![]() ![]() ![]() The only problem is that the cover button is also used to pick stuff up, which can be a real pig if somebody dies next to a wall and you want to steal their grenades. Heck, the game even allows you to ignore the system entirely and use Q and E to lean. ![]() You can also use the arrow keys to quickly look around without aiming. Pressing CTRL throws your shoulder against whatever broken bit of Stalingrad is between you and a surplus orifice, left-mouse allows you to blind-fire over said cover, and right mouse allows you to pop-out and aim. Speaking of cover, Red Orchestra 2 employs a first-person cover-system, which is unique in that it actually works. Whereas in Battlefield you’re bombarded with explosions to the point of desensitisation, in Red Orchestra the distant rattle of a lone machinegun is a worrying sound, and the incoming wail of an artillery barrage will have you crying behind whatever little chunk of cover you can scramble to before the shells fall. Although Bad Company 2 perhaps just edges Red Orchestra 2 in terms of the quality of sound engineering, the latter is a far more atmospheric experience. All the rifles (and there are many) have a kick like a Shaolin ostrich, and the way sound echoes both inside and outdoors is astonishingly lifelike. The audio-visual feedback is arguably the best I’ve experienced outside of the Battlefield series. The commitment to authenticity is visible in a more general sense too. That being the case, for every tactical assault and carefully thought-out defensive strategy there’s a tooth-and-nail hand-to-hand scrap and a frantic forward charge while artillery pummels the ground around you. The attention to detail is all part of recreating the feel of fighting in Stalingrad. ![]() Well actually it doesn’t, because the game stresses authenticity rather than realism. For now, you’re probably thinking such dedication to detail makes the game clunky and slow. I’ll talk about the tanks in more detail later. Now imagine that level of detail when applied to a tank. And then you observe your character reloading with a full clip if the gun is empty, but individual bullets if the clip is half-full. But then you notice you can adjust the optics to compensate for distant enemies, and you can quickly switch to iron sights nestled beneath the optical sight if your opponent is too close. Then you realise you can hold your breath for a steadier aim. At a glance it looks like any other WWII sniper rifle, and indeed it shoots and kills like any other FPS sniper rifle. If the devil is in the detail, then Red Orchestra 2 was developed by a team of exorcists. I’ve heard it referred to as “hardcore”, although I would say uncompromising is a more accurate description.Īs I’ve already mentioned, it’s also incredibly fastidious. The meat of the game comprises of various iterations of capture-and-hold scenarios on large maps that support up to sixty-four players, although there is also single-player that I will complain about in due course. Outside of facetious critic land, it is a multiplayer focussed FPS which falls neatly between Call of Duty and the ArmA games in terms of its approach towards the genre. It’s rubbish.Īnybody? No? All right then. You need about fifty friends and an actual concert hall to play it properly. It’s a classical Guitar-Hero clone in which all the fake plastic instruments are coloured crimson. The Boxing-Day Sales reached new levels of hysteriaįor the uninitiated, here’s an easily digested summary of what Red Orchestra 2 is about. And while other shooters swapped their MP40s for MP5s and their iron sights for ACOG scopes, Tripwire kept on the fight against Fascism, and have now emerged from Hitler’s crumbling bunker with what is probably the most meticulous WWII shooter ever made. Yet as Allied games developers marched victorious from the ruins of Berlin in search of warmer, more profitable climes, somebody forgot to tell Tripwire Interactive that the war for 1940’s Europe was over. Remember the days when the World War II shooter was king? It was the best of times set in the worst of times, a simpler time when I could sleep easily at night knowing that the thousands upon thousands of virtual murders I committed were all justified because each of those terrified-looking German soldiers was almost certainly Hitler’s personal Jew-strangler.īut World War II is so yesterday, and gamers prefer their FPS’ to be set in more modern, ethically questionable spheres. ![]()
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