Whether you actually enjoy playing Spec Ops 2 rests on a love-hate affair with the control system, and it's partly down to the design dilemma of mixing first- and third-person views. The freedom to move inch by stealthy inch in any direction might feel right in FP affairs like Thief and Half-Life, but the artifice of side-stepping and diagonal movement becomes apparent when you finally see other human players skating around in a multiplayer match. To look realistic, third-person games need the character to move in keeping with their walking animation - every time you press forward, the character takes a step forward - and so you lose that precision. Spec Ops II's first-person mode feels clumsy because it's essentially a third-person game with the camera stuck on the character's nose. Edge around an obstacle and you're suddenly a whole step clear, prone to whoever happens to be waiting. Or, more precisely: "Wha-? Fff-Aggh! BUDDA-BUDDA-BUDDA! Mission Failed."

Being able to shoot out lights and scavenge kit from enemies is welcome, but other promised improvements haven't materialised. Buddy AI is still poor enough to jeopardise the best-laid plans: their responses are supposedly geared to whatever weapon they're packing, but in effect you have to keep issuing Hold Position orders to stop them running into their effective range whenever they spot a target. If Spec Ops II was truly realistic then we would have been court-martialled for what we did to the team member who thought to cover our ambushed point-man - with a grenade launcher.

Spec Ops II is a vaguely decent diversion for the dedicated action strategist who's prepared to rough it and wait for the inevitable sequence of patches to fix the bugs. Even so, the whole affair feels rushed and unfinished. As the US Green Berets might have it, this game just isn't battle-ready.