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Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad
Posts
As for the rest? Ehhhhhhhh.
I can say I've played A LOT of shooters set in WWII, and none of them have managed the amazing atmosphere and tension seen in RO2. The game plays like no other shooter out there; your comparisons to other WWII seems forced.
I can't say I've found the game overly difficult and masochistic; it just requires a different mindset and tactics. I respect your opinions on the game; it isn't for everyone. But your review does seem, as Drake put it, a bit snarky. The tone and words used suggest you went into to it determined to paint it in an unkind light.
and you can go from prone to sprinting to prone if you hold shift. like, you start off prone (if you can find a spot to go prone). then, hit shift to spring up, and then find some cover. let go of shift and you'll dive to prone cover or you won't and you'll get hit and end up bleeding so you'll try and bandage and then take cover on the side of some very exposed cover and then get shot in the head.
The remark about a beginner's class on the Unreal Engine is pretty harsh to levy towards a team of like thirty people with limited resources. Especially considering that they won the Make Something Unreal competition with Red Orchestra: Combined Arms.
Hitting three keys to dive to prone? I don't even know what to say about that.
I could go on, but then I'd just be getting into nit-picking and the territory of opinions.
For someone who has followed the series since its infancy it's pretty plain how little research you did.
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Edit:
First of all, all my comments go solely toward this particular game, Red Orchestra 2. I have no experience with the original, and that is ultimately irrelevant since this is a review for RO2 and nothing else.
Secondly, I would think it safe to say that virtually every FPS multiplayer title is aiming for CoD's popularity. It's like how every RPG wants to make Final Fantasy numbers, or every platformer with Mario. Sure there are Indie devs who want to go against the system and just make a game that's its own thing, but I can't say for certainty RO2 was trying to be that kind of game.
I was also in no way suggesting RO2 was trying to imitate CoD at all. If it does sound that way, perhaps I'll take another glance and do a rewrite.
It is a terrible looking Unreal game.
And I'm not just saying that because I had Gears of War 3 playing on my TV; I can run other Unreal games like Batman: AA and Mass Effect 2 on their max settings, no problems. For whatever reason, RO2 is ugly and it runs poorly on my rig.
Considering how I could run those other games along with other stuff like The Witcher 2 with no problems, I have no choice but to blame the game's optimization, not my PC.
And to further add, there were plenty of people commenting on different multiplayer servers of the very same issues I was experiencing. Only they were much more vocal about it.
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My world
It is shattering before my eyes.
(it does run horribly, though)
Steam PSN: DerWaffleMous Origin: DerWaffleMous Bnet: WaffleMous#1483
I would forgive the former if it wasn't for the latter. When your PC is chugging to run something like this, you can't help but wonder "what does this game have that's pushing my awesome PC so hard?".
These guys made Killing Floor right? That one ran leagues better, and it even looked a bit better too (maybe that was the lighting/aesthetics, but regardless).
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It was the maps being entirely made of long hallways. The only map that isn't runs comparatively poorly.
To say that the only thing RO2 does is up the lethality is to ignore most of what makes the game great, even down to the setting, which you have to admit is at least somewhat obscure for WWII, at least compared to Normandy all over again. Even if we ignore that, pretending that RO2 is one of the imitations and knock-offs trying to secure a piece of the billion-dollar pie (when that pie has actually moved on to a new setting about 3 games ago) is silly. Red Orchestra has been a thing since before Call of Duty was a thing.
You then spend 3 paragraphs talking about the single player, which I guess is mandatory for the review to sound complete because it's traditional to go "here is the singleplayer now here is the multiplayer now I will talk about the graphics and sum up my thoughts and here is a score out of 100" but unless zConnection has a strict "make sure you cover the single player" policy (I'm kind of doubting they have a strict anything policy, given the quality of some of the other reviews on the site), you really could have dealt with singleplayer in 5 words: it sucks and who cares. Beating up on RO2's bots is like saying that the Starcraft II AI doesn't understand how to play user made custom maps very well. That's entirely correct, and I suppose that if you have no idea what you're doing and you wanted to play the game in a silly way you would be mad that it's not very fun to play it like that, but anyone who's really going to be playing RO2 at all is going to be playing multiplayer, just like anyone who's going to be playing SCII custom maps at all will be playing multiplayer, and that's really all that matters.
Can you really open up the magazine and count? In any case, I'd list under "detection tools to locate enemy players" the icon that pops up on your HUD when someone spots an enemy (Z by default), the icons that pop up when the commander calls in a recon plane, the icons that show up that indicate the direction someone is firing from (white fuzzy things), the verbal exclamations of your teammates, both automated and over voice chat, and your eyes.
