Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad

With the advent of the holiday season, it seems like its a yearly tradition for video game developers to release their most anticipated video games, quite often which are shooters. It seems like ever year we get a new Call of Duty or Battlefield, or countless other type first person shooters. Which brings us to Tripwire Interactive’s Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad, a PC exclusive WWII shooter which is nothing like any other shooter on the market. Forgoing a Michael Bay style presentation of countless set pieces, Red Orchestra 2 instead takes a far more realistic approach: battles are won with teamwork, tactics, and careful planning. While it doesn’t always make for the world’s most exciting game, it’s still a nice change of pace from the norm and will undoubtedly find its niche on the PC market.

The immediate thing you’ll find out about Red Orchestra 2 is its gameplay. There’s no run and gun across the battlefield here; instead it’s running from cover to cover, crawling prone along the Eastern Front, and looking down the iron sights of your rifle. Getting shot has some serious side effects: depending on where you get hit, you’ll be seriously wounded, bleed out (which can be prevented twice), or flat out die. Therefore there’ll be a lot of critical thinking involved about your actions on the battlefield; reloading takes time and, therefore, isn’t wise to do as you’re walking across open space. There’s a cover system involve, and it’s fairly easy to use. Simply hit CTRL behind any debris item that you could hide behind, and until you zoom in with your weapon, which is clicking down the right mouse button (not holding, clicking), you’ll peek up from cover. It’s similar to Gears of War, but while it’s more natural, i.e. you won’t slide twenty feet towards a conveniently placed concrete slab, it’s also a bit buggy; the game always doesn’t cooperate with covering and often times that means you’ll die in a fire fight.

Once you get past the game’s initial learning curve you’ll most likely feel right at home. The best way to learn Red Orchestra 2′s style is through the single player campaign, which is essentially multiplayer with bots. The only issue with this is that the game’s AI is completely horrendous. Your teammates will refuse to follow orders, lagging far behind instead of following you as you’ve dictated, bullets decide they’d like to hit you from nowhere, despite the fact that you can clearly see an enemy soldier standing still twenty feet in front of you as he tries to see objects in the clouds. It’s almost as if the developers decided, “Hey, we need a campaign. Let’s make some fancy cutscenes, put in an AI, and wing it.” Truth be told, the single-player portion of the game is best skipped.

Thankfully, at its heart, Red Orchestra 2  is a multiplayer affair, though occasional bugs will still hamper you. While I didn’t see as many as I’ve heard about, suffering just one PC lockup and the occasional server lag, the biggest issue I found with the multiplayer was the fact that the first couple sessions I played, the in game server list was constantly empty; I had to go through Steam to find a server, or type in the IP address and port in the console. It may seem like a minor inconvenience, but when you factor in everything else, there’s a severe lack of polish to be found within the game, which is a shame. I might be saying some negative things, but truth be told I still had fun playing. There’s something about constantly being paranoid about getting shot while I carefully look down the sights of my riffle, popping helmets off of enemies where you can lose track of time.

You'll spend 95% of the game from this point of view. Better get used to it.

But perhaps the best part of the Red Orchestra 2 experience is the way classes work in mutliplayer. You have the option of being on different squads, each with different roles and weapons they carry. But there’s a limit as to the amount of people that can be a part of each squad, such as only 3 people able to be on the assault squad, running around with SMGs, and more people carrying long range rifles. It adds a balance that’s severely missing in other multiplayer shooters. There’s no constant threat of grenade launchers and Rambos running wild, and while it is indeed frustration to be one shot from seemingly nowhere, as well as the constant threat of spawn campers, it doesn’t detract from the overall experience.

The only issues with the game is, again, a lack of polish. There’s some great concepts here, but since Tripwire is an indie developer, it’s almost like their budget ran out, despite an attempt to polish out bugs with a two week delay. While the game looks solid, there’s a distinct lack of environmental cohesiveness that, once again, screams lack of polish. The maps are gritty and reflect war-torn Europe well, but once you get to the outer edges of the map, you’ll see bland, wide open spaces and  boring skies. Fortunately, you won’t spend too much time noticing your surroundings and be drawn in by the game’s brilliant score and audio effects. Countless time’s I’ve leaned closer in my chair, drawn in by the game’s sound, living in the moment.

If you couldn’t tell already, I have mixed feelings about Red Orchestra 2. I love that its different, I love its approach to team play, and I love how it re-energizes the WWII shooter. I hate its lack of depth in the single-player, its bugs, and its relative lack of polish. But again, I have fun playing the game, and that’s all that really matters. It’s not for everyone, but those that are looking for a new brand of PC shooter won’t be disappointed. Give it a shot and stick with it. Chances are, you’ll be playing all night. If not, then, boot up a copy of Armageddon and wait patiently for Modern Warfare 3.