Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 war game

Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 (2006)

Categories: infantry gamestank gamesurban warfare gameslanding troops gamessniper games

Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 was off-spring of Red Orchestra: Combined Arms, a total conversion for Unreal Tournament 2004, which offered multiplayer gameplay on maps from World War 2. In Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 we can join one of the sides of the conflict, Soviets or Germans, and take part in the clashes on the Eastern Front. While the game itself was rather simple first person shooter the one thing that made a huge difference was the opportunity to use different vehicles. On some maps they are armoured vehicles, on others they are tank or both, everything depends on the scenario and the map details.

Most of the maps were developed in reality of fights in Russia in World War 2, but once players were able to create their own maps the variety of scenery and conditions became far more rich - there are maps that take place f.e. in Stalingrad, Gdansk or Berlin with infantry trying to cross the open spaces under enemy fire and take over control of the key buildings, but those that take place in the open meadows of Russia or Belarus give a lot of advantage to the tanks.

The rules of the game are simple - key buildings or areas have to be taken over by one of the sides, once one side have control over all the key points the battle result is decided. Each kind of soldier carries different weapon - assault soldier will have automatic pistol and grenades, while tank crew member will have pistol (and of course the tank itself). Within each vehicle there are few spots that can be taken by different people, f.e. in tank driver only steers the tank, radio operator takes control of the machine gun, while commander takes care of the main gun. On each position we can switch between more safe looking option (hidden behind the armor, but with limited visibility) or from open hatch (good visibility, but poor protection).

Additional version of the game was also published, Darkest Hour: Europe 44-45, which contains the scenarios that take place in western Europe during and after D-Day. The game rules are exactly the same, with tine changes to details, but the atmosphere and the scenery is completely different from the Eastern Front.

Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 offers quite realistic point of view - one bullet can kill you, you can be shot before you will even see the enemy, you have to identify if the soldier in front of you is on your side or is it the enemy, you don’t exactly know how many bullets you have left in the clip, and so on. Of course since this is strictly multiplayer game the atmosphere in the game depends on what players you will meet in during the battle, but overall the game can give a realistic view on the battlefield of World War 2.

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