The Second World War multiplayer FPS Day of Infamy, a Red Orchestra-like "rework" of the modern combat shooter Insurgency, will be free to play this weekend on Steam—beginning tomorrow, actually (that's April 26) at 1 pm ET. Developer New World Interactive also has some weekend activities in store, including livestreams and giveaways, increased XP, and "guides and tips" for new players. 

Those tips will probably come in handy. Day of Infamy is a shooter so it's not exactly brain surgery, but it's a little more tactically demanding than, say, Team Fortress 2. Tyler, for instance, was a little too slow deploying his machinegun's tripod, and so instead of conducting a neat alleyway massacre, he took a bullet in the ass. RIP. 

So it's not exactly another Wolfenstein game but it is quite good, and for this weekend at least it's awfully tough to beat the price. There should be lots of people to play with, too: New World Interactive said more than 200,000 people took part in the previous weekend freebie. NWI's Day of Infamy livestreaming action will kick off at 12 pm ET—an hour before the free play begins—on Twitch. 

If you've never got round to WW2 multiplayer shooter Day of Infamy, or just fancy trying a new game without shelling out a penny, then you're in luck. It's having a free long weekend that starts tomorrow and lasts until Monday.

Why should you care? Well, because it's pretty darn good. It's a standalone rework of Insurgency, the teamwork-focused FPS that satisfied our itchy trigger fingers in 2014. Infamy came out this March and offers crosshair-less, class-based trench warfare with artillery strikes and objective-based maps. You can read Tyler's impressions of it here.

It's double XP throughout the weekend, so new players should unlock new classes quickly. The free trial also coincides with the release of a new map, Brittany, and a new tutorial mission.

It's currently £14.99/$19.99 on Steam, which is where you'll want to go for the free weekend.

Before Destiny 2, Call of Duty: WWII, or Star Wars Battlefront 2 swoop in and demand sixty of your dollars, consider investing in these already-great, cheaper shooters. I give these recommendations with a simple rule: none of these games are in Steam's top 100 concurrent players list at time of publication. 

Day of Infamy 

Released: March 23Price: $20, with a free weekend coming soon

Based on an Insurgency mod, Infamy's co-op map-clearing is spectacular casual fun. You plonk down dozens of dumb-but-accurate AI soldiers with your friends, respawning only if the next objective is completed (or if a teammate retreats back to a resupply point at spawn). Infamy is a reminder of how diverse and interesting WWII's weapon set is: the limited optics and small mag size of the M1 Garand and other guns (and flamethrower) fosters drama and moments of vulnerability. Just watch out for Infamy's merciless artillery.

Quake Champions 

Released: August 22Price: $30 (eventually free)

My favorite FPS right now. I was initially skeptical of the changes Champions was bringing to Quake: character abilities, paid loot boxes, and the plan to move to F2P after paid Early Access. After putting a bunch of time into it, I feel like these revisions don't erode the feeling of tagging someone with a railgun across the map, or snatching up the Quad Damage before going on a lightning gun spree. Champions is still Quake at its core: blistering and athletic, played on maps that look like Hell's waiting room. All Champions needs at this point are some netcode improvements and a few more maps.

Squad 

Released: December 14, 2015Price: $40

Somewhere between Arma's simulation and Battlefield's chaos sits Squad, a trudging, deliberate, 50v50 shooter set in modern day maps modeled after Afghanistan and Iraq. It's been in alpha for more than a year and a half, but has grown a lot in that time, with big changes to animation, movement, and weapon handling arriving recently. Offworld Industries is currently working on adding modding support. If organized, large-scale firefighting and authentic radio chatter are your thing but you dislike the open-endedness of Arma 3, give Squad a look.