This is sort of a weird attitude to have. Getting shot is not a case of the game "punishing" you. It's another player shooting you. When you shoot someone, it's not like that's just a random act that happened to occur that has no meaning on your side and no meaning other than "the game is punishing me!" on their side. This isn't a case of players against the game, where the game has all the advantages. Nothing ever kills you in RO2 unless someone on the other side of the Internet pulled a trigger, and that's not punishment. That's just you being not as good as them. That's how all games work. The only reason to see this as punitive rather than as you being bad at the game is...?
Again, this is sort of a weird way of phrasing it. Look, I'll rewrite it: "every multiplayer game requires a learning curve in order to be able to take on other players, but it's a little crazy how simple it is to kill people in Red Orchestra 2. Even if you're six shots shy of a Mosin Nagant clip, you'll be able to kill basically anyone from anywhere with one bullet or two, and they'll have almost no opportunity to figure out where your shot came from. Even if somehow they manage to crawl away from your gunfire, there's a chance they'll bleed to death unless they bandage up." You see? RO2 is not a "hard" or "easy" game. It's a realistic game, and if you aren't any good at it, you'll die brutally, whereas if you are good at it, you'll kill brutally. Most people will be average, which means that sometimes they will die and sometimes they will kill. That's how games work.
Basically to sum everything up, there are two ways to review a realistic game like RO2 or ArmA II. The first way is, for lack of a better phrase, the right way, and it's the sort of thing that, for instance, Rock Paper Shotgun does. These are niche titles, and aside from the die-hard people who will love it almost no matter what despite finding a zillion things to nitpick (myself, for instance), the game will in the end only ever pick up real steam with those people who can appreciate realistic games. The kind that will be frustrated by 2 shot kills no matter what will never enjoy RO2 or ArmA II, so as long as that's clear, reviews that are done "the right way" focus on the pros and cons of the game and blah blah blah.
Your review is the second kind of review for a realistic game, and anyone who reads game reviews can write them in their sleep. Here's how you do it: first paragraph, talk about how the setting is overused, because any realistic game is pretty much going to be WW2 or modern-ish combat, both of which are overdone. Make sure in this paragraph NOT to note that the game, because it's weird and obscure, actually manages to avoid most of the cliches by being set on the Eastern Front of WW2 or by being in some fake Eastern European country (Operation: Flashpoint) or something like that, because this would be too nuanced.
In paragraph 2, discuss the single player, and in paragraph 3 discuss the multiplayer. Despite the fairly high chance that one of these two modes is basically a joke that nobody who is interested in the game would ever play, pretend like the developers actually cared about the neglected mode and then spend lots of time pointing out how horrible of a job they did implementing a feature that could easily be cut without making the game worse.
In whatever paragraph discusses the actual meat of the game, talk about how the learning curve is brutal, how you will be killed from far away without knowing what killed you, how the HUD doesn't show you very much, etc. Basically trot out all the cliches about realism without talking about what the game might do differently from other games, especially other realistic games (since this is RO2 you have to not mention the innovative cover system at all, leave out the detailed tank interior, crew, and damage modeling, don't breathe a word about the maps that are to-scale recreations of actual World War II battle locations, the small things like manual bolting, slow deaths that give you time to fire back, etc). Talk about how the game is only for hardcore players, but don't let that stop you from criticizing it for being hard to learn, even though that's the sort of thing hardcore players probably won't mind.
Finally, mention that the performance is awful and that the game is buggy and the controls are unintuitive, because that's par for the course for realistic games.
There! I wrote your review for you.
TWI also has a well known reputation for fantastic after market support. Unless they go out of business and close up shop you can bet that they will work on the game until it sings, as far as optimization, balance tuning and features are concerned. They are already making some pretty nice strides in this direction. Of course, different users with different hardware configurations are getting some drastically different experiences right now. For example the game runs fantastic on my not-top-of-the-line rig on High settings. It's even playable on Ultra for the most part, but tends to chug somewhat at times. So for now I live with high settings. The only bugs I'm experiencing at the moment are the stat bugs too, no crashes or sound bugs for me in this version.
Not every game is trying to be the best most popular thing ever. I'm sure Tripwire would like if they sold eleventy billion copies, but I have this faint feeling that they were aiming for something a bit more realistic. Making the biggest most popular games costs money, and I don't think any dev out there is dumb enough to shoot for the top without some major bankrolling, like EA is doing with Battlefield.
More than anything else though: the game is not CoD, it's not trying to be like CoD, it's a different style of game entirely. Why do you keep comparing them? Why do you spend more time talking about how WWII is so overdone and how this is like CoD because ____ than you do about the game itself? Why don't you comment on RO2's maps? I think they're a pretty important aspect of a multiplayer shooter. You say run and gunning is punished, but I've found that a moving target is hard to hit with a bolt-action rifle, and an smg beats a bolt-action at less than 50m, which means that running and gunning, especially in buildings, is a very valid tactic.
You also seem to be confused about a lot of things. You don't stop bleeding out by going into cover, it's just that bandaging and cover use the same button. You complain that there are two separate keys for going prone and taking cover? What? Why would you want lying down and pressing up to a wall to use the same button, especially when everyone else is complaining that the cover button is used for too many things already?
