Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 Review
March 19th, 2006 by 
TR Staff
Here’s a review of Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41 -45 from a group of TR players who’ve spent a considerable amount of playtime online since it released last Tuesday.
First impressions
NightStalker: Without a doubt the first impression most people get when they load this game up is how last generation the graphics look and feel. To call the game bad because it doesnt look as good as another game is a mistake I see from many people. As soon as you dive into an Online server, you will quickly become comsumed by the sheer beauty of the gameplay that lies at the core of this game. Gone are the days when one person can run around by himself killing everything in his path to victory; in its place you have the most team oriented, realism based game on the market. You need teamwork to get anywhere in this game.
Jester: When first loading the game, I noticed it reminded me of Operation Flashpoint, with COD 1 level of graphics. Red Orchestra: Ostfront doesn’t have next-gen graphics. It has next-gen gameplay. It wasn’t made with console players in mind…it was made for PC users, with a huge field of view and precision aiming needed. Large expansive maps, ballistics, weather effects, realistic aiming, weapon properties, and vehicles. This game is art imitating life. Unlike most games which claim a realistic feel and make subtle, but game changing, compromises to try to improve playability.
D6Veteran: This game is a steal at $25. Despite the toughest learning curve for any FPS I have played, from the start this game delivers a unique experience. And I should not call this an FPS — it is a WW2 infantry and tank simulator. Graphically it is not as good as HL2 or CoD2, but the importance of that fact dimishes quickly due to incredible gameplay.
Gameplay
NightStalker: Gone are the days when John Doe could run and gun around a server, bunny hop to avoid fire, and jump out windows untouched. This game stresses Tactical Realism play more than any game I have ever played. Shooting from the hip is nearly impossible with the recoil on the guns, in fact shooting is almost useless unless you use your iron sights when you fire. The stamina meter eliminates the advantage of bunny hopping: jumping makes your stamina decrease alot faster then sprinting, therefore after a single jump, you must recover before you can make an effective jump again.
The little things in RO’s gameplay are what is most impressive; things like the sway on your gun getting worse because you have the iron sights up for a long period of time, or the fact that you can rest your weapon on just about anything in your environment in order to steady your sway, taking cover when you have to reload, the blur effect when you are being surpressed with fire or are near a grenade that goes off. One of the biggest elements in RO’s gameplay without a doubt is the Tank combat and the role it plays overall. Tank combat is done very well with great attention to detail. This isnt CoD:UO where a single man can drive a tank, fire the mg and fire artillery all by himself. This game uses Tank crews in which each person has his own role to play. When the tank crews work together with the infantry, you get an online war experience like never before.
Jester: The gameplay is more complicated than other games in the FPS genre. Remembering games like RTCW, COD 1 & 2 and DOD:S — the run-and-gun philosophy could serve you well. However, in RO:O taking your time is the best option. The game is slower. Your movements have to be more precise. Your aim, has to be better. In a lot of games, your success when faced with your enemy is dependent on who pulled the trigger first. Not here. More often then not it is the person that took the time to go prone or into a crouch and make a deliberately aimed shot will come out the victor.
In no other game have I seen more people ducking behind cover immediately when fire screams over their heads. Or people frantically running around trying to pick up their weapon when it was shot out of their hands. Or even two enemies squaring off at each other, and killing each other with simultaneous shots.
And that is just the infantry. The tank battles are just as intense. Precise positioning, ranging, and aim are important here as well — and of course a competent driver — that listens for the shot and reload and reacts appropriately. And the details of the animations and ballistics are simply amazing. Ricochets are almost as fun to watch as a direct hit.
D6Veteran: RO:Ost delivers intense gameplay that is not only fun but can be highly immersive and challenging. The learning curve is steep and requires firm understanging of the controls. I suggest not changing the defaults until you understand all of the controls. A lot of the new players (new to RO) I encountered online had changed the default controls and so could not ask the other players for key information. Once the controls are learned you feel at home in an environment where things you’d want to do in a real life combat situation are available to you in the game. Like giving your teams heavy machine gunner more ammo, or changing the sighting on your tank gun to adjust for range, or diving into a ditch to avoid an incoming round or mg fire, or using a radio to call in artillery fire, or blowing up a hole in the wall so you can flank the enemy. It’s all here. Like I said, this is a WW2 combat simulator.
