Red Orchestra Rising Storm is a game that I like. Imagine Battlefield 1942 but with
more polish and even better bot support and you're about there. The weapons are satisfying
affairs, ranging from one-hit kill rifles to flame-throwers to ludicrously powerful
machine-guns that need to be set up before they can be fired. Or not... but you'd look
silly trying. It's a rare success in a saturated market.
When friends recommend games to me they either tend to be so easy there's no point in playing,
or have such a steep learning curve that you don't manage to have a moment of fun for the
first week or so. Granted, that first game I had was somewhat
confusing. I didn't know where to go or what to do, but I still enjoyed it. I couldn't
believe it when an enemy ran past and I was all like 'wait his outfit's slightly different
to mine, LETS SHOOT HIM!!!'. You'll find there's a fair bit of that sort of confusion at the
beginning, which is why the bot support is so important. If you like you can join a server
with 32 bots and feel like a GOD as you mow them down. That's not to say they're BAD bots.
They're bad players but excellent for filling the servers, giving them life and making it
more enjoyable for everybody. Admittedly, I find real people a fair bit harder to defeat.
As you play with bots, you find that people join. The majority aren't as Godly as you
might imagine and I've managed to hold my own for a fair while as people join either
side. If Armed Assault is the war then this is the
battlefield and it does it admirably. You can go lone-wolf, or join squads, or lead
them, or command the entire battlefield. Whatever you do you feel valued and it leads to some
thoroughly enjoyable and memorable situations, like holding onto a checkpoint for as long
as possible as it gradually gets overrun, spraying wildly with a flame-thrower as you
try to take out as many enemies with you before the screen turns black. Or creeping through
the undergrowth behind enemy lines for 5 minutes only for it to pay off as you're able to lob
a grenade into an enemy bunker. And yet, for every success there has to be
an equal failure. You WILL get caught out. You WILL be outsmarted. And you'll take it
personally. But the game is forgiving. You respawn in a matter of seconds and after a
15-second run you're back in the action. If I die in CS GO I rage. If I lose in a single
player game I stomp off in a huff. In this game I formulate what I'll do with my next
life in my head then set out to fail it in the most spectacular fashion possible. Part
of the game's appeal is how seriously it takes itself, making rambo, banzai and suicidal
moments all the funnier. It's marvellously balanced and I often find
the losing team is rewarded with the most memories. There are many similarities between
this and Armed Assault, but this makes war more manageable, less time consuming and a
lot more fun. I've played for a number of hours and still
don't feel I know the game too well. I leave important leadership roles to people who know
what they're doing, haven't been in a tank yet and couldn't distinguish between a lot
of the weapons on offer. I take this game casually, but I suspect that there's enough
depth here to reward the most hardened of warriors. How exhilarating it must feel to
engage in a 16 v 16 clan battle! I only play with friends and it's testament to this game
that they're up for a game whenever I am, so longer after the game's initial release.
I find that I can squeeze sessions of Rising Storm in before work or last thing at night
for no reason other than because it's fun. In an age when things feel increasingly like
a chore, this sort of experience means a lot to me. I'm slowly learning the battlefields
and doubt that I'll ever master the strategies but I'll have fun mucking them up time after
time. That's right. I play this game CASUALLY. I'm
a real noob! I make huge blunders, accidentally teamkill, can't tell the difference between
this and vanilla Red Orchestra 2 and consider jumping off cliffs a viable tactic, but not
since Grand Theft Auto has being so bad at a game been so appealing. Rising Storm is
a game that I ignored for too long. If you're a fan of Battlefield, Call of Duty, CS GO,
Armed Assault, Hitler, World War 2 or computer games in general, I urge you to give this
game a go. If not, wait until it's on sale and still try it out. The true appeal is from
the memories you create from playing. Per minute it's one of the most thrilling and
action-packed experience out there. It's a real gem and deserves all the praise it can
get. I still occasionally stop in the heat of battle, look down at myself and wonder
why the hell they let me loose with a weapon in the first place. That's got to be the biggest
joke of them all.