Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad (RO2:HoS)
Written by: Cpl TristerUpdated: 8/2/11Tired of all the modern age combat? Well, RO2 is a FPS based on the WWII era "simulation" around the Battle of Stalingrad between the Germans and Russians. The battle was among the largest on the Eastern Front marked by its brutality and disregard for military and civilian casualties. It also was among the bloodiest battles with casualties nearly 2 million deaths. It was a turning point in the war which the German forces were unable to attained further victories in the East.
RO2 will be exclusively for the PC and have no plans to bring it to consoles, as of yet. If they were to, then RO2 would be built for the consoles and not just simply ported. With this, RO2 was developed with no limiting or restrictive factors from consoles such as "horsepower" and graphics. This allowed them to build bigger maps, higher resolution graphics, and 64 multiplayer. The game will be released with 10 64-player maps and 2 tanks.
Tripwire has developed this game with features they have always wanted in FPS as well as feedback from the FPS community. They have made this game to be as real as real can get, in a game and still attempted to retain the fun aspect. Perhaps making this game the most true war simulation game out there to date. It's believed that Battlefield 3 falls behind when compared with RO2 in reference to simulated realism and having that feel of realism.
Also they are already developing an expansion pack due to release shortly after RO2 hits the shelves called Rising Storm, made by a selected team of 1st class modders and developers straight out of the community. And RO2 had the ability to be modded with open server/game files and a SDK kit. As well Tripwire will continually be releasing downloadable content. Also mods are already being made as this
youtube video shows.
MSPR: $39.99us
Release Date: Aug 30, 2011
Genre: FPS - WWII
Platform: PC
Multiplayer: 64
Closed Beta Test: TBD
Tripwire's Conference on June 18th:-
Watch Video Part 1 Starts at 1:10 and turn your speakers down as they run a volume test.
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Watch Video Part 2-
Download Audio Part 1-
Download Audio Part 2RequirementsMinimum:Processor: 2.0GHz Processor
Memory: 1GB
Video card: GeForce 6800 or Radeon 9700 Pro
Recommended:Processor: 2.0GHz Processor
Memory: 2GB
Video card: GeForce 8800 or ATI HD 3870
BackgroundRed Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad (RO2, RO:HOS, or just HOS) is a sequel to Ostfront 41-45 that was released back in 2006. This from 1000-1200 users favored 8.6 and 8.4 out of 10 according to
Metacritic.com and
GameSpot.com respectively.
RO2 is based on the Unreal Engine 3 developed by Epic games and used on games such as Unreal Tournament of course, Gears of War, Mass Effect and MoH just to name a small few. Tripwire, the developers of RO2 and previously an international mod team, won $50,000 and a free commercial license of UE2.5 and 3.0 (valued $350k and $700k) in the Make Something Unreal contest of 2006 ran by Epic Games. That's right! Tripwire was just a bunch of gaming modders who had, what is known as "total conversion", of the Unreal Tournament 2003/2004 game into Red Orchestra. By winning the license they only had to pay $99 and 25% royalties after the first $50k to release and sell Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45, the first developed game as Tripwire.
FeaturesA whole slew of features. After all Tripwire is a modding team. They brought new unique features to the FPS genre. They have added never before seen features, gameplay, and concepts. As well as made tweaks to those already in existence. They have also added more realism to the game that seems to be closer to actual simulated warfare than any game I've seen.
Where do I even begin? RO2 encompasses practically every feature other games have and then some. It's a long list so I'll show you some video that talk about and show some of these features.
Here is a link to Tripwire's forums listing the
features, weapons, and mapsOk lets get on with it shall we?
Classes: Assault (submachine), Elite Assault (special rifles), Riflemen, Elite Riflemen (semiauto), Machine gunner, Marksmen, Squad Leader, and Commander. Also for tanks you have a tank commander, driver, and gunner.
Modes:Territory: This is like capture the flag with a twist. Instead you'll need to capture an area. Not by having at least one player standing there while the bar fills up. But by having more players in the area than the enemy has.