Maps
NightStalker: The maps for the game are done beautifully and fulfill their purpose, whether it is the infantry or the tank heavy maps. Personally I enjoy the infantry maps. All the maps are very wide open, there are multiple paths you can take to get to your objectives: some paths provide better cover, while others provide better flanking. Working as a team to ultilize all parts of the map is the only way to win. There are quite a few maps converted over from the RO mod and while these are great maps; they just dont feel new to long time players. Hopefully the mapping community will flourish and we will have more maps in the future.
Jester: There are three types of maps. Infantry only, combined arms, and mostly tank warfare. Most of the maps are laid out well and of large size. Some maps need their spawn points rethought out a bit. Sometimes the attacking force is much too close to the initial objective than the defending force, providing for a vehicle rush style of play, or the attacking force is too far away from the initial spawn, and it is almost impossible to remove the entrenched defenders from the initial objective. Overall, the maps are wonderful to look at and are well designed providing just the right amount of difficulty to each force and providing multiple avenues of attack and defense.
D6Veteran: The 13 maps available at release offer a tremendous variety of combat scenarios. The variety in landscapes, objectives, vehicles and weapons is simply amazing. It is more accurate to refer to the maps as battles, for each one is deeply rooted in history. For example tanks are restricted to the tanks that were historically present at the battle, so no Tigers in 1941. Each battle contains a map the player can view at any time to see the objectives for their team, their current position on the map, as well as labels for zones on the map to aid in coordinating with their comrades.
Realism Features
NightStalker: Anti Run and Gun Weapons: they sway, they recoil and there is no cone of fire; making shooting from the hip useless and annoying. There’s just no reason to ever shoot from the hip in this game. If you are in close quarters and have a rifle against an mg, you have a better chance killing your foe with a bayonet then you do trying to hit him from the hip.
Realistic Suppression and Ballistics: supressing fire plays a big role in this game because of the blur it causes those under fire. The bullet ballistics in this game are second to none: the bullets and guns act exactly like their real life counter parts, which means you really need to learn the mechanics of the guns in order to hit moving targets. You must lead into your shot and you also have to take distance into effect because of the bullet and velocity drop.
Jester: You have to aim to be successful. Free aim provides that unless you are at extremely close range and have an automatic weapon, you are better off trying to use your bayonet or a rifle strike rather than shooting from the hip. Also, after making a shot, it drops you out of iron sights (there is no zoom with the iron sights) and you have to provide input to reload. This removes the possibility of being caught in a reload animation if you have to use melee. Reloading takes a realistic amount of time, time better spent behind cover. As you reload if you are behind cover, you player pawn will automatically lower itself behind that cover. As you go back to iron sights, your player pawn will lift up slightly to provide a better view above the cover. One shot to the chest or head, one kill. However, you can shoot people in the legs and slow them down or in the hand to make them drop their weapon.
The ballistics are true to form. Having to make adjustments based on range, provides just enough difficutly without becoming frustrating.
Movement is slow, however, you can sprint, but you have to rest otherwise your overall speed will be reduced until you do. Similarly, if you injure your legs, your speed is reduced for a set amount of time, and although I haven’t confirmed this yet, if you injure a hand, your aim is affected.
You can lean around corners and rest your weapon on horizontal and vertical surfaces to better improve the sway of your aim.
I have to say again, this is the first game I’ve noticed where people react realistically to being under fire. Perhaps the motion blur supression helps with that. For example in COD people would rush objectives under fire. Here, immediately after a shot rings out, people automatically fall to the ground. No standing around looking for where the shot came from — down on the ground, scrambling for cover, crawling their way towards the objective.
D6Veteran: The beauty of Red Orchestra is in the subtle way that tactical realistic gameplay is encouraged from the environment of the game. This is done by rewarding players with life for virtually every moment they act like a trained WW2 soldier or tanker, and conversly punishing those that do not with a quick and unglorious death. Run and Gun and bunny hopping simply do not exist in RO because they don’t work — nothing will get you killed more quickly. The use of realistic ballistics also means no rail guns. At longer ranges firefights can last well over a minute between a couple soldiers in cover. The tank combat in RO is so detailed and authentic that it makes vehicle combat in games like CoD:UO and BF2 seem comically bad. I could dedicate and entire page to everything RO has to offer to a tactical realism fan.
