An elite group of mercenaries are on a mission to the Amazon with the purpose of retrieving a package from a crashed plane. What's in this package...who knows. Unfortunately in a strange sense of irony, their plane is also shot down. Now a small group of survivors must complete their mission and overcome the odds against a dangerous enemy. This is Raven Squad.

Raven Squad from SouthPeak Games plays just like your typical first-person shooter. According to Associate Producer Lee Perez, Raven Squad is more like a "first-person shooter/ real-time strategy hybrid." Sure you have all the elements of a first-person shooter, but keep in mind that your not a one man strike force. Raven Squad adds a new element to the mix. You can also use a top-down view and play the game like a real-time strategy game to command the rest of your squad. The best part is that you can play it in whichever view you wish, or combine both of them. I guess you can say that Raven Squad combines elements from Rainbow Six and even Full Spectrum Warrior and makes them into one unique experience.

When playing in first-person, everything you know from playing other FPS like Halo or Call of Duty will be the main focus. You can crouch behind walls, rocks and other objects. You can also aim and fire your weapons with precise accuracy, unless your a really bad shot. You can even switch between squadmates especially if your running low in ammo. While all this sounds great, just keep in mind all you run and gunners out there that just like in Rainbow Six, if you take a few hits...you'll die.

Now for all you RTS fans out there, Raven Squad also allows you to command your squad at any time. You can play out each mission from a top-down view (press the Y button) which allows you to see everything. Now you can command your squad by using a cursor to move them to a specif spot on the map. You can either take the enemy head-on, or you can perform flanking maneuvers, create ambushes, and other strategies to make the mission go smoother and with less casualties. Once your squad comes into contact with enemy forces, they will fire automatically.

At E3 2009, Lee Perez showed me one of the missions which involved clearing out hostiles from an enemy village. Lee said that he loves the run and gun aspect because he wants to go Rambo on the enemies. He'll go through clip after clip of ammo killing them. Once one character ran out of ammo, he switched to the next one laying waste to all. Now while all that's fun, Lee also showed me the RTS view as he moved the cursor commanding his squad, then went back to first-person and went Rambo again. Now that's my kind of action hero.

Remember guys that Raven Squad is not just about run and gun, it's also about tactics so try to use both perspectives to help you through each mission. By the way, the game also has multiplayer so that you and a frien can work together through the campaign. Maybe if your a run and gunner, you can get a friend who's into RTS and work through hostiles or vice versa. You can have two run and gunners or even two RTS guys as well. The main point I'm getting across is that there is many different ways to tackle the game so make use of them.

Overall, Raven Squad is shaping up to be a game that brings first-person shooter lovers and real-time stratey gamers a little closer together. This hybrid could pave the way for future games to take this approach as well. SFX360 will keep you posted on all the latest updates concerning the upcoming hybrid. Look for Raven Squad on the Xbox 360 and PC on August 11.