Countdown: This is like elimination... yup... with a twist. Instead of having a huge map when it comes down to 1 vs. 1 and hoping they'll find each other soon when they are on the other ends of the map, the map is divided into sections with objectives. You have one life to complete the objective in around 2 minutes. Once the objective is complete all the dead come back to life to continue to the next objective until the game is won. Failure to capture the objective within time or everyone dies, the game is over. The timer pushes players to do something instead of just camping out waiting for the sights to line up on someone's head.
Firefight: Team Deathmatch. (Can't find anything more on this)
Single Player Campaign: Multiplayer maps driven by the Battle of Stalingrad story.
Multiplayer Campaign: Campaign map is divided into 10 smaller sections and you are allotted a certain amount of Combat Points. Players vote which section to attack (uses more points) or defend (uses less). Then decide how much Combat Points to use for resources. A campaign can last at max 4 hours.
Co-Op: Have players join you to fight AI on the campaign map.
Skirmish: On or offline. 3 fire teams of 3 made up of human and/or AI to clear the map of enemy AI.
Anti-Cheat system: They game will have three, yes three, anti-cheat systems. Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) is the first-line of defense, customized version of Punkbuster, and Proactive Developer (developers actively squash cheat mods)
Defense: Not only can you duck behind cover or lurk around a corner you can snap to cover in turn giving you more cover. Move along that cover and snap off. Cover varies in size and can reveal certain parts of your body. You'll be able to peek or shoot from cover and fire blindly. Not the typical 3rd person view, I can see what I'm shooting at but, true blind fire. To come off cover, simply run from or hop over it. There is Peripheral Vision indicators (shown as arrows) on the sides of the screen letting you know there's movement of up to 185 degree of view, which is what an average person can see. The majority of FPS and perhaps other genres, and having one monitor only shows around 90 degrees. You won't be able to tell friend or foe until you look.
Ballistics: Bullet drops and the ability to pierce through certain materials depending on material, caliber, and type of gun causing damage on the other side. So be careful where you take cover.
Damage: Depending where you're hit will determine instant death, lethal, critical, or non-critical damage. One hit type, you will instantly lose half the damage while bleed out the other half over time, unless you bandage it up. Every player has the option to bandage themselves to stop the bleeding. If hit just right you can die a slow death (shown by a fading to black screen) allowing you a chance to kill or wound enemies around you. Also depending where you get hit may affect your aim or the ability to run at top speed.
Mobility: You are able to prone and they've done something different here. Once prone, instead of hitting a few keys to stand up and take cover, you can simply just sprint. When you stop you'll resume the prone position. You also can climb fences and through windows.
Weapons: Barrels overheat from rapid fire and can be damaged rendering it unusable. You do have a replacement barrel so you're not completely down and out. Bipod based guns can be mounted on practically any surface and your movements pivots around the bipod. Instead of aiming higher the further the target is, you now have the option to adjust your sights. And the sniper rifle now shows a 3D scope. Instead of looking right down the scope having that tunnel vision effect, you now see the scope and everything around it. This allows you to view upcoming, close, threats. Weapons also have a weight to them making it so you can only carry so much. Too much and it'll slow you down. Weapons also collide with the world around you. No more barrel poking through a corner of a building or through sandbags. For mulitplayer the turrets are randomly placed throughout the map, usually behind some sort of cover. So don't expect to find that .50 cal mounted machine gun in the same place next round. There also is no crosshair floating in the center of your screen while you hold your gun by your side.
Louder heartbeat, faster breathing, screen desaturation and shake when being suppressed. This affects weapon sway, aim, sight, and hearing. The effects are cumulative so the more you’re suppressed the more profound the effects will be.
Destruction: Buildings can be destroyed piece by piece but not flattened to continue to provide some type of coverage and not have huge open areas.
