I could go on a huge rant about how infuriatingly inaccurate the game's controls are, or how my character constantly fumbles when I'm trying to make him swing, or how the game is extremely punishing with no tutorial, but instead, I'll just leave you with this: My opponent served the ball and hit the net. The ball fumbled onto my side, rolling, and my opponent got the point.

It's been a while since I've played Battlefield: Bad Company. I got stuck at a rather frustrating firefight in the single player campaign, and since I don't have a Gold membership I wasn't able to play the multiplayer. Fortunately, the Bad Company 2 beta is on the PlayStation 3, so I don't have to use my brother's account every time I wanna play. Based on what little content the beta has to offer (one map and one game mode) Bad Company 2 is largely the same as its predecessor, yet for all their similarities, Bad Company 2 is miles better. Everything from the controls to the weapons to the kit customization is tuned well, and the absolutely gigantic map and wide range of vehicles make the multiplayer feel like a long, epic set-piece battle.

The last Battlefield game I played was 1943, which I played a couple months ago (By the way, I totally recommend 1943, as my reviewshould make quite clear). Seeing as I haven't played the series in a couple of months, I had to get used to getting shot out of nowhere and constantly getting blown up by tanks. I became frustrated with the game quite quickly and stopped playing for a couple of days. Fortunately, GiantBomb did a quick-look of the beta, which encouraged me to try it one more time. Not only did I kick ass, but I unlocked some sweet new weapons and quickly became addicted to the game.

I started playing as the Assault **** After all, I'm the kind of guy who wants to blow people to bits every chance I get. I unlocked several weapons and mods, and then tried my hand at the Engineer. Not only did the rocket launcher score me huge points (I got 320 from blowing up a tank), but I unlocked some seriously awesome new weapons as well. To be more specific, the SCAR. As I said, I'm the kind of guy who wants to run in guns blazing, so I haven't tried any other ****s yet, but I do plan to at some point.

Most of the time my teams have been pretty uncooperative, running around and doing their own things, but in one game I found myself in an excellent squad. I spawned on my squad mate, and before I knew it, my whole squad was together and we were blasting bad guys and planting bombs. Whenever I was felled, my comrades revived me and I killed that guy shooting at their backs. We planted a bomb inside a crashed train and held ourselves up inside, blasting away at opponents to keep them at bay. The cooperation was amazing, and it became quite clear to me that Bad Company is at its best when everyone is working together.

The beta runs pretty well, but it's obviously not a finished product, so there is some slowdown and very rare lag. Graphically the game looks identical to the first, but without the grain from the first game all the graphical flaws like aliasing, texture issues and other visual issues are quite clear. It's still a good looking game, but it's far from cutting edge, and in this beta there's a ton of pop-in, including trees that don't appear until you're mere feet away from them.

I'm loving Bad Company 2 so far. If you don't have a key yet, you need to get one and join this army. It's almost identical to the first game, yet it's immensely better. It's easily the most fun I've had online in months.

Because I pre-ordered it from Best Buy and it still hasn't come. Yup, it still hasn't arrived. Which means if it doesn't come tomorrow it won't be here until at least Monday.

I'm never pre-ordering again. EVER.

I have to say, I thought all the great reviews were a little on the bribed side, but after playing the game I realize where critics, as well as other players, are coming from. Read the review here.

I'm glad I got the game for free when the 'demo' was posted. Read the review here.