Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 Review

I had a very difficult time collecting my overall thoughts on Red Orchestra because I completely enjoy one part of it but my interest faded in another. I should also mention that I experienced a few bugs while playing through it. With that out of the way, I have to say right away that Ostfront 41-45 has to be the most realistic WWII game I’ve played to date.

I’ll begin by stating that I never had a chance to play Red Orchestra: Combined Arms--the mod--so I can’t really do a comparison to what it used to be. The game takes place on the Eastern Front of World War II--the largest and most deadly conflict in the war – resulting in the range of twenty-five to thirty million casualties. It was a war that pitted the Soviet Communists against the German Fascists and lasted approximately four years.

Ostfront is primarily a multiplayer game but also includes a “practice” portion which the player probably won’t spend much time in. The included bots are quite daft and even if you’re a first-timer I’d recommend just heading straight into an internet server. (As an example of the A.I. mistakes, I noticed friendly killing and vehicles running into each other on a few occasions.) Ostfront 41-45 is played from the first person perspective, even while driving vehicles on the maps that provide them. More importantly, there are two different types of maps in the game: infantry and tank maps. There are also a few smaller tank maps, called Combined Arms maps in which the tanks are there to back up the infantry.

Infantry maps are very enjoyable and at least to me, far superior to the tank maps. If I had to compare this type of map to another game I would say they have a few minor similarities to non-Source Day of Defeat but overall, it is a very different game. Infantry maps are smaller than the tank maps but are still quite large; so large that you’ll be able to see enemies scurrying around at great distances but they will simply be out of range for anyone besides the snipers.

The tank maps on the other hand, remind me of Battlefield. While calling in artillery can be extremely exhilarating (also available in some infantry maps), I would ultimately just get bored on these maps. Operating the tanks is fun at first but after a while I just wanted to head back to an infantry map. I think that the main reason I got bored with these is a combination of two things:

• The max amount of players that a server can currently hold is thirty two
• The maps are huge

It isn’t a bad thing that the maps are big but more players need to be allowed into the servers. For example, I went into a server that was playing Bondavero that had a total of thirty one players; one less than the full amount. The problem is it only felt like I was playing with a few other people. The maps are just so large that you’ll rarely see infantry and there will be a couple of tanks here and there. I know there are limits to what the hardware can support but if sixty four players were allowed into tank maps, it would probably be a whole new ballgame.

The objective in each of the map types is to capture certain points of interest and hold them. With a total of thirteen maps there are six infantry, four tank, and three combo maps all being historically accurate. In fact, everything is very historically accurate in the game. One exception might be the color of the Tiger I tanks which are light tan and stand out quite a bit compared to the Soviet tanks and even the Panzers. After looking around a bit I found that the colors did vary quite a bit but nothing quite so bright besides the paint job for the North African front. That, combined with the fact that the tanks are probably dirty after traveling outdoors for so long, leaves me to believe they would be darker in color. The only reason I pick that out is because you can see the German tanks coming from a long way away and that gives the Soviets an unbalanced advantage.

With artillery shells going off all over the place and tracer rounds everywhere you could say that this game is a mix of Battlefield and Call of Duty in certain aspects – infantry and Combined Arms maps especially. You have the intensity of a game such as Call of Duty, which has a lot of close combat, but it takes place over large and open maps. Not many games have been able to pull that off in the past and I’d say that Red Orchestra does nicely in the infantry and combo maps. The game is a bit slower paced because of how realistic everything is, but I wouldn’t say that’s a bad thing at all. When someone starts shooting at you, you’re going to drop to the ground, when you see an enemy tank coming around the corner you’re going to run to the nearest cover, etc. Most of the time it is a one-hit one-kill situation and you’ll want to avoid confrontations without cover.

I absolutely love the attention Tripwire has given to the small details in the game. Something I noticed right away was the way that your gun moves first as you move the mouse around. In other first-person shooters that I am familiar with, it’s more of a full body movement. The way it is done in this game is the way it should be in every FPS. Another thing I experienced was having my gun shot out of my hands on a couple of occasions which was surprising, but I like the addition. I also really liked how your vision would blur and shake when bullets came whizzing by, machine guns fired close to you, tanks drove near, when grenades went off nearby, or artillery landed near you. At first I didn’t like the viewpoint from the tanks but found out that if you roll your mouse wheel, you can pop your head out the hatch for a clearer perspective. While I’m on the subject of views, I think the iron sights were also well done and would highly recommend that players set their right mouse button as the iron sight key because you’ll be using it a lot.

When I first started the game up after it was released everything looked horrible. After a visit to the official site I found out that an option called “HDR Bloom” in the advanced display options was causing everything to look very blurry. Even with that option off it was only until I bumped up anti-aliasing from 2x to 4x that I noticed a huge difference. I wish there was just an AA/AF setting in-game because while I’m able to change AA to 4x for RO I’m not sure that my computer will be able to handle it in other games.  With that out of the way, the graphics are certainly good, but not anything extremely remarkable. I did notice that the smaller infantry and combo maps look much better than the tank maps (most likely to reduce lag because they’re larger). The weapons all look very good, player models don’t look bad and the environments are great. I love the how “hilly” certain maps are and how the land varies. It seems like in a lot of other games, especially multiplayer, that steep hills are never present – at least never in the amount that they are in this game. There is also a variety of different weather in maps which I liked: a few where it is snowing, some dark and rainy maps, and some where it’s nice and clear. I did run into a few critical errors that had something to do with rendering. After this happened I updated my display drivers to the most recent version and haven’t experienced it again.

Ostfront’s sound is great overall. One of the highlights in the sound department would have to be the bullets whizzing by your head. It was done very well and really makes the player want to drop to the ground or get behind cover when it happens. Another sound that you’ll notice quite a bit on the tank maps is the powerful tank firing.  Also, artillery on both types of maps is very convincing. All the weapons sound good and I noticed that there were a few background noises--such as planes flying overhead on a couple of maps--which help add to the realism.

A couple of random issues before closing: I didn’t like how the bolt-action rifles operated. Instead of having to click again to open and close the breech, it would be better if this was done automatically after shooting. I know it was probably put in place to make things realistic but it just seemed like kind of a pain to have to click twice all the time and it is hard to get used to. Also, while I have the attention of the RO community I must say that I couldn’t help but notice the amount of childish bickering that was taking place in the servers. It was more than I have experienced in several other popular multiplayer games and would like to tell the community that it is a turn off and might be reflecting negatively on the game’s image to new players. I’m in no way discounting points because of this; I just thought I’d make it clear to the players. One last thing, the clumps of trees in the Arad map (maybe others too) got a little strange when I walked into them. It seemed like I would start moving much faster and at one point the screen went entirely black (I made my way out though).

In the end, I’d have to say that Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 is worth the twenty five dollars. Once Tripwire has some time to iron out the bugs I can really see Ostfront succeeding as a great teamwork game for clans. I’m also hoping that new maps will be released in time so that players will stick around. I had to dock it somewhat for the bugs, the A.I., and the tank maps but see these issues being resolved in the near future. If you enjoy World War II games, especially ones with realistic gameplay, you’ll want to get this game.

Link to FAQ with detailed information on the game:

http://www.redorchestragame.com/forum/showthread.php?t=795

(Note: because it is a multiplayer-only game, for the most part, a multiplayer score will not be included)