Immersion
Jester: This is an example of what it will feel like to play the game: You are an anti-tank soldier. You are armed with a sub-machine gun and 3 panzerfaust. You are in a huge valley surrounded by mountains, everything is covered with snow, it is snowing. Your orders are to cross the frozen river from the town you are quatered in and to capture and hold the small pennisula from the enemy hands. You hop in the back of a half-track. The men around you are each in their own little world. One is nervously tapping his foot, another is tapping his hands on his legs to the rythm of a song in his head, a third is vomiting on his shoes. You cross the town down below the banks onto the frozen river and hop out of the half-track. Slowly you crawl along the edge of a building, finally reaching a trench that faces an open field where you know Soviet forces will be slowly rolling into position with their tanks to protect their side of the river. A Soviet T34 crests a hill to your left and slowly pulls into position behind a house about 100 meters from your trench. He is perfectly angled to take out any of your armor that crosses in to the small village on the penninsula — hoping to capture the Soviet occupied town. You raise your head ever so slightly above the trench line to get a better look. The T34’s gunner sees you and tracers fly over you head. You drop down prone in the trench. Slowly you pull up into a crouch and bring your panzerfaust into firing position. You check the reticle and make sure that you are prepared to aim correctly with the correct range. You pop your head up, aim slightly above the 80 meter mark on the sight and fire! The panzerfaust slowly arcs up — reaches its pinnicle and comes down directly on the front armor of the Soviet tank. You know it weakened him…but are you brave enough to stick your head above the trench again to fire another round?
The Best and Worst
NightStalker: The single best thing about RO is the fact that it is made and desgined with realism in mind. Comming from a Tactical Realism backround going back quite a few years, it’s great to finally see a game released with such realism right out of the box.
The worst thing is also the best thing, because the game was made for Realism players, it makes the game appeal to a much smaller and niche audience of players. This means a much smaller community of players. No matter how much we in the community try to spread the idea of Tactical Realism, one thing will always be certain: we will always be a niche community. Day of Defeat, Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, all these games had tactical realism communities, but compared to the amount of stock players these realism communities didnt have a fraction of the number of players in the total community. RO is the first big chance for the growth of Tactical Realism.
What’s Missing
Jester: Next-gen graphics. Hopefully we will see that when the Unreal Engine 3.0 is released!
A mantling system. Some objects in the game are hard to get over. Due to the restrictions in jumping (you can jump, just not very high and in succession), some objects that should be easy to get over are impossible to get over, i.e. sandbag walls. It would be great if you could “pull” yourself over this obstacle rather than trying to jump over it or going around it.
Other than that — there really isn’t too much missing gameplaywise.
D6Veteran: Tank crew supression, tank crew role switching and mantling: First, tank crews should be suppressed with a long blur and a much louder clang when their tank takes a hit. Secondly, changing role positions in a tank should not be instantaneous — movement between seats should be animated just like the movement in and out of hatches. This would further discourage solo tanking, which is often more advantageous than having to coordinate with a stranger on a public server. Lastly, a mantling ability is something I miss often in this game. With such huge rewards for any soldier using tactical movement, it becomes frustrating that you cannot pull yourself over a wall, fence or up onto a object.
Conclusion
NightStalker: This is the most realistic game you will find on the market. Most games require heavy modding to make them somewhat realistic, but the guys at Tripwire give it to us right out of the box and they give it to us for only $25 thru Steam. If you are a Tactical Realism player, looking for a game made with you in mind, this is the best $25 you will ever spend on a game. It may lack polish in graphics but its the best WW2 gameplay you will ever experience.
Jester: If you are into WWII fps, then for $25, this game will provide you with the most value you have ever gotten for your money. If you have ever given a thought to playing one of the realism mods for COD, Source, etc… this is the game for you.
D6Veteran: Not since Shogun Total War have I played a game that struck me as being so ground breaking in a genre. Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41 - 45 is not a mod for Unreal Tournament — it is a well polished retail release that delivers everything the developers promised. The gameplay is so intense at times that I found my mind filling in the pixelated world with the colors to bring it to life and create an experience that was somewhere between viewing a gritty war film and actually being on the front lines. It is simply the most immersive combat game I have ever played.
