The intuitive gameplay is backed up by an impressive game engine, which gives you entire islands to roam over, complete with villages, dirt tracks, forests and mountains. At first the photographic textures can be rather jarring, and the good old fashioned bitmapped trees look a little of place, but before long you won't even notice. Overall the effect is highly immersive, with vast draw distances, detailed terrain and vehicles, impressive lighting effects and a true day and night cycle.
Animations are mostly very good, and the soldiers move, shoot and die in a believable way.
Even the menu features impressive real-time rendered scenery in the background, complete with rusting burnt out trucks, marching soldiers and glorious sunsets. The sound also has its moments, and the sound of your own heavy breathing as you lumber across the hills carrying assault rifles, grenades and radio sets is particularly good. The more you exert yourself the louder and deeper the sound of your breathing, until it becomes a deafening roar in your ears that drowns out most other sounds, signalling that it is probably time that you stopped running and calmed down. Although we were certainly very impressed by this alpha version of the game, some work remains to be done. Top of the list is helicopters, which at the moment are very difficult to pilot.