I didn't get to test much yet, but the initial impressions are that holy crap, this is starting to be pretty cool.

In all the previous versions I always felt like I was playing something that could become cool, but now it actually felt cool.

The grenade nerf is great. Both the range nerf and the blast radius nerf are simply wonderful. The game plays quite different now, the firefights are more intense and half of other team isn't suddenly vaporized like before. Now there's actually time to make some moves, like flank a little.

The bullets are supposedly more lethal, but I could swear they feel (a lot) less powerful? Or maybe accuracy has changed, and there are more single hits now (as opposed to a couple of hits pretty much every time before). Anyway, I'm seeing blood spatters and guys surviving to run away all the time now, and previously it was a fluke. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing (maybe a little bad?)

Trench fights and urban fights have pretty much done a 180. In earlier versions I felt like they were the weakest parts of the game, and now I enjoy them the most, especially urban action.

The MP5 still feels noticeably better than any of the other weapons, which seems a bit off (although technically a submachine gun probably would be superior to an assault rifle at ranges seen in RWR, as the accuracy and penetration of an assault rifle would go to waste)

I didn't yet get to try the mortar, which in fact raises a question about the needed score. At some point a feature becomes so rarely seen it becomes meaningless or at least uninteresting, but this might not be the case (as I tested quite briefly).

Overall though, a significant step to a very good direction indeed. Really good stuff!

-One thing I find pretty annoying is when you chat ingame, you can't hold down a key to repeat it, that includes backspace too.
-Also, a game play imbalanced flaw is when you are against some wall, and you can never run out of bullets by abuse R key.
-Lastly, Could you please rotate the gun image on HUD 90 degrees, I think it looks weird right now.

Edit: Did I really forget to mention this: I love 0.5 beta.

Hey that's a good find, hadn't notice that one before, the shooting over a wall while reloading -bug. Thanks!

The key-repeat is something that will be added in the future, it's a pretty annoying usability issue.

NP, and somehow, I misread that "-bug" as "-hug"..

Actually I've been wondering this myself lately and have experienced it a couple of times too often that the bullets don't kill as often as they should in this game. In the change log I might have unintentionally compared the beta 0.5 state to a state that became after beta 0.4 was released and I had already made some changes. So it's probably like you said, the bullets are not that lethal than what they used to be in beta 0.4, which was not my intention.

I'll take a look at that stuff, guess I'll be releasing 0.51 sooner that I thought. Thanks for bringing this up!

Hey, the new map is pretty cool. Didn't get to test the mortar yet. I've to play the new beta a bit more.
Additionally: Is this only my impression, or are the graphics even more clearer in the new beta (that's pretty nice)?

Another thing that I noticed (as well as the things that other people have said) is that with the M240, if you move against a wall you can shoot over, with no ammo, when you shoot the gun will make the clicking sound at the same speed as the gun fires. Sounds pretty cool actually

Not sure about the other guns, or if it is specific to this version, I will go and test...

EDIT: No it doesn't happen with other guns, maybe because you cant move while firing the M240?

I just quickly ran through a game, greens on the right, greys on the left. For some reason when we took the entire town but the west end and villa, the AI started massing around 40-60 troops in the upper left corner of the map, even though there were no enemies there.

The new map has different settings for lighting than in the first map, which makes the world less colorized and more bright, which might be the thing you're seeing. Other than that there shouldn't be a significant change in overall graphics, apart from some of the new textures.

Haha, that's funny I'd reckon it's easy to fix too. Expect this to be corrected in the new release that will be probably out this weekend already.