Overview

Sometimes being late with a review has its rewards. It may happen that a bunch of features that look great on paper don’t quite mesh into a great game. In both cases, I happen to be speaking of Red Orchestra, the award-winning mod that has turned out to be a commercial game. Red Orchestra promises realism, large maps, a physics-based armored vehicle damage system and location-based damage on characters. While the graphics may not be quite FEAR or Oblivion, they are serviceable – based off the last released Unreal engine (no, not UE3), and naturally comparable to Unreal Tournament 2004.

Sounds great, right? In fact, for the first little while I was enthralled. Tanks have multiple positions that do have to be manned to be useful – you cannot drive and fire at the same time, as with Battlefield games. Each crew in the tank also has at least one other position or view – so the driver can choose to sit back safely from the view slit, lean forward, or pop the hatch and enjoy a panoramic though rather dangerous view.

There are only about a dozen maps, but these tend to be fairly large and detailed. Red Orchestra also has more vehicles than we’d expect. The Germans have a half-track, Pz IV F2, Tiger, StuG III, and Panther, while the Russians have a similar array of T-34s, IS-2s, BA-64s and others. The game even comes with rather incompetent bots. Though based on the excellent UT bots, my experience with them has been less positive – they clearly didn’t adapt well to the different style of vehicles, for example. This may have something to do with the complexities of understanding whether a gun can penetrate a tank at a certain range and angle, rather than the standard UT hitpoint formula. Then again, that’s really no excuse for a tank to drive around while spinning its turret all the time, ignoring targets.

Weapons selection is fairly standard – Mosin-Nagant, K98, MP40, PPSh, and so on. Perhaps what’s exceptional is the oddly abundant number of pistols, especially on the German side, but really, who plays a game for the pistols? Aiming down the sight is considerably more important than in other games, and that includes the Call of Duty series.


In an attempt at being realistic, bolt-action rifles require two-click operation. One click of the button shoots, and a second click is required to reset the bolt in place. It’s one of those decisions that seems cool, but generally makes no sense. It adds unnecessary clicking and for most soldiers, training taught them one smooth process for aiming, firing and cocking the bolt. In Red Orchestra, the second-click becomes automatic for anyone who’s played the game more than ten minutes and consequently, it really adds little. There’s not much skill involved, though with perfect timing you may be able to get an extra shot or two off per minute relative to someone who’s being careless.

Red Orchestra promises realism and it generally delivers. It’s much more realistic than any World War II shooter out there, but not all of that is good. Take uniforms and terrain as an example. RO has plenty of cover – grass, hills, nooks and crannies in the terrain, fences and crops – and it’s all very dirty, smudged. If you thought picking out a friend or foe was difficult in some of the darker Call of Duty or MOHAA maps, you’ve seen nothing yet. With haze, dirty ground, fences and foliage obscuring the view, picking off someone at long range with a rifle can be risky business – for your score as well as theirs. While players are generally conscientious about not team-killing on purpose, I have never died quite so often to friendly fire as in Red Orchestra. This may be due to the fact that I tend to lonewolf and can often be found on the enemy’s side of the map, but the lack of distinction among uniforms – realistic or not – is what makes me a victim of friendly rifles.