There's a new Sniper Elite game! Like the name suggests, it's both the second game in the series and involves you, an OSS operative, trying to prevent V2 rocket plans from getting into the hands of the Soviets. The single player campaign is pretty fun. Despite the regenerating health it's still very much a stealth oriented game. You can't run and gun like Call of Duty, and it only takes a few shots to kill you.
Shooting people is totally rad. The game takes bullet drop (varying depending on your gun's statistics!), windage, background noise (If you time your shots you can mask the sound), and all kinds of other stuff into account. Penetration doesn't seem to be too great but bullets ricochet realistically and you can bounce a bullet off an object to hit a guy and kill him. The bullet cam is very fancy, and now it includes a sometimes gross X-ray vision so you can see your bullet shredding organs, breaking, and all of that visceral stuff Jack Thompson loves.
The multiplayer is cool, but a little limited right now. There's only four modes, Deathmatch and Distance King, and team versions of same. Deathmatch is just who can get the most kills, and distance king is who can make the longest killing shot. It's a very different kind of game from most shooters. It can be very slow and methodical, with lots of sitting very still and watching for movement, followed by frenzied bursts of activity when someone takes a shot and suddenly everyone draws a bead on everyone else. You still get the occasional chud trying to play Call of Duty, but SMGs and Pistols are of limited effectiveness and most good vantage points have spots you can place mines and tripwire grenades to take care of guys sneaking up behind you.
There's a third mode, which I haven't tried yet, and is part of the reason I posted this. The game has a two-player co-op mode where one player is a sniper and the other is a spotter, dividing up the stealth and sniping aspects of the gameplay, which sounds pretty cool. Obviously that's the kind of thing that sounds best played with friends. The regular multiplayer is probably played best with friends too. Sniping is a high-skill activity so a lot of games end up being very one-sided as one or two good players feed off the people who aren't as good.
Who else has Sniper Elite already? Anybody want to organize some coop or deathmatch games?
This is me. Other people who'd like to get together can post their links too, and we can all add each other.
What do you think about the game? It's not quite as simulationist as the first but I feel like it's more fun in general.
EDIT: I forgot to mention, there's also only three maps for deathmatch (haven't played distance king yet), which is a little disappointing, but it looks like they'll be adding more. There's Quarry, which is my favorite. It's a big valley with people shooting each other from either side and a no-mans-land between them. There's also Kreuzberg, which is okay, it's some kind of big fancy courtyard surrounded by buildings. Like before, a lot of no-mans-land. The last map I hate. It's a church and buildings around it, and unlike the other maps it's very hard to navigate. Everything looks the same, there are dozens of places for people to hide where it's basically impossible to see them. It's also very busy and can be hard to spot people even when they're not well hidden.