Tripwire's World War II shooter Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad launched this week and I've been playing on and off ever since. I need to check out more of the online modes before I'm ready to deliver a final review, but have played through all the single-player content and spent a few hours online. Here's what I think so far.

Red Orchestra 2 is split into single-player and multiplayer modes, but make no mistake: this is a multiplayer game. If you buy this looking for a cool single-player experience, you're going to be hugely disappointed. Set in and around Stalingrad, you fight as both German and Russian armies. Animated cut-scenes and voice over deliver story to connect the missions together, which do a decent job at establishing the proper mood and making the missions feel less isolated and random. The mission designs are mostly just copied versions of the multiplayer's territorial control where you assault and defend buildings and patches of ground. It could have been fun, but the glitchy artificial intelligence screws it all up.

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A Red Orchestra 2 Firefight

The ability to order around individual squads of AI-controlled teammates is very much welcome, but hardly useful when my fellow soldiers rush into machine gun fire, take up positions on the wrong side of cover, or aim at solid walls with the apparent expectation an enemy will phase through it. The opposition isn't much smarter: often bunching up in doorways, failing to recognize enemies, or running out into the open for no reason other than to be shot. In one of the tank missions I watched as three opposing machines rolled, one after the other, from the far side of the map and actually rammed into my AI-controlled teammate without firing a shot. I was parked several hundred yards to the side, and picked them off as they were rolling along an invisible assembly line.

While I would recommend passing on the single-player missions, the multiplayer is excellent. It's a style of gameplay that rewards teamwork, patience and twitch skill. Death can be quick – a single bullet is often more than enough to permanently put you down. Matches are characterized by prolonged periods of inactivity. You scan the vast battlefields bristling with cover spots amongst the rubble of houses and factories, looking for an enemy's head, legs or gun, all with the hopes of finding a target and firing that one perfect shot to score a kill. Though you're not pulling the trigger often, the periods of silence in between bursts of action are no less intense because the threat of death is always so close.

A lot of care clearly went into creating a unique feel for every weapon in the game, something you'll need to get intimately familiar with if you want to have any kind of effect. Because there are no crosshairs onscreen, you have to use your weapon's sights, and it helps to control your in-game character's breathing for longer range rifle shots. Often you won't have much of a target to hit. Almost all are prone or behind cover, meaning you have to be especially accurate to get a bullet from your gun into the exposed parts of enemies. The effect is that every shot you fire is significant, and every moment you're alive exciting.

Though the Red Orchestra 2 has stability issues, multiplayer has been a blast so far. I'll keep playing and get a review live as soon as I've put in enough time.

Rating 10 out of 10 :