It should be hitting the shelves now or relatively soon.

It's got about three demos: Sid Meier's Pirates (boat combat...meh), Darkwatch (haven't played it yet) and the Live! only Battlefield 2: Modern Combat.

Battlefield 2 rocks the Casbah and anyone who's remotely interested in military team combat should definitely check into it.

The demo plops you in a desert and places you either at the "terrorist" encampment or the American camp (your choice). Now I haven't played around with the settings but the popular (or may be the only mode) is conquest where your team must occupy six flags that are between the two camps with most of the flags in a small city in the middle of the map. You choose your soldier type (assault, sniper, special forces, engineer, support..I may be forgetting one) and off you go. The map has vehicles littered intelligently throughout (jeeps, tanks, helicopters,cars, etc.) that anyone can hop in and drive. Most vehicles will allow others to hop on for the ride. The chopper even allows for parachuting (just make sure the pilot doesn't have the chopper tilted downward or you may jump into the blades). It's FPS, so everything is pretty much self explanatory except that 1)weapons are changed by holding the left trigger and using a stick to make a selection, 2)D Pad is for zooming in/out on the radar, activate/deactivate flag locations and map, 3)White button is to talk-only team members and those right by you can hear you speak.

When I first started, yeah there were asshats that were grenading their own team mates and laughing but now as the game is getting into more hands there are some fairly serious gamers playing that leads to some great moments. With most of the flags in the city the chances for intense firefights are high.

This has been a public service announcement