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Red Orchestra 2
14 years ago
General
Verdict: Don't bother with it, or at least not yet.
Even if you've played the first one, the second is a little problematic. The sticky cover system is next to useless and will usually get you killed as you get hung up on windowsills, the odd brick on the ground, low walls, and so forth. Most maps are structured with lots of open space, which sounds a bit strange if you played Red Orchestra 1, but in this case it causes the combat to quickly congeal into a large-scale game of whack a mole.
Here's how it plays out: You enter a match -- unless Punkbuster is working properly and fucking you. There are two types of server: Empty and Full. The ones with the best ping are, of course, empty. The full ones won't let you in. As you scroll down the list, which takes several minutes to populate, you may see the odd server that is neither empty nor full. Doing so usually means giving up on finding something with decent ping on the understanding that you might play this game that you have recently bought.
Once you have entered a server, you will generally see a variety of choices. "A-ha!" You might think, if you played Red Orchestra 1, "An assault class slot is open! I must be in luck!". Knowing that the trusty Pa-Pa-Shah or the Stig-44 will soon be yours, you get ready to mow down dozens of fools. Then, with your class selected, you spawn and realize what kind of mistake you've just made.
I should note that there are several combat classes in the game: Assault focuses on sprinting, grenades, and rapid-fire weapons that are effective at close range. Rifleman and Elite Rifleman offer long-range accuracy, and in the case of the latter issues you with a semi-automatic rifle. A Light Machine Gunner is issued with a weapon that can only be used in two positions: while lying prone, or while resting on cover. Squad Leader gives you the ability to throw smoke grenades, call in artillery, aerial recon, and be a moving spawn point. Marksmen are effectively snipers, issued with a weapon with telescopic sights.
All of these sound useful. Then there's the details. Only two marksmen are allowed on each side (sometimes one). This slot is immediately filled by someone who doesn't know what they're doing. Light Machine Guns, being only useful behind cover or while lying prone, are occasionally useful for murdering people in their spawn area, but otherwise leave you a slow-moving thug with a useless lump of iron in your hands as you plod the two miles from your spawn to the front line-- only to get shot.
Squad Leaders are great at laying down smoke, which all members of the opposite team immediately point their guns at, as invariably waves of people will try to run through it. When they emerge from the smoke, they die without even knowing where the enemy is. They are also very good at laying down artillery on indestructible objectives and their own men.
Since all kills seem to take place at hundreds of yards or more, the assault class can be effective on a handful of maps, but is usually fucked into a cocked hat, running from one useless bit of cover to the next and praying with increasing intensity as the enemy gradually surrounds, pins down, and murders him.
This leaves the riflemen, who are now the kings of the battlefield. Their weapons can (and do) reach across the entire map. All you have to do is point it toward an open area and shoot at those little moving blobs in the distance, or play a game of whack-a-mole as the enemy pops behind, above, and around cover. Given a little high ground, you don't have to run towards the enemy at all. All you have to really do is spawn, go upstairs, find a cozy window, and murder people for the rest of the day. If you get killed, it will be only by other riflemen.
Now, Red Orchestra is famous for having tank combat as well as infantry combat. The tanks look fantastic, function to a high level of realism, and so on, but there is one big flaw: There's only two of them.
Do you want an IS-2 tank? Well, you get a T-34. Perhaps you wanted the StuG, the Tiger, or the Panther? Well, you get the Panzer IV. There are only two tanks in this game, and most of the tank maps are billiard-table affairs where you spend most of the time hunting down tiny scraps of cover and little lumps of earth to hide behind, wait, fire at the enemy, die, and repeat. The lack of variety in armor means that tactics boil down to a very simple and boring formula: Find an enemy and try to shoot at their sides. Since it can take 10-20 minutes to even find the enemy, most of your time in a tank will be spent (probably realistically) jerking off and/or building a music playlist best suited to your current predicament, like an audio book of Tolstoy's "War and Peace".
