Thought I'd be the first to comment on the current beta. I've played Heroes of Stalingrad quite a bit and I saw this came from the same studio, so this game at $11 (if you previously had HoS) was a easy choice. If you want to purchase this game and don't already have Heroes of Stalingrad, it's 20$. I'll start out with the good things, and then wander off into the stuff I feel isn't right or needs adjusting.
I really enjoyed how much detail they put into the music, voice acting, and maps/scenery. The maps compared to Heroes of Stalingrad are much better designed overall. Doing a banzai rush as a team is intense for the first time. The music is really nice, and the weapon SELECTION 9not balance) seems MUCH better than HoS. I hated not having much selection in HoS regarding weapons. I can join a game late in rising storm and 75% of the time, there is a specialty class slot still open. I also feel the map design improved significantly since HoS sans 1-2 poopy maps that have very little cover and go back to the "camp it out" game-play philosophy HoS was famous for. Fights in Rising Storm move significantly faster than combat in HoS. Banzai charges, while I feel are under-powered currently, do work well if the WHOLE team does it. The detail on the small things bring the franchise extremely close to a well-published title. Graphics are a bit lackluster, but this is from the engine and it's limitations/tripwire's engineering dept limitations rather than the tripwire team being straight up lazy. Chivalry: Medieval Warfare is a good example of the visual quality you will get in a 20-30$ unreal engine game.
Here is a list of cool things that if you are familiar with Heroes of Stalingrad, you might enjoy:
* Banzai sword death charges
* Japanese soldiers can place their grenades as a trap (I'm pretty sure they can, haven't myself)
* Japanese soldiers can commit suicide with a grenade by clicking middle mouse and running with the nade. they have several seconds until it explodes and they do not take suicide penalties.
* Some maps have cans tied to string, so you can hear enemies nearby moving through them.
* US team has Flamethrowers, Japanese team has Knee Mortars.
* both teams play differently, which causes combat to move MUCH faster. Garands take more shots to kill than a Japanese bolt rifle, Type 99's outclass Thompsons/BARs, etc.
* Slight UI Improvements
Sadly, the same bugs that made Heroes of Stalingrad a budget bin game appear front row in Rising Storm, despite being almost the SAME game. Annoying imperfections with terrain clipping, alongside some weapon balancing that feels awkward compared to Heroes of Stalingrad kills the atmosphere built up. The actual game-play (depending on the team situations) is tedious, boring, and borderline annoying at times. If feels like they nerfed weapons on the US to make up for the fact that historically japs lost in even fights. the M1 garand takes a few shots to kill and the sights are horrid for now. Overall the combat feels very forced and guided in a certain way. They want Japanese to use banzai and speed, while the US get more automatics to stop this. I get the point: asymmetrical warfare. I just worry that it becomes hard to balance this type of game-play when you make the maps and classes that asymmetrical (ex: Natural Selection). If you get a good game, then yea it sure is enjoyable. When you egt a stacked game in rising storm? It's worse than HoS. Lockouts happen very often in Rising storm (lockouts occur when one team cannot progress yet has a ton of tickets left).
About the bugs. It's a beta. I understand. I'll most likely get flak for even complaining about stuff because it's still a "beta*" but it's also just a re-skin of Heroes of Stalingrad; they had so much time to polish bugs, yet a majority of the bugs in Rising Storm are also present in Heroes of Stalingrad. Some obvious quirks include zooming bugs related to hardware (Logitech setpoint in particular), balance issues (flamethrower was amazing yesterday, now it's terrible due to a silent patch), and clipping of terrain/other abnormalities (opponents heads hardly visible and yet they kill you). I think the last one has to do with the lag issues that have been present since this beta came out. It's also not helpful that when you play against laggy players, the game seems to calculate registry without considering they might be wrong over the player with 80ms. I'd guess it's due to the use of the unreal engine, and some of the other bugs are most likely linked to the engine as well so I guess they wouldn't be able to avoid them without switching the engine, which isn't happening. It's a shame though to see such a great game stifled by the amount of bugs.
Overall, I'd say if you can buy the game at $11, I'd try this and hope the bugs get fixed. Note that some of these bugs have been around since Heroes of Stalingrad, so if they don't get fixed that's just Red Orchestra for ya. If you buy the game now, you also get Heroes of Stalingrad. It's pretty obvious why tripwire did this; you are paying 11$ for the game and you already owned 1/2 the game so technically you aren't getting THAT much of a discount. If you intended on buying Rising storm, sure you saved some money, but you probably dealt with Heroes of Stalingrad and how buggy it was when it was released. For 20$, I'm not sure on this. I said the same thing for Chivalry and it ended up on sale almost a month later for less than retail pricing, so I could see this game not becoming successful and pulling a HoS (10$ sales every so often).
