Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad

Tripware brings one of the most cruel battles in human history to our home. A fight on the streets and house by house, recreated by one of the most demanding FPS of the moment. We have never been so close to knowing what those anonymous soldiers felt. Superb game.

The kind of shooter that can live only on the PC. It's far deeper than console shooters, and makes no concessions to accessibility to appeal to a casual audience. This is as hardcore as first person shooters get, and if you're prepared to put the time in to learn how to play it well, you'll be rewarded with a level of satisfaction that team deathmatch will never deliver.

Red Orchestra 2 delivers one of the best WW2 experience to date. The game has several bugs, but it embraces the entangling realism of a real war.

After a few hours of adjustment, blam! I suddenly fell in love with RO2, regardless of the bugs and other issues. Its unique, realistic, ruthless portrayal of war is a refreshing antithesis for crowdpleasers like Call of Duty and Battlefield. RO2 will be a long lasting cult game, and personally I can't wait the game is fixed so I can get back to the ruins of Stalingrad! [Oct 2011]

Despite the plethora of bugs, Red Orchestra 2 delivers the best WW2 experience to date. Forget about the buggy and useless singleplayer and embrace the entangling realism of a real battlefield, like never before.

The game punishes every error, has a steep learning curve and is not made for beginners, but at the same time it's extremly motivating. Once you're into the game, you won't be able to stop playing for hours.

A game like Red Orchestra 2 is a rare find in this era, even considering that World War II has been done to death as a game setting. An uncompromising title that does not have any qualms about throwing players to the sharks and saying "deal with it", it's a deeply satisfying multiplayer experience if one can suffer enough to allow it to be.

Despite the lack of polishing, a lot of bugs and an awful single player AI, Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad is one of the deeper and most compelling FPS experience we've played since a lot time ago.

Going through the Hell of Stalingrad in a shooter? Not everyone's thing. There's a few technical issues and it's hard to get into for newbies despite a singleplayer-campaing. Still, if the topic doesn't bother you, and you want realism rather than bouncing ball PvP opponents, Red Orchestra 2 is a good choice.

This videogame shows World War II as authentically as possible. Hard to learn hard to master – but the reward is the most realistic war atmosphere you can get. [Nov 2011]

If released 60 years earlier, the game would have definitely goten a Stalin Prize. [Nov. 2011, p.67]

It's a well-crafted game that will feel off-putting and foreign at first. But once players give it the time it needs, dive into its systems, and learn them, they will find a game that fills a void that the current trajectory of the FPS genre has left.

A solid alternative to the deluge of twitch-based multiplayer shooters, with great potential to draw in new fans to the realism shooter scene. [Nov 2011, p.42]

In Red Orchestra, there are so many variables to take into consideration before pulling the trigger, which makes nabbing a kill against another human player infinitely more rewarding than any other shooter on the market.

Tripwire has created a very awesome game. They succeeded in making a realistic, strategic, first-person shooter. It isn't a game designed with a single-player campaign in mind. It isn't for people wanting a twitchy, run-and-gun FPS. It's designed for PC gamers who want a complex shooter.

A fine line of a multiplayer shooter appears under a cloud of faults. This game is not afraid of getting out of an arcade stream, and it tortures a player with its realism and team-based gaming approach; it also brings several approaches of online warfare. Yet, the starts are painful, but Stalingrad's atmosphere won't let you leave.

With a full retail price and low amount of single player content, you have to really love the multiplayer gunplay in order to love the game.

In Red Orchestra 2 carelessness is swiftly punished and careful positioning and teamwork ultimately rewarded. It's a game for the patient, and despite its slower pace, no less exhilarating than any other shooter on the market.

RO2 is an acquired taste and brutally punishing to newcomers.

Red Orchestra's back with an even more polished gameplay, a new graphical engine, some added mechanics, and, indeed, tanks. The realism of the first one is back yet again, even though some slight modifications may throw off some of the gamers used to the original. But this mix of atmosphere and demanding gameplay, both as an individual FPS gamer and a team player, is what makes RO2 unique. It still lacks a little polish, though, but a patch should take care of this.

Hits a sweet spot for me. The gameplay is fast-paced without being too hectic and confusing. The realism is not as arcade-like as Call of Duty, and it's not a hardcore simulation like Arma II. There is even enough variety in the role types that you can have a completely different gameplay experience depending on what you want to do.

A mostly triumphant and surprisingly refreshing return to the FPS' favourite setting. Although the single-player is rather lacking, the attention to detail and harrowing atmosphere make for some intense and gripping multiplayer battles.