You keep saying it's for the masochistic, because "it will punish you". How? You never actually describe the basic gameplay, or what happens in the level. You say that you'll get shot and lose, but remember that for everyone who gets shot and loses, someone else shoots and wins. Which means that the game isn't punishing them. Either you've failed to describe the winning half of the game, what happens when things go well and your team moves in a cohesive unit and you check corners and use grenades and smoke well and you cap all the points, or the game is punishing you in ways other than making you lose, but you don't describe that at all.
tl;dr
You spend so much time complaining about the setting, the graphics, the AI, and how it's trying to topple CoD but kinda different, that you never really describe the game in any detail, and the whole review sounds like you accidentally installed it when you meant to play CoD, gave it half an hour, then got bored. That may not be what happened, but it's what the review sounds like.
You bring up some valid points along with others before you, so I'll take the time to do another read-through and see if I should do any heavy re-writing. One thing I will agree on is that perhaps I overdid it on the CoD comparisons, at least to the point that perhaps I made it sound like it was trying to directly compete with the franchise.
I do not, however, accept that the singleplayer should not be talked about, or given a pass because "no one would care about it". My job is to review a game's entire package, both singleplayer and multiplayer. Just because one facet works doesn't mean the other gets a free pass. Had the singleplayer content been more blatantly treated as "offline practice" I would have been less critical, but I got the sense from the cutscenes and dialog that they were trying to go for an immersive experience, and that's why it fails as a result.
There's also no excuse for shitty AI companions. Never has been, never will be.
When I wrote "the game punishes you", I was stating that in the sense that its mechanics, even when used by other players, can be daunting and punishing for people who aren't deeply invested in the genre. I stand by that, even though I'll be considering re-writing that as well. Some games just aren't as newbie friendly as others, that's a fact. That wasn't intended to be a negative, in any case, but an observation.
Lastly, while I don't think you're openly mocking my review structure, the simple truth is that's how most sites want their reviews written. And even if it wasn't the case, that's the style that feels most comfortable for me. If I went completely random without following some ordered guidelines, it would probably come out as an uneven mess. That's why I emphasize on creating segways, both to make it easier to read and easier to write. If you happen to hate this kind of structured writing, well, feel free not to read my other reviews.
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That said, I feel you're completely the wrong person to review the title as you seemingly didn't put more then five minutes - much less hours - into the title. It's an incredibly uneducated review that as TychoCelchuuu mentioned completely glosses over what makes RO2 not Call of Duty while trying to compare the two products at the same time. Since I don't think you're being dishonest on purpose, ignorance is the lesser of the two evils here.
In any event, I did a rewrite and submitted it to the site, so expect that to go up within the day. While my overall opinion of the game won't change (and yes, I was technically the "wrong" person to review it, a point I did mention briefly in the review), I did cut down on the snark and CoD references, which after further reading I will admit was overdone on both counts. ZConnect usually praises any sarcasm or dry humor I put into reviews, but admittedly this one went a little too mean-spirited.
I appreciate all the feedback and hope you will continue to read my reviews henceforth, even if you don't agree with them.
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i mean I won't say ro2 isn't unforgiving compared to most modern fpses, but i dunno it just doesn't seem that bad to me compared to other games i've played. Heck even arma2 is more "uhhhhhhh what?"
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Feels good man. Feels good.
because it says my profile has like 500+ wins and like 1200+ kills when I've clearly played like <20 rounds and killed < 100 people.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums.
so either in the last week they've made significant performance improvements or this game is heavily CPU oriented and my swap from Q6600 to 2500k was a good move.
I generally agree with you, but FWIW, I feel like I'm being punished whenever I play FF without using competitive (aka bullshit) lighting settings. Where's that sniper who killed me? Who the fuck knows, time to either try to camp (and die, because I don't have a scope) or move (and die, because movement is really fucking obvious).
That said, I enjoy RO2 a lot in general. I just think FF is designed to showcase most of their bad decisions.
It's a stat bug. You aren't the only one.
They've been doing a ton of optimization work, but I think it's most likely a little from column A and bit from column B.
Steam ID: SirToons 3DS: 3024-5277-3254 Twitch: SirToons
Apparently something cool is in the works too, according to some hints I've seen devs drop on the boards.
sneaking around to the other team's side of the map and killing all the camping fuckwits tends to make up for it though
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It's safe to assume that there'll always be a couple of well-populated servers run and populated by the series' diehard fans.
I just use the Steam server browser. It works great for the game.
I say if you are into realism and the concept grabs you go for it.
And there are a couple of big mods in the works that will likely attract their own audience too, like Darkest Hour did for Ostfront.
Yeah this is also exacerbated by all the low walls. Quite often I can't even tell whether I'm shooting at a head or not, let alone whether it's russian or german.
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