* (isn't every game a beta now? I think Minecraft kinda made every game that isn't a AAA+ title release at a beta level. It saves company face if there is a huge error, and gives them the right to swing drastic changes without pissing off consumers. It also allows them to start paying bills ahead of time.)
I really enjoyed how much detail they put into the music, voice acting, and maps/scenery. The maps compared to Heroes of Stalingrad are much better designed overall. Doing a banzai rush as a team is intense for the first time. The music is really nice, and the weapon SELECTION 9not balance) seems MUCH better than HoS. I hated not having much selection in HoS regarding weapons. I can join a game late in rising storm and 75% of the time, there is a specialty class slot still open. I also feel the map design improved significantly since HoS sans 1-2 poopy maps that have very little cover and go back to the "camp it out" game-play philosophy HoS was famous for. Fights in Rising Storm move significantly faster than combat in HoS. Banzai charges, while I feel are under-powered currently, do work well if the WHOLE team does it. The detail on the small things bring the franchise extremely close to a well-published title. Graphics are a bit lackluster, but this is from the engine and it's limitations/tripwire's engineering dept limitations rather than the tripwire team being straight up lazy. Chivalry: Medieval Warfare is a good example of the visual quality you will get in a 20-30$ unreal engine game.
Here is a list of cool things that if you are familiar with Heroes of Stalingrad, you might enjoy:
* Banzai sword death charges
* Japanese soldiers can place their grenades as a trap (I'm pretty sure they can, haven't myself)
* Japanese soldiers can commit suicide with a grenade by clicking middle mouse and running with the nade. they have several seconds until it explodes and they do not take suicide penalties.
* Some maps have cans tied to string, so you can hear enemies nearby moving through them.
* US team has Flamethrowers, Japanese team has Knee Mortars.
* both teams play differently, which causes combat to move MUCH faster. Garands take more shots to kill than a Japanese bolt rifle, Type 99's outclass Thompsons/BARs, etc.
* Slight UI Improvements
Sadly, the same bugs that made Heroes of Stalingrad a budget bin game appear front row in Rising Storm, despite being almost the SAME game. Annoying imperfections with terrain clipping, alongside some weapon balancing that feels awkward compared to Heroes of Stalingrad kills the atmosphere built up. The actual game-play (depending on the team situations) is tedious, boring, and borderline annoying at times. If feels like they nerfed weapons on the US to make up for the fact that historically japs lost in even fights. the M1 garand takes a few shots to kill and the sights are horrid for now. Overall the combat feels very forced and guided in a certain way. They want Japanese to use banzai and speed, while the US get more automatics to stop this. I get the point: asymmetrical warfare. I just worry that it becomes hard to balance this type of game-play when you make the maps and classes that asymmetrical (ex: Natural Selection). If you get a good game, then yea it sure is enjoyable. When you egt a stacked game in rising storm? It's worse than HoS. Lockouts happen very often in Rising storm (lockouts occur when one team cannot progress yet has a ton of tickets left).
About the bugs. It's a beta. I understand. I'll most likely get flak for even complaining about stuff because it's still a "beta*" but it's also just a re-skin of Heroes of Stalingrad; they had so much time to polish bugs, yet a majority of the bugs in Rising Storm are also present in Heroes of Stalingrad. Some obvious quirks include zooming bugs related to hardware (Logitech setpoint in particular), balance issues (flamethrower was amazing yesterday, now it's terrible due to a silent patch), and clipping of terrain/other abnormalities (opponents heads hardly visible and yet they kill you). I think the last one has to do with the lag issues that have been present since this beta came out. It's also not helpful that when you play against laggy players, the game seems to calculate registry without considering they might be wrong over the player with 80ms. I'd guess it's due to the use of the unreal engine, and some of the other bugs are most likely linked to the engine as well so I guess they wouldn't be able to avoid them without switching the engine, which isn't happening. It's a shame though to see such a great game stifled by the amount of bugs.
Overall, I'd say if you can buy the game at $11, I'd try this and hope the bugs get fixed. Note that some of these bugs have been around since Heroes of Stalingrad, so if they don't get fixed that's just Red Orchestra for ya. If you buy the game now, you also get Heroes of Stalingrad. It's pretty obvious why tripwire did this; you are paying 11$ for the game and you already owned 1/2 the game so technically you aren't getting THAT much of a discount. If you intended on buying Rising storm, sure you saved some money, but you probably dealt with Heroes of Stalingrad and how buggy it was when it was released. For 20$, I'm not sure on this. I said the same thing for Chivalry and it ended up on sale almost a month later for less than retail pricing, so I could see this game not becoming successful and pulling a HoS (10$ sales every so often).
* (isn't every game a beta now? I think Minecraft kinda made every game that isn't a AAA+ title release at a beta level. It saves company face if there is a huge error, and gives them the right to swing drastic changes without pissing off consumers. It also allows them to start paying bills ahead of time.)
Last edited: