For 24 hours (probably starting at about 10 AM Pacific Daylight Time) Steam is offering
Sniper Elite V2, and all assorted DLC, for
FREE.
In short, you're an American sniper behind enemy lines in Germany. Your primary goal is to kill Germans, usually specifically high-ranking ones (there's even a DLC where you get to kill Hitler). You'll also end up killing Soviet soldiers, but mostly because they don't realize you're on their side and follow a policy of "shoot first, ask questions later."
You get access to not only Allied equipment, but also German and Russian. As in most WWII games, I prefer to use German firearms. This isn't because their guns are superior (they aren't and I have a soft spot for American carbines and Soviet sniper rifles), but because you end up killing a lot of German soldiers, who then drop their weapons, which enables you to grab the ammo from said weapons.
SEv2 also feautures a "kill cam" which shows you, in slow motion, an x-ray image of your target as the bullet you fired flies through the air and penetrates your victim. Often this is incredibly brutal and gory. The x-ray imagine also shows internal organs and the human skeleton, so if the bullet punctures a particular organ or shatters a bone, you get to see it. Fortunately, you can turn this off if it becomes annoying, which it eventually will after the 200th time seeing it.
Just so you all know ahead of time, the game does use checkpoint saves (which I think is completely wrong for a stealth-based sniper game) and requires DirectX 11. That means Windows 7 and Windows 8 only. Windows XP and Vista are limited DirectX 9 and DirectX 10.
All of that said, SEv2 plays well even on a lower-end machine. I originally played it on my laptop (which was NOT made for gaming) and after turning down a few non-essential elements, like shadows and particle effects, the game ran pretty well. Not great, but plenty fast enough for a game that isn't a twitch-based shooter.
I'd strongly suggest getting it (despite the fact I gave it a "thumbs down"
review on Steam) simply because it's free. You can't go wrong with this, as even if you hate the game or it won't run properly, you haven't wasted any money.
