Last weekend's Penny Arcade Expo had more PC games than any previous year. I liked a lot of them. Torchlight 2 had goggled ferrets . Portal 2 had a hilarious co-op trailer and revealed that you can hug your puzzle-solving partner. Duke Nukem Forever had...existence. But Red Orchestra: Heroes of Stalingrad was the best thing I saw at PAX.
This post is a roundabout way of me saying you should be paying attention to it; it's probably going to be a generational leap for WWII shooters. It simply has the most impressive systems I've seen in an FPS: functional first-person cover, 64-man multiplayer on dedicated servers, nuanced damage modeling (there's a bandaging system, "instant blackouts" if you get headshotted, but no magical, auto-regenerating health), realistic tank combat, and sniping mechanics (spot them in the trailer inside) that leapfrog everything in the genre.
I wish I could show you all of it; we'll be having the first hands-on with Heroes of Stalingrad in a future issue. In the meantime, eye 29 of the game's screenshots and the new trailer below.
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Evan's a hardcore FPS enthusiast who joined PC Gamer way back in 2008. After an era spent publishing reviews, news, and cover features, he now oversees editorial operations for PC Gamer worldwide, including setting policy, training, and editing stories written by the wider team. His most-played FPSes are Hunt: Showdown, Team Fortress 2, Team Fortress Classic, Rainbow Six Siege, and Counter-Strike. His first multiplayer FPS was Quake 2, played on serial LAN in his uncle's basement, the ideal conditions for instilling a lifelong fondness for fragging.
