Despite the chance of getting into the Halo 3 beta if you dusted off your copy of Halo 2 for three hours on Xbox Live this past week, the top game on the service continues to be Gears of War, which somehow manages to get more unique users every week out of the ten million xbox 360s worldwide, despite the fact that there are more than twice as many original Xboxes out there, plus the fact that 360s with hard drives can also play Halo 2. I guess all that can be said is that if you were that hot for Halo 3, you were probably playing some Halo 2 every week anyway. Besides, everybody also knew that the mere 13,000 beta spots were going to get snapped up in the first few minutes of the registration form going live on the 5th, so perhaps many passed up the chance.

Of course, Halo 2 is a game that’s more than two years old, and a lot of people are just “played out” on it. Furthermore, although Halo 2 is upscaled on the 360, it’s not a “next generation” game; it doesn’t have that shiny new.. shininess that new games have.

If Halo 3 comes out near the end of this year, Gears will be a year old, and Halo will be the new kid on the block. How will that showdown turn out? Will users flock back to the franchise that built the Xbox? Or will the B button beat out the mysterious X button, with Gears taking the mantle from the Halo franchise?

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I played some Battlefield 2142 multiplayer some more tonight and here’s a little rundown of the command system in place. Long story short: being a commander is FUN! At the beginning of the game you get a chance to apply for the position of commander of your team. The computer will decide whether or not you will be accepted as the current commander based on the military rank of all of the people who applied. If you don’t get accepted you have a chance to disgrace your whole family tree, call mutiny and let your team vote you into the position.

Now, as commander you get to run around like everyone else, but the real fun begins when you find a hidden spot to lay down and switch to map view. From here you get to initiate global artillery strikes, emp strikes, send out UAV’s, do satellite scans of the battlefield, zoom in with imaging satellites, initiate supply drops, and lay waypoints and give orders to your squad leaders. Except for waypoints and orders, every one of these resources are on a timer that lets you use them only x times a minute. If your squad leaders aren’t doing their job as well as you would like, you can send them the message “Follow my orders soldier!”. There’s nothing quite like doing this and having a few of them click respond “Yes sir!” and see the squads slowly start moving towards your intended waypoints.

In map view, you can only see the map and positions of your 32 or so teammates, you get the enemy positions temporarily by sending out the UAV’s or doing a satellite scan. This battlefield intel is then transfered to your soldiers in the field so they can see where enemy positions are for a number of seconds. Think of it as lumberjack-dar on steroids, but with a lot less “I’m a lbj and I’m ok with that”ness. (only THX’ers will get that one, sorry)

Using the satellite zoom feature, you can get a visual on enemy troops and more precisely call in your global artillery and emp strikes. It looks a lot like the top down feeds we currently get from AC-130s and other surveillance aircraft. Getting a visual on the troops will not log them into the tracking system though, you have to use a UAV or a satellite scan for that.

If you take the chance to be a squad leader, you will have 5 or so people on your squad that you can give orders to. As a squad leader, you will be receiving commands from your commander. You will be given the opportunity to accept or reject a command based on your interpretation of the situation on the ground. You can also request artillery, emp, supplies, and support. Squad leaders can issue waypoints for their squad as they see fit.

Needless to say, I will be clicking the “Apply for commander” button at the beginning of each game from now on. There’s nothing quite like being head to head against another commander in a game of chess with 64 live players on the ground.