Satisfying, suspenseful multiplayer is more than the sum of its parts, but marred by bugs for now. Ignore the single-player. [Holiday 2011, p.64]

Brutally satisfying.

Apart from some bugs in the initial release version, a great WW2 tactical shooter with dense atmosphere and realistic weapons such as infantry guns and soviet and german tanks. Up to 64 players fight each other in two teams online and in local networks.

It's a strange blend. On one hand it has a lot of bugs and a very complicated gameplay. The visuals are crude too. On the other hand it offers great atmosphere and attention to details that maniacs will appreciate. [November 2011, p.66]

The single-player is a complete write-off, but the multi-player crowd will find a lot to like in Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad.

Death comes early and often in this extremely challenging and realistic tactical shooter.

Dedication to the ruthless multiplayer portion is what will eventually pay off and set you to one of the finest and most gratifying tactical online shooters.

It's mainly a multiplayer game, bravely defending its hardcore nature with many unconventional gameplay choices. For the best part, it's a great experience, one hardcore shooters fans absolutely have to try. It's a shame though that it has been released still so rough around the edges, in deperate need of performance and debug patches. In a few months it could get better, but as of now it goes just for true fans.

Red Orchestra 2 is a fickle monster. On the one hand, the innovative gameplay and close attention to realism and detail give this release tons of potential. Unfortunately, the amount of bugs present coupled with the most clueless AI we've seen in awhile takes away a lot from what this game has to offer.

The multiplayer of Red Orchestra 2 offers various interesting debate points about the realistic online shooter breed: praised by many, played by few. Forgetting some bugs and the (hopefully) soon to be addressed performance hiccups, Red Orchestra 2 is definitely an entertaining product that, online-wise, will guarantee months of brutal fun.

Despite a few old-fashioned quirks, Red Orchestra 2 is fun to play. Clean up the bugs, and it will become a nice middle ground for those who are tired of Battlefield, but couldn't fall in love with ArmA.

it's an admirable game that probably deserves an audience of dedicated players.

If you strip the game's uninspired visuals and interface and manage to come past its bugs and glitches, Red Orchestra 2 takes no prisoners with its realistic mechanics and physics. It is a game for a hardcore PC audience who thrive on this type of games with its relatively slow-paced tempo yet high intensity.

Tripwire, "the modders that became developers", delivers a decent, multiplayer oriented FPS based on the WWII battles between the Nazis and the Russians. And the result is game almost perfectly suited for those who love massive online battles.

If Red Orchestra 2 appeals then I daresay you'll have a great deal of fun, but you might want to leave it a month to see if things improve.

As hardcore as first person shooters get but fascinatingly distinctive as a result - if you have the resolve to endure its rougher edges.

It has flashes of brilliance, but then you get stuck on some cover and get killed because of it, and that moment is shattered.

An immensely ambitious game, and in some ways, it's even a groundbreaking one. However, its focus on realism will turn off fans of arcade shooters, and the developers will have to do some patching before everything truly clicks. If you want a hardcore multiplayer FPS that thoroughly immerses you in the Battle of Stalingrad, this could be the game for you-someday.

An unfinished game with many bugs casting a shadow on an otherwise good and demanding FPS. Do you remember all the announcements preparing us for a multiplayer campaign and cooperative skirmish? These modes are not finished yet. I'm disappointed that a game not so different from the beta version appeared on the market. Tripwire Interactive has a thing for supporting its games so I'm sure that after several patches and mods Red Orchestra 2 will fly. But for now it's not worth a full price.

To release this game in such a poor state is almost offensive. What's there is great when it works, but the bugs should have been fixed by now. To follow the rules of a review, we can only score the game on its current state, which means it falls way down the all-time rankings. The caveat, though, is that if you give Red Orchestra 2 a little more time and you're willing to overlook the faults, it's likely capable of breaking into the top five games of the year so far.

A multiplayer centric WW2 shooter that puts great emphasis on realistic mechanics and ambiance. Unfortunately realism does not always translate into fun, resulting in a game with little appeal except to the hardcore fans of the era.

Quotation forthcoming.

If you think both Battlefield and Call of Duty are too exaggerated and unrealistic, and feel Counter-Strike is too soft, Red Orchestra 2 might be the game for you. It doesn't appeal to us, though.

Bugs are aplenty. The voice system barely works, crashes happen regularly and pings fluctuate from game to game.

While its cover and suppression systems and tanks are outstanding, there are far too many bugs throughout the single and multiplayer game. While broken animation and even the bizarre leveling bugs can be ignored to an extent, the constant framerate and sound dropping - not to mention outright crashes - make RO2 too frustrating at the moment - and sadly it's only going to get worse as more people get fed up and move on to something else.