Red Orchestra Ostfront 41-45

Realism in shooter games is heralded as a rare and unique thing. Most realistic shooter games- take Counter Strike, for example- usually fall back and fail in the “Realism” department due to one issue: Gamers do not like playing seriously. When a gamer pops onto a Counter Strike server, he/she does not expect to play seriously and on a team basis- and if they do, they are usually made fun of. But, somewhat oddly, on the very same distribution platform as Counter Strike, VALVe's STEAM platform, is a small little game that just came out- Red Orchestra Ostfront 41-45.

Red Orchestra Ostfront 41-45 is about the Ostfront (That is, the German East Front, the area where they attempted to take Russia) during 1941-1945. No surprise there. In what could be considered the first of it's kind, Red Orchestra Ostfront completely ignores the whole America vs Germany war that many games cling to, and focuses on a very different area: Soviet Russia vs Germany. And, when I heard about this, my response was something along the lines of “Hell yeah!”- primarily because WW2 games, if they have to focus on World War 2, might as well focus on something other than Pearl Harbor and D-Day.




Remember how I mentioned realism up there in the introduction? Say hello to the perfection of realism, smack in the middle of cold Russia. With 28 weapons to choose from and up to 32 players per match, Red Orchestra Ostfront 41-45 truly makes you feel like you are actually in a war. Instead of doing what a lot of World War 2 games do and “helping” you in the game, Red Orchestra Ostfront 41-45 is all about the situation, and it abandons such industry standards as a radar or a cross hair. This can be insanely frustrating at times, but it just adds to the paranoia one feels while trudging through the levels with absolutely no idea where you are or what you are doing. Just like in reality, Ostfront ensures that you are never truly safe, and incoming bombing attacks, along with snipers who are deadly accurate just make you shiver in your little virtual boots. This isn't Day of Defeat, folks.

One interesting addition to Red Orchestra Ostfront 41-45 is the vehicle combat, which reminds me quite a bit of what we have seen on games like Halo 2. Smack in the middle of the normal battle, tanks and other machinery are truly a menace- but have the same weaknesses as their real-live counterparts did. Tossing a single grenade doesn't cut it, and getting with friends to “take down that damn tank” is really a fun experience. All of this rolled together means that not only are players bombarded constantly by bombs overhead, but the tanks are rolling, and the peon-like players are left sitting in the middle of the battlefield going “Huh?”.

Guns in Red Orchestra come by the barrel full, but take note- this, again, is limited by the nasty confines of realism. With just about every weapon you could want on the battlefield, there is a lot to do and shoot, but there is one issue- not only is the game pretty strictly limited when it comes to ammunition, but without the cross hair, you must actually aim by holding the gun up. By adding this requirement to the mix (You can go without it, but you will never hit a thing), Red Orchestra takes what could be an easily exploited game and makes it actually quite difficult for the layman. This can be good or bad, it's all up to you- but I can say that I was somewhat disappointed I couldn't just fire my Luger and kill everything in sight.

Red Orchestra Ostfront 41-45 presents a compelling presentation, and really redefines the term real, especially when it comes to the ambiance. Set in such places as the middle of what appeared to be a Russian town, Red Orchestra Ostfront 41-45 prides it's ability to take real life settings and draw you into a virtual form of them. I really enjoyed how the whole game worlds were absolutely huge and detailed beyond what is normally seen by games like this, and I really have to applaud the effort that went into creating these works of art. However, this did not exactly translate into perfectly beautiful graphics, and the quality of what I saw on my screen would be more equivalent to a really good XBOX game rather than a top-of-the-line PC game.




An irritation I found with this game actually could be considered the fault of realism, and that is the lack of direction. Unless you know the maps back and front, Red Orchestra Ostfront 41-45 can be very confusing, and for the first few matches I played on it, I had absolutely no idea where I was or where I should be going. This leads into a FPS sin- walking around aimlessly just waiting to see something or get shot. While the game has a kind of rudimentary map to use, I found it awkward, and even if you do get a general idea of where you are and where the flags are (in the case of CTF), that still does not translate into an easy-to-play game. Red Orchestra Ostfront 41-45 requires time to learn and time to adapt, and many gamers, including myself, do not want to spend hours playing a shooter just to learn how to stay alive.

However, this is a double edged sword- this kind of requirement keeps idiots out, and the games are not only mature and difficult, but also full of true challenge. No-one here is immature enough to sit there and voice spam or hack, and it seems like the community that has developed around Ostfront is something worth getting into. One nice thing I noticed, something unlike other Vehicle-including shooters like Halo 2 or Unreal Tournament, was the fact that there was not an insane rush to the vehicles, and many gamers preferred actually walking. That's pretty cool. As I'll explain below, walking takes forever, but it's still nice to see gamers who aren't fighting their own team-wide King of the Hill tournament to get a stupid vehicle.

Another gripe I had was the issue of the controls, which seem to have been made by a drunken monkey. When I play a shooter game, like every other gamer on the planet, I use the WASD format- which everyone and their brother uses. Look at your keyboard right now, and tell me where the “O” key is- it's all the way out of a normal hand's reach. And that's the map key. Along with some really odd choices, like putting Ironsides on the other side of the alphanumeric keys, I had to go and completely reconfigure the setup. Great.

My last complaint about this game is the use of a stamina system, much like Day of Defeat. While this worked in Day of Defeat, it does not work in Red Orchestra Ostfront 41-45, primarily because Red Orchestra's maps are big, and the characters move slow. That translates into long lag times between the action, in which, on some levels, I could have reasonably taped my key down and got food, then come back a few minutes later and have still been walking to look for something to kill. I absolutely hate that, I had enough experience of that with Final Fantasy XI, I will put up with that no more.




So overall, what do I think of Red Orchestra Ostfront 41-45? I like it. I really do. But there are some things about this game that really bring it down, namely the sometimes completely dead gameplay. Between running around (very slowly) and having very hard to use weapons, I somewhat yearn for Day of Defeat, where people just fight and kill each other with ease. The best way to explain Red Orchestra Ostfront 41-45 is to consider it a Day of Defeat clone with more realism and less overall fun for everyone. If you want to experience a fun realistic shooter to give you a challenge, this may be it- but if you think this is going to be fast, frenzied, or really hyper, you are out of luck. So, keep that in mind as you wait for it to slowly and quite painfully download on the Steam client, if you trust those newfangled things.

4 star(s) out of 5

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