This is Daniel Matros, the new community manager at Dice. As you may or may not know, we just released Onslaught mode for Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Just wanted to give you some more info on what you can expect in this new co-op experience.

Onslaught is co-op in the sense that you get to play with a squad of up to four soldiers against endless waves of A.I. enemies. Endless until you take the base flags, that is. The people who are actually doing the Onslaught are you — the players.

Atacama Desert is a real favorite among Battlefield players. In Onslaught, this huge, vehicle-heavy map is ravaged by minor sandstorms that give it a limited visibility.

This makes Onslaught approachable on two totally different levels. First, it is the perfect place for newcomers to hone their squad tactics without having to face human opposition. On easy or normal difficulty, this should be very manageable by a team of four soldiers playing together. As long as one of you stays alive at all times, the others can keep spawning in.

For the elite squads out there, crank up the difficulty to hardcore and see how quickly you can clear the maps — then compare your best times on the global, Onslaught-specific leaderboards for bragging rights.

The enemies keep attacking as long as you don’t capture a base and advance. Prepare for the fight of your life on Hardcore difficulty!

I played a bunch of matches on Atacama Desert on the hardcore setting today. After 20 or so epic fails, the junior product manager here at Dice and I hooked up with two more soldiers and swept through Atacama’s three bases in 13 minutes. By no means even close to the fastest time in the world, but a nice first attempt to try and crush in the days to come. Two of the guys in our squad today finished up on Atacama in just seven minutes. See if you can beat that.

Oh, and I caught executive producer Patrick Bach in the corridors earlier today. I asked him to give our readers on the PlayStation.Blog some inside info on how to succeed in Onslaught mode:

Keep your squad tight and make sure to experiment with a mix of different kits. It’s all about finding the right weapon for the job. You wouldn’t try and blow up a tank with a sniper rifle — even though you CAN headshot people with the repair tool, actually.

Solid advice. For more on what is happening at Dice and with Battlefield: Bad Company 2 in particular, stay tuned on our blog. Hope to see you guys online, and do let us know what you think of Onslaught!