Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad/Rising Storm

Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad is a World War II-themed tactical multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed and published by Tripwire Interactive in September 2011. It is a sequel to Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 and it focuses heavily on the Battle of Stalingrad. On the other hand, Rising Storm is an expansion pack published in May 30, 2013 and it is set in the Pacific Theater.

Why It Rocks
NOTE: This page will mainly focus on Red Orchestra 2, but Rising Storm also shares some of the good qualities
 * 1) The game makes a great job portraying the horrors of the second world war.
 * 2) The gameplay mixes very well the arcade and military simulation modes: while you still have the common fps elements (visible hud, sprint and life bar) and pacing, one or two bullets will be enough to kill you, you need to check manually how much bullets do you have left and there is a "fear" bar that, if it is filled completely, your vision and hearing will get blurrier and your aiming will get worse, also, you will need to have a good communication with your team if you want to win. Even better, the game has a realistic mode that will turn off the friendly names, kill confirmations and the radar.
 * 3) Amazing and very well detailed graphics even for today standards.
 * 4) It features a lot of attention to the detail, you can zero your weapon sights and scopes with visible effects, vehicles have very well detailed interiors, supressing fire will make you enter in panic and some weapons can dismember the soldiers, like the AT rifles.
 * 5) Unlike most of the nowadays FPS games, getting shot will lead to bleed and you will need to use a bandage to stop it.
 * 6) A good soundtrack that will vary depending on the state of the battle.
 * 7) Fascinating and realistic voice acting, you can really feel the emotion in the soldier screams or the paint in the death sounds.
 * 8) Japanese soldiers will actually speak japanese, which is a great detail.
 * 9) Pleasing and punching gunplay.
 * 10) There are tanks and another kind of vehicles like semi-trucks that will add a lot of immersion to the game.
 * 11) As said before, the vehicles have an awesome attention to the detail. Besides that each player can take one of the roles of a real tank squad, the driver can open the hatches to have a better view, the gunner has a reload animation for the tank cannon and machine gun and the commander can guide the crew and guard for possible threats.
 * 12) A wide variety of weapons, the Rising Storm addon even adds more weapons, including a flamethrower and a katana!
 * 13) You can choose between a good selection of designated roles, like marksman, rifleman, assault, anti-tank, team leader or even commander, which is the responsible of providing artillery coverage, co-ordinate his platoon and call in reconnaissance planes.
 * 14) A very well designed progession system, each class and weapon has its own leveling system and leveling up will unlock more weapons and attachments.
 * 15) You can make bayonet charges, and of course, these ones are really euphoric and satisfying.
 * 16) Japanese soldiers will make the emblematic "banzai" scream when they're charging against the enemies.
 * 17) Mod support from the community is really extensive, the best example is the Heroes of the West mod, which brings the game experience to the Western European theater and adds more weapons, vehicles and factions.
 * 18) A lot of gunfight and tank battle maps that are faithful to the WWII setting.
 * 19) The game is now bundled with the Rising Storm addon at the affordable price of $20.
 * 20) Pre-ordering or buying the deluxe edition will add some extra content for another games, like Team Fortress 2 and Killing Floor.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Very clumsy controls, specially when you go prone or take cover.
 * 2) * This said, the USE button has three functions: taking coverty, picking up items and using emplacement guns, meaning that if there is a weapon near a corner, you will spend too much time trying to pick it up.
 * 3) Unlike its predecessor, there are no any kind of rocket launchers here, as an infantry soldier, you can only destroy tanks with AT rifles and grenades.
 * 4) The optimization can very inconsistent.
 * 5) The game is prone to crash in large maps and computers with only 4 GB of RAM.
 * 6) Frequent latency flaws, mainly on 64 player servers.
 * 7) Sometimes you can die for no apparent reason, even if you're sure you didn't get shot before.
 * 8) Very poor bot AI, some enemies don't attack you and others will try to melee and not shoot.
 * 9) The learning curve is steep and adapting to the game style is pretty hard and it takes too much time to master it, specially for arcade fps players, the fact that the community is extremely toxic and arrogant with new players won't help too much.
 * 10) Some weapons like the flamethrower are very overpowered and can kill you with a single short burst.
 * 11) The single player mode was sadly removed, meaning that campaign related achievements are impossible to get nowadays.
 * 12) The game can be stressful and traumatizing for some people.

Reception
Red Orchestra 2 received generally favorable reviews. GameSpot gave Red Orchestra 2 a 7.5/10, with a generally positive review only critiquing the game's singleplayer component, stability (citing frequent crashes) and inconsistent, unrefined game mechanics. Also, the singleplayer campaign received a fairly negative reception due to the uninteresting gameplay, which was mostly caused by very poorly programmed AI opponents and teammates. On Metacritic, it currently has a 76/100 from critics and a 73/100 from users. It also received the PC Gamer Multiplayer First-person shooter of the Year award. Rising Storm also received major positive reception from both the fans and media. PC Gamer magazine gave it a rating of 86/100, calling it "A gritty, brutal WWII shooter that uses its scale, setting, and fidelity to great effect. The game was also well received on Metacritic, attaining 82/100 from critics and an 8.5 from users.

Trivia
Because of the dark tone of the game, the amount of gore, the realistic mechanics and the painful death screams, the game is often known as "PTSD Simulator" in the internet community.

Videos
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