LawBreakers 

Released: August 7Price: $22.49, but free to try now through this weekend

PC gaming isn't a popularity contest. Yes, LawBreakers hasn't had a great launch, but that doesn't invalidate its clever weapon and movement mechanics, which are some of the most inventive I've seen this year. From my review: "Each role has a fun micro-skill or two to learn, adding depth and steepening the learning curve in most cases. Gunslingers teleport in 15-foot bursts like Tracer from Overwatch, but the first shots from either of their dual pistols are buffed immediately after you blink. If you fly backwards as the Harrier, you shoot lasers from your boots that can fend off pursuers. As Harrier, I have to mark a target with a debuffing dart, then grit my teeth as I paint an enemy with my Iron Man-like laser beam. The simplicity of the Battle Medic's grenade launcher is great: left click throws grenades that detonate on impact, and right click pops out ones that bounce. I like the moment-to-moment geometry I'm asked to do to decide which grenade will be more effective."

LawBreakers also sports some of the best netcode on PC. 

Rising Storm 2: Vietnam 

Released: May 30Price: $25

Antimatter Games and Tripwire make ambitious FPSes. With Vietnam, the studios continued Rising Storm 2's bold focus on asymmetry with faction-specific spawning mechanics in addition to distinct weapon sets. The Viet Cong can create tunnels; the Americans can phone in helicopters for air support. 

Otherwise RS2 strikes a sweet spot between authenticity and accessibility with features like weapon mounting, prone/lean, and a commander role that can call in air strikes and other support. It's a shooter about attrition, teamwork, playing the objective, and about slithering your way into a blind spot just behind the enemy's advance and racking up as many kills as you can before you're found out.

Dirty Bomb 

Released: June 2015Price: Free

You don't see too many people talking about it, but Dirty Bomb's average concurrent player count is up 38 percent in the last year. DB's low recoil guns and the low deceleration penalty for jumping translates to excellent and tense dances, close-range duels where the movement decisions you make have a major impact on the result. Its payment model is pretty inoffensive, and like other F2P games, there’s a rotation of free mercs. 

Day of Infamy, a standalone WWII rework of modern combat game Insurgency, is worthy of the 'Day of' moniker—which in this case references Roosevelt's Pearl Harbor speech, but also tips its hat to the classic Half-Life mod and eventual standalone game Day of Defeat. It's what I probably imagined Day of Defeat would like in the future, back when I was staying up all night playing it in the early 2000s.

For a more modern comparison, because Day of Infamy does play differently than its DoD cousin, it's pulling me in like the launches of Red Orchestra 2 and Rising Storm did. It shares a lot with those games—friendly-fire and officers who can call in airstrikes, for instance—but with simpler weapons and tighter, blockier Source Engine maps, striking a balance between Red Orchestra’s ‘you can manually bolt your rifle’ authenticity and the action of classics like Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. It's nice to hear the ping of an M1 Garand again.

At one point, hunched in the corner of a crumbling apartment with a bolt-action rifle, I listened as metallic footsteps approached and faded away and approached again. I didn't dare hit Tab to see who was alive, but suspected I may be among only two or three still-breathing teammates, while the others waited to spawn in a new wave of reinforcements—it gave me those late game Counter-Strike nerves, when you know your whole team is watching your last stand.

My stalker could have hit Alt to creep, silencing his footsteps, but I heard every clang as he trudged around the building looking for the holdout keeping the point secure. Then, a cloud of flames erupted through a doorway to my right. The flamethrower's burning tip appeared through the door first, the hunter followed and turned to his left where I was crouched in a kitchen, and I shot him in the chest. (Damn campers.)

Had I missed, I'd have been charcoal, and as it turned out, we would've lost. That level of pressure has been rare in Day of Infamy so far—I've played about five hours—as wins tend to be more decisive. But I did witness one match come down to a knife fight, and another end with half of a team hunting down just one guy from my side. Watching from the dead ranks, we cheered him on as he evaded like experienced prey, darting through buildings, doubling back, eventually falling to a burst of machinegun fire.

Smoke and errors

Outside of those arena shooter-like standoffs, success in Day of Infamy is half planning, half execution. The most frustrating moments (outside of being blown up by a plane in my spawn) occur when I get the former part right, but flub the follow-through. I suspect a troop of reinforcements will jog down an alley to the right, for example, but I'm a second too late deploying my machinegun's tripod and what would've been four easy kills ends in waiting 25 seconds for another respawn wave.

