, engineers and so forth.

If you can find a group of regulars to play with, that might work. But when I hopped into a random match with strangers who also had access to the demo, it was like watching pinballs go to war.

Battlefield leadership: Everyone bounced off in random directions, haphazardly calling in air strikes on foes and teammates alike or unleashing streams of machine gun fire into whoever happened to wander past their crosshairs.

In the real world, that might mean a court martial, but in the game it's all part of the fun. It's only a matter of seconds to regenerate and trot back into the fray.

There will be a single-player mode as well, where gamers can play through some kind of flimsy plot, but the real attraction will be the multiplayer.

Still some bugs: The one complaint I have about the demo -- and it is just a demo, so hopefully this will be ironed out in the final version -- is that the game occasionally gets choppy regardless of the speed of your Internet connection.

Usually it wasn't bad enough to affect gameplay, but occasionally a bad guy that I had in my sights would disappear and reappear several feet away. Still, "Battlefield 2" looks like a real treat for console gamers.

'Battlefield 2: Modern Combat' Rating: Rating pending Score: A real treat for console gamers For: Xbox and PlayStation 2