For the most part, the gameplay modes in Soldier of Fortune II are what you'd expect them to be. There are five gameplay modes, which include the standard deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture-the-flag options, as well as more unique infiltration and elimination modes. The first of these latter two examples is a lot like CTF, but it places one team on constant offense and another on the defensive. As part of the attacking team, you're tasked with penetrating the defenders' base, retrieving an item (in this case, a briefcase), and extracting it back to your spawn point. The defending team can win by eliminating all the attackers or by preventing the briefcase from getting stolen within the allotted time limit. The elimination mode is similar to team deathmatch, but if you get killed, you stay dead until the round is over. The first team to eliminate every member of the opposing team wins the match. You can choose to play these five modes in one of nine levels, which vary from the lobby of a Hong Kong hotel to a muggy Colombian jungle. Even the Raven offices are included as a playable map.

We found that the most addictive gunfights took place in the game's jungle environments. That's because these levels contain fields of long grass that are drawn by placing alpha-blended textures on flat, moving polygons. It's a simple method that more and more games are adopting, but it's artfully done in Soldier of Fortune II. This effect isn't just for cosmetic purposes, though. Many of the game's 100 character models are skinned with camouflage that blends perfectly with this grass, especially while crouched. In fact, you'll be hard-pressed to spot a hidden enemy until you're a few feet away. This makes it very easy to set up an ambush on unsuspecting players and very crucial to sweep areas for traps before rushing an enemy flag.

To keep matches fresh, Soldier of Fortune II will also include a random map generator that functions like the many map-creation tools that almost every current real-time strategy game has. You simply choose from jungle, hill, snow, or desert terrain types, choose from one of three times of day, select a map size, and voil�, the game spits out a completely unique map. There's also a fourth variable that the generator bases its maps on: a text field that will let you type in any kind of alphanumeric string. You can plug anything you want into this field--your name, your street address, your pin number, whatever--and the generator will use that string to further randomize the map-creation process. What's more, if the generator creates a map that you like, you can plug the same alphanumeric string into that field at a later time and get the same exact map. Most of the random maps you'll see are impressive in their design, and we often found ourselves playing the randomly created maps more than the professionally designed levels. Not that any of the professional maps aren't expertly designed, but the act of being dropped into a completely new area at the start of every match places everyone on a level playing field, and besides, it realistically re-creates the feeling of being inserted into hostile and foreign territory.

Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix is scheduled for release next month. According to Activision, the developers at Raven Software are currently implementing several AI changes to the enemies in the single-player game and going through the requisite bug sweeps. From what we can tell from our early build, Soldier of Fortune II is clearly shaping up to be yet another one of Raven's many notable and distinct first-person shooters.