It's hard to get into. That's been a problem with online PC games for a while now, because there's really nothing casual about them. You have to get inside their communities to really enjoy the game, and these hardened fraternities of gamers can be obscure nuts to crack. All too often the newbie sidles into a game and looks around, is embarrassed by having to ask so many questions, and gives up to go back to something a little less forbidding. Quite a few of my games journalist colleagues cite this problem as one of the major reasons why online PC games are flawed: they're just too awkward to be mainstream. It's geek terrain. Developers, meanwhile, work to make them ever more accessible to the general gamer - see Battlefield 2. See World of Warcraft.

But then there are games which simply don't want to bend in this way. Their kick is in their complexity and their demands on the player. They remain resolutely out on the periphery of what it's possible to be interested in. They're tough to get into, overly complex, reliant on lots of acquired knowledge. They rely on communities of committed and enthusiastic players to keep running. And yes, Battleground Europe is exactly that kind of game.