I'm a multiplayer game kinda guy, so I did not even look at the single
play of this game yet.

My initial impressions:

If you were a fan of Ravenshield/Athenasword multiplay, this is going
to be an absolute must-buy for you.  It is a victorious day in
software development (let alone game development) when a company
releases a product that directly addresses everything that was wrong
with its predecessor.  Let me start with the things that bothered me
about Ravenshield and discuss how it was addressed in Lockdown:

---- Choppiness ----

Ravenshield:  Bad netcode and / or server resource usage.  I have
always had the best internet connection available in my area
(currently 3mbit DSL), yet Ravenshield got very laggy on every server
I played if the number of players got above a certain amount.  You
could feel it gain smoothness everytime players dropped out.  2 vs 2
games were adqeuately free of choppiness but how much fun is that?

Lockdown:  Smooth as glass!  The overall movement felt like a
singleplayer game to me!  We had 16 people playing at once and it felt
like Ravenshield with only two players on the server (probably
smoother, actually).  The smoothness could be likened to what I
experience in Counterstrike.  I will say that I experienced a small
amount of what I believe were lag spikes, but I had a 250 or so ping
to the server I was playing on, which was due to the limited number of
servers who were running the demo.  I suspect when the retail version
is released, I will see many servers with two digit pings and this
won't be an issue.

---- Differing Team Skins Too Similar ----

Ravenshield:  Frequent friendly fire accidents because everyone just
looked too much alike.  Green was undistinguishable from Black (or was
it Grey and Grey-Green we were supposed to be able to discern in the
dark from long distances?).  Plus it was difficult to remember what
color your team was unless you played on a daily basis and just got
used to each level.

Lockdown:  Problem solved.  One team looks somewhat like traditional
rainbow six skins, the other team look a bit like terrorists from
counterstrike.  Plus you get neon green captions above your teammates
head.  Friendly fire incidents will be dramatically reduced.

---- Gameplay -----

Ravenshield:  People often whined that it was a game of "whoever sees
the other first wins".  To some extent this was true, but to some
extent this would be true in a real-life urban warfare situation
between two trained men with assault rifles.  I personally did not
mind it, but I can see how it reduced the fun factor a bit for folks
coming from a Counterstrike background.

Lockdown:  It is still much more realistic than Counterstrike, but it
seems like when the developers had to make a tradeoff between realism
and fun, they leaned toward enhancing the fun factor (which I think is
a good thing for the overall success of the game).  It is still quite
common to get simultaneous kills (both guys kill each other in a
shootout), as could happen in reality.  But overall I think those who
were frustrated by going around a corner, only to briefly see a small
helmet off in the distance peeking from around a door take them out
with one easy shot, will probably find that it happens less often in
Lockdown.  The shootouts can feel a bit more chaotic and emotion
stirring than in Ravenshield.

Now, a few negative notes from the demo:

1. Player models/skins.  I felt they are a bit more cartoonish than in
RS (subjective).  Nothing that detracts from the game.
2. Atmospheric sounds.  The demo seems to be absent of music or
ambient sounds on the demo map.  The little music sound bites in RS
added a lot to the game, such as the tragic sounding song that played
when you died.  However I suspect this is a demo thing and the retail
maps will feature more background sounds, etc
3. Limited weapons.  Only one assault rifle to choose from in the
demo.  No doubt there will be more in the retail version but it would
have been nice to see what they are.

So, for those of you who have already decided you hate it, the AI
sucks, etc...  Do not be surprised if it ends up with game of the
year, because there are a great number of people like myself who play
for the multiplayer element, who will probably waste a lot of hours
playing this game in 2006.