Sniper Elite V2

My only previous experience with Sniper Elite was with their Nazi Zombie game and I pretty much rage quit over the very poor mechanics of very often getting dropped from a coop session and not being able to rejoin. It quite killed my interest in the whole series until this game was made freely available for one day. I grabbed it and proceeded to play through the single player story on the hardest setting (why play anything less?) that features almost zero HUD and realistic bullet drop.

While it still crashed out on me twice and it has the one path with a few detours typical map setup for the missions the story is not bad, the areas are gorgeous, the mechanics of stealth vs speed are great (I am a Thief fan), and fighting enemy sniper teams and armor are fantastic! The slow motion, sometimes x-ray, kill cam also brought a smile to my face each time I saw my targets organs and bones shatter (sometimes explode) from my rounds, but boy did they get me a fair number of times too. Fortunately you don't take realistic damage or a health bar, instead it uses the troll methodology of "if you get hit too much consecutively you die, but hide for awhile and you regenerate" making it a rather fun 6-7 hours of gaming.

A little lower and you would have got "nut-shot" cam.

The little touches of having the sunlight cause enemy sniper scopes to flash once in a while are awesome too, and it happens to you as well if you wait too long while aiming since unaware enemies suddenly spot you after awhile. I must admit the whole experience has rekindled my desire to retry the Nazi Zombie one, maybe just in single player this time - and definitely ups my interest in the other Sniper Elite titles. I may not buy them for me due to my own rule, but I still buy games for others. So while I sit here humming the main theme of the game as I type, I can't help but give it 4 bullets out of 5. I haven't tried coop on it (no one to try it with) so that may alter the score depending on how it goes.