Actually dropping into each of the levels was a simple affair (we just used the quick match option to find us a game), but there weren't a huge number of people playing online for most of the weekend, so we mainly spent our time messing around with the maps and the game modes. The maps themselves were nicely diverse for the few they were.

All four offered a unique feel, though most were pretty sparse and lacked a cohesive feel to the interactive stuff; you could shoot and shatter a vase, for instance, but not an aquarium or outside windows. "Culdesac" was an urban block tucked in next to a busy freeway and complete with ghetto bird whirling away overhead. "Penhouse" was a rooftop apartment high above the city with its own helipad. "Hacienda" was a palatial mansion with tons of criss-crossing rooms and hallways for some fun sniping or losing a tail. "Downtown" was quite simply a massive outdoor downtown office complex that features everything from buildings you can explore to a cascading waterwall (no, that's not a typo, it's one of those things with the ribbed concrete surface where water cascades down).

Three game modes -- War (think traditional deathmatch with the team with the most kills getting the win), Raid (a sort of one-sided capture the flag where the cops try to steal gang loot and bring it back to the SWAT van) and Tag (a gang on gang deathmatch with the added challenge of tagging special areas in the level with your custom tag for more points) -- were interesting enough, but it wasn't anything we haven't seen before. "Hacienda" wasn't available in Tag mode, presumably because the team hadn't had time to create the tag spots yet, because who wouldn't love to spray paint the hell out of some rich guy's pad?

Each match allowed for tweaking of Game Type, Map, Time or Score Limits, Max Players, Reserved Slots (for people you want to invite to the game from your Friends List), Best-of-Series settings to determine how many rounds would play out before players got kicked out to the Ready Up screen, the option to alternate teams every round, whether or not players respawn and if they have a set number of respawn tickets, Friendly Fire, Self Damage (from grenades and the like), whether or not the game is a Ranking Match and in Rain mode if there were Loot Restrictions on who could pick up the loot (to make it harder for the cops to find if players so chose).

The game certainly didn't skimp on community options, either. This is no SOCOM, but then it's really not trying to be. We easily created a clan and goofed around with the friends list a bit, but maintenance of both was remarkably easy. A leaderboard allowed for reports on the top 10 and 9 other players surrounding your rank with everything from leading clans to single players and was sortable by kills, tags, deaths and so on.

Yeaaaah, you like all those run-on paragraphs? We thought you might. But wait, there's more!

The controls are simple enough, with X jumping, Square interacting with the world (open doors, tag spots), Triangle reloading and Circle allowing for voice chat. Tapping up or down shifts from first- to third-person mode and left and right let you lean in that direction. L2 shifts from primary to secondary weapons and R2 lets you cycle through all the weapons categories.

So how does it play? Even in the early beta, lag was surprisingly easy. The Ready Up screen before heading into matches made doing things like switching teams and changing controls a little clumsy (you cycle through the options with up and down rather than left and right, even though the options are listed from left to right), and matches tended to be a little on the thin side because of the small number of players, but it was obvious that the map designers had a fun time creating multiple entry points and lots of buildings or rooms to explore on every map.

As is the custom, we'll try to hold off on judging the game this early. Things are a little rough in the collision department, but the multiplayer and voice chat sure seem solid. Given enough quality maps and a good base of players, there should be plenty to enjoy when the game finally ships in a few months. We'll let you know when we get some time with an updated build, and hopefully report back soon with some single-player impressions.