After the past year's assault of constant conflict footage from the major media outlets, we all think we have a good idea of what it's like over in the Middle East. The embedded reporters and the grainy satellite phone footage keep us reminded that we still have troops in harm's way. Kuma Reality Games, the new development house out of New York City, has taken it upon itself to 'digitize' the combat operations. They mean to take relatively current battles from the operations going on in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and make them into playable FPS missions so that we on the home front might understand what our troops really have to go through to defend freedom.

After marveling at the subject matter that Kuma dared to take on, I got down to setting it up. First off, KumaWar is not a game you go to a store and buy; you sign up for a subscription with your credit card, download the client software (a whopping 280MB), and then you're off to the races. After you get in, you need to start downloading missions. Presently, there are six missions available, and once downloaded, you log into the game and select the mission you want to play.

There are two ways to play KumaWar, with a 4-man bot squad or multiplayer. Being a traditionalist, I started off with the single player mode. You can switch to control any one of a 4-man team, usually consisting of a heavy weapons guy who carries an M16 with a grenade launcher, two assault troopers with regular M16s, and a sniper (guess what he's got). Each soldier is loaded down with some accessory items, like sidearms, grenades, medkits, and binoculars. Most missions have you skulking around locales such as Baghdad or Fallujah, or infiltrating the Shah-i-Kot Valley in eastern Afghanistan. The objective is usually to seek out and destroy all enemy activity in the area. You get to use some rather cool weapons, such as in the "Kill Uday and Qusay" mission, where you use a Humvee-mounted TOW missile launcher to soften up a building that is being heavily defended by the brothers Hussein. It was pretty fun to use the weapons that the US military used in this exact mission. If you remember your recent history, Uday and Qusay were actually brought down by a volley of anti-tank TOW missiles last July.

After taking the fight to the enemy single-player style, I decided to try my hand at multiplayer action. KumaWar basically has the same philosophy as the Battlefield series of games; single player is the warm-up mode, and multiplayer is where the bullets really start flying. Currently there are two modes available; Red on Blue, where two human teams take each other on, and Co-op. Co-op simulates the single-player missions with human allies instead of bots. A mission-based mode is in development that will allow you to take on the US military. A game mode like that has got to be controversial, and it makes me wonder if Kuma can withstand the political uproar that might erupt if it gets out that a game can have you playing as an Al Qaeda or a Saddam loyalist. As for server availability, there didn't seem to be many, and I was disappointed in the lack of any central servers. Someone apparently has to host each server on their own, as there were consistently only two servers total whenever I checked, and these always had open slots.

While daring in its unflinching desire to take on current conflict, the game has some aspects that aren't up to scratch. Kuma Reality Games is a new company. KumaWar is its first product, and it shows. The look of the game suffers from an overall lack of polish that you might find in a Call of Duty or a Max Payne 2. The ground textures sometimes look plastered on, and the overall detail level is lacking even at high settings. The enemy AI suffers from an acute case of eagle-eye; as soon as they become visible, they can see you. This means that an enemy on a rooftop several blocks away past some trees will start taking potshots at you, and the Iraqis were apparently given great shooting instruction because they can hit you pretty consistently from that distance. Duck and cover, soldier!

KumaWar is a noble effort to bring the sense of the current day battlefield to gamers with all the weapons and threats that our soldiers have become so familiar with in real life. It features weapons and terrain consistent with the Iraq and Afghanistan theatres of battle, and new missions have been coming out regularly since the game's debut. If Kuma can keep up this brisk pace of mission generation, they should start to see a lot of repeat customers to its subscription service. If you have access to a credit card, don't forget that Kuma gives all new customers a free seven-day trial period before it starts to charge you. You can't lose with free, so it's worth it to try the game for a week and see how you like it. If you always wanted to have a wargame based on the current day's battles, this is the game for you.