But as ABC's Wide World of Sports reminds us, the thrill of victory must contrast with the agony of defeat. In my first properly good match, which put me in the upper third of the scoreboard, I found a perfect spot to cozy up with my machinegun sights, wasting the better part of two waves as they sprinted between buildings—even hitting some through smoke cover.

One minor detail unexpectedly boosts the thrill of Day of Infamy: you can't see your K/D ratio while alive. You aren't meant to know whether or not you just winged someone, or if spraying through clouds of dust and smoke had any effect, until you're between lives. If you can’t see a body—which is often, with how much smoke is used—the only way to know your target isn’t aiming back at you is to go look (or get shot). Several times I took a long shot with a bolt-action rifle, but had no idea if I hit the mark until I opened the scoreboard later while waiting to spawn. The delay only makes it more gratifying to learn that an unlikely shot was on target. The little number by your name is so tiny, even it can’t seem to believe that you ticked it up with that shot.

I only wish talking to my team were more fun so far. The built-in voice chat works well, but last night it was dominated by a few witless sacks of head cheese spewing racial slurs as they tried extremely hard to be seen as brave provocateur scamps. No one wanted to talk to the racist tryhards, so for the most part, no one else talked.

It’s possible I was just unlucky to end up in that group, and muting players mitigates the problem, but it was a disappointing first impression of the community. When I do find a team that’s communicating in a fun way, calling out enemy locations and coordinating attacks—which also happened, briefly—Day of Infamy can absorb hours just as well as Day of Defeat did back when I was in high school.

Day of Infamy is the standalone expansion for 2014 war shooter Insurgency that hit Early Access last July. After just three months of pre-release bunker living, the WW2-inspired total conversion will breach the bounds of full release on March 23.

Naturally, Day of Infamy has a trailer to mark the occasion. Let's have a peek at that first: 

So what's new on the western front as DoI marches towards full release? Unit Systems, says developer New World Interactive, whereby players can collect digital militaria items "in the form of new character art" which represents factions' regiments and divisions. Rank progression will also unlock random units for players to use and/or trade. 

A new difficulty, Commando Cooperative, also comes to the frontlines—where players can make use of a new PvE playlist, complete with "elite" AI opponents and "limited fire" support options. Day of Infamy also boasts ten maps, now including Foy and Crete.   

"With launch date on the horizon, we are feeling the hype from our community and know that gamers are ready for a visceral WWII experience," says New World's creative director Andrew Spearin. 

Day of Infamy launches in full two weeks from today on March 23, 2017. Until then, read Steven's early impressions from E3 last year, and check out the game's first in-game footage which debuted at the PC Gaming Show last year:

Day of Infamy, the Second World War-based standalone expansion to the 2014 FPS Insurgency, is now in "Early Access beta." That means new features including stats and rankings, the unit system, air support, new game modes, visual updates, a whole mess of bug fixes, and a fresh new trailer to mark the moment. 

It seems like something of an arbitrary step, since Day of Infamy was, and is, available for purchase as an Early Access release. Regardless of what it's called, this update is a big step forward: The introduction of rankings means that players will now earn cosmetic Unit items when they rank up, and character models will display the appropriate rank patches on their arms. All factions now have access to the "Carpet Bombing" option, while the US can call in Mustang strafing runs, and the Germans can deploy Stuka dive bomber attacks. 

Developer New World Interactive has also rolled out "First Wave" Units, one per faction, that will be available exclusively to Early Access players: The Gordon Highlanders for the Commonwealth, the 1st Ranger Battalion for the US, and the 1.Infanterie Division for Germany. Fallschirmjäger, 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions, and the 92nd "Buffalo Soldiers" Infantry Division are in development, and Canadian, Australian, and Indian regiments are also planned. 

Day of Infamy looked quite promising when we got our hands on it over the summer, and hopefully the move to beta will continue to carry it in the right direction. A full breakdown of changes and new content in the beta release is available here, although a few changes have been made since then in a hotfix that came out today. Day of Infamy is currently 25 percent off as part of the Steam Winter Sale, dropping it to $15/£11/€14 until January 2.