With all the games we own played out, we find ourselves in a quandry

So Aaron and I decided to break out of the funk of just going through the motions and playing Call of Duty 4 over and over by purchasing Battlefield 1943. I had heard some positive things about the game, and seemed like a pretty cool shooter for 1200 Microsoft Points. After a half gigabyte download, we jumped into a game pretty quickly and started up the action.
The game is pretty simplistic - the only game mode is point capture; you use various weapons/vehicles to achieve your objectives, and you can form up squads with friends, or join open squads with random XBOX Live or PSN users. There are three kits/classes - Infantry (a short range class with submachine gun, a repair wrench and a rocket launcher), Rifleman (a long range class with a semiautomatic rifle, rifle grenades and a bayonet) and Scout (a sniper class with a sniper rifle, semiautomatic pistol, and satchel charges). Each class has its own nuances and subtleties to learn so you can play them well.
For some reason, the only map we could play was Wake Island (the free map that was unlocked when the community reached 43 million kills), but I didn't mind. The amount of time we spent on the map meant we could learn all the points, the placement of vehicles and anti-aircraft guns.
We played with two mutual friends, and found the squad mechanics pretty easy to work around, though weirdly squad invites work through XBL's invite system, rather than being in-game.
The visuals are pretty decent - the engine is that from Battlefield: Bad Company, meaning that almost all of the buildings, trees, sandbags, towers, bunkers, hangars and bridges are destructible. This adds a pretty awesome element to the game - order an air raid on the Airfield in Wake Island, and you can drive up a minute later and see the entire place in rubble and on fire. It looks different from Bad Company though - 1943 has a stylized, colourful look, as compared to the cold, greyness of the Eastern European landscape of Bad Company.
The game has some pretty awesome "HOLY SHIT" moments, whether it's dodging tank fire by running into a building, only to have the building blow up around you, or having a fighter plane chasing down your jeep, only to zip over your head and crash into a tree, or pulling off a successful sniper shot from a kilometer away.

We'd have to play more maps to get a definite opinion on the game, but so far, it's definitely one of the best XBLA games I've ever downloaded. I would absolutely recommend the game for purchase!