HUD: The HUD has been stripped to just the radar/minimap giving you more viewing space. There is a tactical view showing objective info, damage indicator, stance, suppression and stamina bar, number of mags and other things. Therefore, you won't know how much ammo you have left and will have to check it from time to time. You won't see +10 kill instantly after you kill someone to give you the some uncertainty of whether or not you actually killed them. You also won't see a kill box but your own. Hey the only way anyone knows who shot who and when is if you saw it yourself or someone tells you.
Progression: Gain experience and access higher ranks, rare weapons, abilities, equipment and other classes. Your appearance also changes with rank. You started of clean cut, untouched by the stresses of war and a nicely pressed uniform. The higher the rank the more the clothes start to become worn, face will show signs of war stress. Team killing can and will deduct point and eventually lower your rank. Be on good behavior and you're points will come back... at some point.
Environmental Temps: Maps can have set temperature which changes the rate barrels heat up and muzzle velocity of tanks.
Squads: Can command fire teams with orders. Players who follow orders will earn points. Players in your squad will have green tags.
Commander: Will have fire support from mortars, artillery, and rockets. Aerial recon to survey the battlefield and report enemy locations. These reports actually filter down the ranks with a few seconds delay. Recon will only report visual contact and not hiding units. Commander can also choose to let a reinforcement wav spawn immediately. Immediate spawning will be limited.
Morale: Your team's morale will increase if the battle is doing well as in most captured points and least amount of deaths. Better morale will enable you to capture points faster. Having a player ranking a Hero beside you will increase morale of everyone around him. Lose him to death and suffer a big loss in morale, more so than if he wasn't there at all. One team's morale will influence the enemies. The better your team is the worst your enemies will be.
Tanks: Think of a tank simulator within an FPS game. There will be only 2 types of tanks at the moment, since it took Tripwire 3 months to create a fully 3d model both inside and out. There are actually compartments you can slide or crawl into. You'll be able to see the other players and/or AI inside the tank and have usable hatches, periscopes, and viewports. They also have specific hit points allowing you to target or damage optics, transmission, turret rotation mechanism, hitting the fuel tank, drive sprocket, treads and more. And now shots that penetrate the tank armor can hit the crewmembers inside. Spots not taken by players will be controlled by AI and can be ordered. Tank commanders choose to lock their tanks or allow other players to join. They are still debating having the ability to repair tanks/vehicles. Currently they are going on the idea of repairing at resupply areas.
RO TV: A fully featured spectator mode (1st, 3rd and freecam) for broadcasting and moviemaking as well as pile in more spectators all viewed with a delay for cheating purposes of course. Spectators will be able to target their cams to a player and navigate the views surrounding that player or freecam. With freecam, you can go anywhere any height any angle and/or fly around. You'll need two servers to run this feature. One server being the game server the other RoTV that can then be broadcasted from any website and/or recorded to edit later.
Demo Recording: Same as ROtv. One difference may be less configurations. But what is different is no additional server is required and no broadcasting. The demo recording isn't a true video recording. It is a recording of events such as, it won't visually record a player killing another; it'll record the information of that killing. This makes the files stored much smaller but also requires a special player (usually supplied with game or built in-game) to watch and edit. These files should be stored locally by default but can be stored on the server if configured.
VOIP: Split up by Public, team, squad, and vehicles.
Spawning: Choose a predefined point or on your squad leader. You don't simply respawn on top of your leader, but further back, away from danger. On certain mulitplayer modes the squad leader or commander will be able to send reinforcements. Meaning they'll be able to pick a location for everyone who dies to respond. This sets up a wave of attacks forcing the enemy to kill everyone in order to clear the area or to overrun an area. The commander has a 4 minute cooldown before he can use it again.
Multiplayer Server Settings: A whole slew of custom configurations can be done for multiplayer games. Most, if not all, configurable options can be found in this
Google Doc. It is overwhelming at the number of settings you can manipulate possibly changing the gameplay experiences, difficulty, or even duration perhaps. It's seems anything that could be changed in a multiplayer game, can be changed. This is definitely a game based on multiplayer, but more so competitive multiplayer... The real, hardcore LAN tournaments.
