But the journey's got to start somewhere. The demo showed off by the Zombie team had Marcinko and co. on their way to a shipbreaker yard with the intent of hooking up with an allied helicopter. The story behind the setting was that the North was currently in the midst of exploiting political prisoner labor to construct a war machine, and this was just the place to do it.

A few key points initially stood out. The crackteam of SEALs ran four strong: besides Marcinko, there's Dan Capel, your right-hand man; Chip Wilson, the "calm, cool collective type" and always adaptable to his surroundings; and Doug Durant, whose comic relief is prevalent but hardly overshadowing of his weapon savviness and unwavering tough guy attitude.

And Zombie didn't hesitate to show off just what this trained squad could do. Under AI control, not only would they react to Marcinko's subtlest movements - kneeling as he did - but each member could be assigned individually and with ease, allowing you to dole out even the most specific commands to each SEAL with the simple press of a face button. How specific, you ask? A plan to take out two North Korean guards later in the demo exemplified a fellow teammate sneaking up behind the enemy on command and effortlessly taking him out with a sniper rifle.

"I think in a lot of the tactical shooters we see that your team goes to one place and they do the same thing all the time," offered Creative Director Ian Vogel. "We really want to give you a lot more flexibility."

Enemy disposal and war tactics as a whole all came back to a very central theme, as the Zombie team stressed: the game's "free-form battlefield." Citing the heavily-scripted events of the genre's contemporaries, the developers opted for a much more boundless alternative, in encouraging players to complete an objective however they please, from the routes they choose toward a certain destination to how they want to most effectively dispose of enemies. And in a war zone like this where unpredictability runs rampant, would you really want it any other way?

To put it all into action, we were treated to a very, shall we say, explosive demonstration. With enemy units as responsive to each other's every beck and call as they are (very MGS-like), it's all about turning this seemingly steep advantage in numbers into tactical lure behavior that works in your favor. Say you take out a nearby truck (and with the in-game vehicles' interactive components of damage, a well-placed shot to the gas tank will do 'er in quick) or show an unsuspecting guard's neck the business side of a blade. Naturally, other guards will come a-runnin'. But what if you were to - oh, we don't know - tag that fallen enemy's body with a booby trap and watch from a distance? That teammate scrambles to the scene and quickly meets his maker.

A similar strategy, as we saw, was also used on a larger scale, but with the same destructive result. Remember that chopper we were supposed to be rendezvousing with? You know, the one that was going to whisk us off to Fantasyland, never again to see the hells of East Asian warfare? Uh, yeah, one inconveniently-cued alarm later and that plan (along with our copter) was blown to bits. With the enemy now on high alert, it took some key booby trap placement to stick it to the man, with a teammate readying one on the actual alarm itself while Marcinko (you) placed one on the ground, just in time to send an approaching truck sky high (Vogel actually had Marcinko killed in the process, but we won't mention that). The Zombie team on-hand was able to confirm pressure-sensitive, remote and timer-based booby traps will be available for your exploding pleasure in the final game.