Since the birth of the First Person Shooter genre, one time period has always been there. World War II. Beginning with Wolfenstein and followed time and again, the military class of FPS games has captured the public. No one knows exactly why, though many have theories. Perhaps it is the simple thought of the entire world at war. Perhaps it’s because the immense loss of life. Perhaps Hitler was so perfectly evil that we must re-enact his defeat over and over.

Yes, the market has been flooded with WWII titles just like it has been flooded with zombie games. There are even games that mix the two. So in a world where we have become jaded with WWII games, it takes something special for a title to stand out.

I have waited and longed for a new a stand out game to capture my attention the way that Battlefield 1942 did. It would be a lie to say that I did not have high hopes for Tripwire’s new title Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad. But to my loathsome disdain, RO2 has become nothing more than a kamikaze bomber of WWII games.

Red Orchestra 2 General Overview

The game has 2 campaigns: The Axis and the Allies. To start out, only the Axis campaign is available. You start in a training level that quickly runs you through the movement controls and the basic weapons and aiming techniques. Keeping in line with previous Tripwire games, you have no crosshair; only iron sights. While this will annoy some FPS gamers, don’t hate it until you try it for yourself. The lack of a crosshair really adds to the realism of the game and prevents a lot of “spray and pray”.

For the most part, you are simply playing “King of the Hill” with the AI. Go here, go there, capture this, defend that. If you are shot and killed, instead of spawning at a home base, you “possess” the body of another solider in your unit. This can go either way. Sometimes it is of great benefit to you by putting you close to the fight. Other times the NPC will run straight at the enemy causing you to spawn and immediately die.

This is essentially the entire single player campaign, and there are 16 levels of it. But we all know that the main reason you buy a war FPS is so that you can go head to head with your friends. With 64 person servers, you can not only kill a few friends, but are pretty much guaranteed a chance to kill the annoying juvenile delinquents who plague ALL multiplayer games. MP has most of the traditional game modes and nothing original or innovative. If you have played other WWII games, then you have essentially played Red Orchestra 2.