Musings on ... Red Orchestra: Heroes of Stalingrad

Click for bigger versions.

Only a short one, but you can see my musings on the beta over here: http://mouseclicksandmovingpics.blogspot.com/2011/09/musings-on-red-orchestra-2-heroes-of.html. So, having played the actual game for the past few weeks I think I can probably give you a final verdict. Obviously it’s great, but I don’t think that this game is for everyone. It’s bloody difficult for one thing, and the level of detail is insane. The damage modelling goes right down to individual hands and feet, and a single bullet can kill you ten seconds after you spawn. And honestly, it can get quite frustrating. If your team is massively outclassed by the opposition, it probably won’t be much fun. However, there is still a cool feeling of being the rubbish force just holding off against the attackers.

                It certainly isn’t an easy game to get into. I can imagine a lot of people used to games like Call of Duty bouncing right off this. It’s just too different, too realistic really. There’s no massive advantage for playing the game a lot, there’s barely even a progression mechanic. But all that means that you’re forced to play as a team. If you try to do something heroic by yourself, you’re probably going to die. You can’t just sprint behind enemy lines and expect to get ten kills. It promotes teamwork over anything else. To be fair, other games force teamwork to a much greater extent. Bad Company 2 probably does it the most obviously, with the whole spawning on your team-mates idea strongly enforced, along with heavily defined classes.

                All of these reasons are why Heroes of Stalingrad isn’t going to win any awards. It isn’t polished enough, being fairly buggy and a bit laggy still, and it isn’t mainstream enough. Only people who are sick of the samey, hyper-polished crap being produced by Activision and EA, or who love hard-core shooters, are going to claim this game is awesome. Fortunately, I am both of these things, and shall therefore be ignored by almost everyone in terms of my gaming opinions. Sadly I expect most of the brilliant things this game does will probably be ignored as well, which is a shame as it does so many things right.

                This was best illustrated when I was playing the Battlefield 3 beta the other week. Just the fact you can crouch and sprint at the same time in Red Orchestra and couldn’t in Battlefield instantly made the game feel rigid and unrealistic. The same with reloading when your MG when it’s deployed. In RO2, as I mentioned in the beta, you crouch down behind cover whilst reloading, which would be enormously useful in the sniper-filled hell of Battlefield’s Operation Metro map. Hopefully we’ll all be crouch-running in every game for the next 100 years, but don’t hold your breath.

                So that’s pretty much all I have to say that wasn’t covered in the beta write-up. No, Heroes of Stalingrad won’t be winning any awards, and won’t have a huge impact on gaming as a whole, but bloody hell it’s an interesting game, and I would recommend it if you wanted something a little bit challenging.