I can't condemn Red Orchestra 2 for its attempt to make a realistic combat experience. You realize, soberingly, that war of this type was essentially waiting around, eating, diddling yourself, and camping until suddenly the hand of fate bitchslaps you dead, and in many servers you don't even get a killcam to see who or what killed you. You don't get penalized for dying in this game beyond having to hike 5 miles back to the combat zone from the spawn area. Again, I'm sure that this is realistic, the notion of endless hiking and jogging until you catch a bullet, but it's not particularly fun, either.
Perhaps it's an accurate portrayal of war itself. It is so far removed from the frantic pacing, spectacular kills, and urgency of most war games today that Red Orchestra 2 seems to be wrong. Perhaps it's right. Perhaps it's a way to teach you, for $50, that war is in fact a long string of dull and tedious activities that ends in a pointless, terrifying, and sudden death. With the exception of windowsills that conspire to kill you and the crazy thruster-limb animations of the combat troops, or the fact that the map will literally kill you instantly if you take one step too far, Red Orchestra 2 encapsulates the rigors and tribulations of war like no other game.
Yet it seems to have forgotten that it is a game, and should therefore be fun.
This is a point not lost on Red Orchestra 1. The variety of combat styles, the structure of the maps, and the overall function of the game seemed better suited to having a good time. Death was still just a breath away, but the game would actually reward you for flanking the enemy instead of rushing in head-first. You didn't have to worry about being killed by wacky cover because sticky cover didn't exist. You didn't have to worry about getting killed for trespassing on the enemy's territory. You didn't have to worry that the enemy would drop constant artillery barrages on your own spawn point.
If nothing else, Red Orchestra 2 has accomplished one thing: It underscores the charm of Red Orchestra 1. I'm probably not the only person who will soon uninstall Red Orchestra 2 and reinstall Red Orchestra 1 to feel the magic again.
Even if you've played the first one, the second is a little problematic. The sticky cover system is next to useless and will usually get you killed as you get hung up on windowsills, the odd brick on the ground, low walls, and so forth. Most maps are structured with lots of open space, which sounds a bit strange if you played Red Orchestra 1, but in this case it causes the combat to quickly congeal into a large-scale game of whack a mole.
Here's how it plays out: You enter a match -- unless Punkbuster is working properly and fucking you. There are two types of server: Empty and Full. The ones with the best ping are, of course, empty. The full ones won't let you in. As you scroll down the list, which takes several minutes to populate, you may see the odd server that is neither empty nor full. Doing so usually means giving up on finding something with decent ping on the understanding that you might play this game that you have recently bought.
Once you have entered a server, you will generally see a variety of choices. "A-ha!" You might think, if you played Red Orchestra 1, "An assault class slot is open! I must be in luck!". Knowing that the trusty Pa-Pa-Shah or the Stig-44 will soon be yours, you get ready to mow down dozens of fools. Then, with your class selected, you spawn and realize what kind of mistake you've just made.
I should note that there are several combat classes in the game: Assault focuses on sprinting, grenades, and rapid-fire weapons that are effective at close range. Rifleman and Elite Rifleman offer long-range accuracy, and in the case of the latter issues you with a semi-automatic rifle. A Light Machine Gunner is issued with a weapon that can only be used in two positions: while lying prone, or while resting on cover. Squad Leader gives you the ability to throw smoke grenades, call in artillery, aerial recon, and be a moving spawn point. Marksmen are effectively snipers, issued with a weapon with telescopic sights.
All of these sound useful. Then there's the details. Only two marksmen are allowed on each side (sometimes one). This slot is immediately filled by someone who doesn't know what they're doing. Light Machine Guns, being only useful behind cover or while lying prone, are occasionally useful for murdering people in their spawn area, but otherwise leave you a slow-moving thug with a useless lump of iron in your hands as you plod the two miles from your spawn to the front line-- only to get shot.
