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Written by Mike Holmes on the 23rd of March 2012 at 10:47

Last week I went on a trip. The goal of it was, ultimately, to play Sniper Elite V2 - Rebellion's soon to be released stealth shooter (you can read the hands-on preview elsewhere on the site).

The game is set in Berlin in the final days of the European half of WWII. Players take on the role of Karl Fairburne, an OSS agent sent into Berlin to extract key Nazi scientists before the Russians arrive hoping to find the same thing.

Part of the day involved playing the game, but the rest of it was spent outside at a shooting range (based at an undisclosed location), and trying out some replica WWII sniper rifles.

It provided a welcome distraction from the business of playing games. Not for any negative reason to do with the game itself, far from it, but rather as a complimentary experience that went perfectly with the tone set by V2.

Shooting sniper rifles is a serious business. As you'd expect, there was several strict safety procedures to follow, though in truth, we were never given enough time with the weapons to be considered dangerous in anyway.

The range, hidden away somewhere in deepest, darkest East Anglia, provided us with a unique opportunity. By sniper standards we weren't very far away from our targets (in real-life, the top snipers routinely hit targets hundreds and hundreds of meters away), but we still got the chance to try our hand at two different rifles.

I am pleased to reveal that I made five head-shots out of a possible six. My targets paper head was riddled with bullet holes. Although I had a significant part to play in the act of shooting, I think it's fair to say that most of the work was done by the rifles themselves.

They come equipped with quite a kick, and if wasn't for the fact the we were sitting down to take our shots, I think it's likely that there would have been a couple of embarrassed journalists put on their backsides by the considerable force produced by firing one of these rifles.

The guns were awesome weapons. Their simplicity, coupled with their effectiveness, makes them the specialist weapon that every wannabe soldier covets (you can include me in that bracket).

Although it was great fun playing around with the high-powered rifles, it was also a sobering experience. At the end of the day, these are weapons built to kill other human beings, and that being the case, I'm glad that the only time I've ever got to shoot one was in controlled conditions at an event for Sniper Elite V2.

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