LAN Support: This gives anyone with the game capability to host your own game server locally and possible over the web.
ConclusionSit back, close your eyes, and just let the abundant, overwhelming information soak in and process. If you're looking for a close to true war simulation, or are tired of the modern day war, this game might be for you. It's been talked about that RO2 is in competition with MW3 and BF3. Although perhaps not in terms with graphics. But I'm sure we all have a game or have played one, that has '80s graphics but extremely fun to play. If you are one to value graphics above anything else (and trust me there's a lot of players criticizing this) or not into the real as real can get as this game portrays, then this may not be for you. However so, it is a game made by FPS gamers for FPS gamers.
RO2 brings a lot of new features, realism, uniqueness, and concepts that it could be termed as innovative; to have added fresh air to the FPS genre. However some of these features were done in RO1 and just tweeked in RO2. This game could also be used to launch a new clan or a clan into the next level, being the server is practically fully customizable to house your own tournaments. Already, there is a huge following of gamers, modders, communities for this game; more so than RO1.
The game seems to be geared towards the close to true simulated war-heads but made simple for newcomers; a problem found in RO1. From fully, useable, 3d modeled tank interiors to penetrable bullets, to true blind fire, to 3d scope, to player and tank damage models, how much more real can you get. Well of course you can get more real, but would it be fun? Tripwire didn't believe it would be to a lot of players. They simply wanted to create a game that had what they wanted in a game, as gamers/modders and also include request from the community; to get it as real as possible and still be fun. Tripwire is one of those companies that will listen, heed to, and include requests from the community; so long as there is enough players who agree. They plan to come out with content on a regular basis including an expansion pack a few months after RO2 launch.
I must admit, when I first saw one of the trailers, I was not impressed or interested. Sadly, I believe it was based solely upon the graphics which seemed to be behind current and/or upcoming games. But as I read what they have done and going to do, it got me. In terms of gamplay and realism this might just come above BF3. Thanks Bronx! (That's both sarcastically and sincerely for putting this game in my head)
Updates7/5/11
7/9/11
7/24/11
8/2/2011
If you own Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45, you’ll get…
20% off the game’s price (as opposed to the current 10% pre-order sale)
Special in-game item – Russian Guards Badge and German Close Combat Badge
Day 1 unlock of the Kar98 and Mosin rifle bayonets
If you buy the Steam Digital Deluxe Edition, you’ll get…
Access to the final phase of closed beta before the August 30th launch
Day 1 Unlock of the Elite Assault Weapons (MKb 42(H) and AVT-40) and Semi Auto Sniper Weapons (SVT-40 and G 41(W))
Team Fortress 2 German and Russian hats (“vintage” if bought during pre-purchase)
Two new characters for Killing Floor – Russian and German Soldier Re-enactors
References:
http://www.heroesofstalingrad.com/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Orchestra:_Heroes_of_Stalingradhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_something_unreal#Modshttp://dosclan.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=429http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_Enginehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_Engine_3http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=48698http://www.vg247.com/2011/06/20/red-orchestra-2-to-sport-vac-and-punkbuster/https://www.youtube.com/user/RedOrchestraHoShttp://www.gametrailers.com/game/red-orchestra-2-heroes-of/11974http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=53318&page=3http://www.rush-zone.com/heroes-of-stalingrad-competitive-support.htmlhttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1wjBHpq75aHPX3CEw6ZztEgf6TqVSCEjq0FNQY2MQ9OY/edit?authkey=CLb8hvgH&hl=en_GB&pli=1&ndplr=1&pli=1#http://hos.roladder.net/http://bashandslash.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=104&t=4868http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/09/02/red-orchestra-heroes-of-stalingrad-vehicles/http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=14444http://wiki.unrealadmin.org/UTV_%28UT2004%29 
I can't run that, I thought it was going to be like 2.0ghz. 