Squad Leaders are great at laying down smoke, which all members of the opposite team immediately point their guns at, as invariably waves of people will try to run through it. When they emerge from the smoke, they die without even knowing where the enemy is. They are also very good at laying down artillery on indestructible objectives and their own men.
Since all kills seem to take place at hundreds of yards or more, the assault class can be effective on a handful of maps, but is usually fucked into a cocked hat, running from one useless bit of cover to the next and praying with increasing intensity as the enemy gradually surrounds, pins down, and murders him.
This leaves the riflemen, who are now the kings of the battlefield. Their weapons can (and do) reach across the entire map. All you have to do is point it toward an open area and shoot at those little moving blobs in the distance, or play a game of whack-a-mole as the enemy pops behind, above, and around cover. Given a little high ground, you don't have to run towards the enemy at all. All you have to really do is spawn, go upstairs, find a cozy window, and murder people for the rest of the day. If you get killed, it will be only by other riflemen.
Now, Red Orchestra is famous for having tank combat as well as infantry combat. The tanks look fantastic, function to a high level of realism, and so on, but there is one big flaw: There's only two of them.
Do you want an IS-2 tank? Well, you get a T-34. Perhaps you wanted the StuG, the Tiger, or the Panther? Well, you get the Panzer IV. There are only two tanks in this game, and most of the tank maps are billiard-table affairs where you spend most of the time hunting down tiny scraps of cover and little lumps of earth to hide behind, wait, fire at the enemy, die, and repeat. The lack of variety in armor means that tactics boil down to a very simple and boring formula: Find an enemy and try to shoot at their sides. Since it can take 10-20 minutes to even find the enemy, most of your time in a tank will be spent (probably realistically) jerking off and/or building a music playlist best suited to your current predicament, like an audio book of Tolstoy's "War and Peace".
I can't condemn Red Orchestra 2 for its attempt to make a realistic combat experience. You realize, soberingly, that war of this type was essentially waiting around, eating, diddling yourself, and camping until suddenly the hand of fate bitchslaps you dead, and in many servers you don't even get a killcam to see who or what killed you. You don't get penalized for dying in this game beyond having to hike 5 miles back to the combat zone from the spawn area. Again, I'm sure that this is realistic, the notion of endless hiking and jogging until you catch a bullet, but it's not particularly fun, either.
Perhaps it's an accurate portrayal of war itself. It is so far removed from the frantic pacing, spectacular kills, and urgency of most war games today that Red Orchestra 2 seems to be wrong. Perhaps it's right. Perhaps it's a way to teach you, for $50, that war is in fact a long string of dull and tedious activities that ends in a pointless, terrifying, and sudden death. With the exception of windowsills that conspire to kill you and the crazy thruster-limb animations of the combat troops, or the fact that the map will literally kill you instantly if you take one step too far, Red Orchestra 2 encapsulates the rigors and tribulations of war like no other game.
Yet it seems to have forgotten that it is a game, and should therefore be fun.
This is a point not lost on Red Orchestra 1. The variety of combat styles, the structure of the maps, and the overall function of the game seemed better suited to having a good time. Death was still just a breath away, but the game would actually reward you for flanking the enemy instead of rushing in head-first. You didn't have to worry about being killed by wacky cover because sticky cover didn't exist. You didn't have to worry about getting killed for trespassing on the enemy's territory. You didn't have to worry that the enemy would drop constant artillery barrages on your own spawn point.
If nothing else, Red Orchestra 2 has accomplished one thing: It underscores the charm of Red Orchestra 1. I'm probably not the only person who will soon uninstall Red Orchestra 2 and reinstall Red Orchestra 1 to feel the magic again.
While I usually don't care for the multiplayer, I'd like to know how the single player campaign is.
- The Desert Fox
Throw in some brief cinematics, some voice talent from Company of Heroes, and a bit of interesting historical narrative and there you are. That's the single player campaign.
- The Desert Fox