Rising Storm, the stand-alone expansion to the award-winning Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad just got its pre-order made available over on Steam. Pre-ordering the game will give you instant access to the on-going beta, as well as a 15% discount. Actually, if you're one of the cool people who already own Red Orchestra 2, you get an extra 25% discount, boosting the total discount up to a nice 40%. Not bad for a game that isn't even out yet. Pre-ordering the digital deluxe edition will also net you some nice bonuses:

- Day 1 Unlock of: the US M12 Trench shotgun, the Japanese Type 99 Machine Gun, the Japanese Type 99 Sniper Rifle with 4X scope (level 2), and the US M1 Garand with bayonet (Level 2).

- 2 Rising Storm soldier playable characters for Killing Floor.

- Rising Storm and Red Orchestra 2 soundtracks.

- Will include the Red Orchestra 2 Steam Digital Deluxe Edition Upgrade (4 day 1 unlock weapons, 2 playable RO2 KF characters, and 2 RO2 hats in TF2).

In case you are on the fence about Rising Storm, or just haven't heard about it yet, let me sum it up in one word: Brutal. It's a brutally realistic multiplayer FPS, where Japanese and US soldiers fight over territories in the Pacific Theatre of World War 2.

Though considered to be an expansion to the original Red Orchestra 2, it's quite different in some ways. RO2 had battles raging between the German and Soviet soldiers, and though they each had their own arsenal of weapons, it was all fairly equal. They both had SMGs, rifles, MGs and such to match each other. In Rising Storm, however, the US troops have much more advanced weaponry - such as the menacing flamethrower - but the Japanese weigh up with some abilities exclusive to them. They can set grenade boobytraps, pull out a katana and go banzai charging, fire up some mobile mortars and so on. It all ends up being a much more asymmetrical experience than what RO2 was.