Red Orchestra, UT2003 Mod, Released 191
Neophytus writes "The first public edition of the long awaited Red Orchestra mod for Unreal Tournament 2003 has been released. 'Red Orchestra brings you in-depth infantry combat on the Eastern Front of WWII. With the emphasis on realism and authenticity, the Soviet Red Army meets the German Army on the ground across battlefields from Kiev through Stalingrad and on to the Reichstag in Berlin. Real weapons. Real battles. Real soldiers.' Download from FilePlanet (free reg. req.), FasterFiles, more."
Uhmm right.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Doesnt this add to an already overblown selection of World War 2 based FPS's?
Heck the best thing about the Desert Combat mod for 1942 is that its NOT about WW2!
Re:My opinion... (Score:4, Interesting)
May I ask why?
Realistic? (Score:4, Interesting)
You can't call it realistic if you can play after you've died once.
You can't call it realistic until the credit for every action you take is given to your superior officer.
WWII was a terrible event. I have no problem with FPS, but to make a mockery of WWII while the survivors are still alive seems disrespectful to me. Play all you want in a Sci-fi setting. Make mods "simulating" the america civil war. But I think it would be nice to show some respect for the still-living vets of WWII.
Good History Book for background (Score:5, Interesting)
Enemy At the Gates came close, maybe in it's first 10 minutes. After that, Hollywood falls far short of the horror and what really happened (as much as I can tell from reading this fascinating retelling of the battle for Stalingrad)...
There's been an ongoing debate among us about which is the better history. On the one side Dave, Rick, and others favor the dry academic 'cause and effect' of macroeconomics and political philosophy that lead to the World War 1914-1945. Others among us push for the 'real story', the oral tradition of the grunt soldier's pains and trials from the trench in the actual battle-- it doesn't matter how the forces got there, the drama of the day comes from a baker holding a rifle.
Stalingrad mixes both, but in an acceptable fashion: Beevor rightly frames his story around the causes and impetus behind Hitler's folly and Stalin's incompetence, but then follows those mishaps all the way down to how they drew 500,000 men in the German 6th army to starvation and death in the steppes of the Volga.
This is not an easy read. Do not try it if you have a fear of lice, rot, cold, or desparate hopelessness-- you will feel them as you read.
Beevor's foreshadowing was sometimes distracting, but then, as the reader, I had to tell myself that it was only foreshadowing because I didn't know the details of the battle-- this is history, not fiction. The author draws us to seminal mistakes in judgement, crucial firefights that end up dooming thousands later on, the chaos of war that brings entropy-- and death-- to millions.
I highly recommend this book.
(review originally appeared here [thought-control.org]
Re:Uhmm right.. (Score:3, Interesting)
That sentence makes no sense at all. I guess it's just a weird reach for some clever rhetorical hook. If I join a football squad, but can't beat the current striker, I'm still an addition to the team.
Maybe if the squad was already at full capacity, adding me doesn't supply anything new, but that's exactly what the poster was suggesting.
And when there's a question of if a new contender is good enough to be considered, it should be held up not against the best of the others, but the worst- for that's the one who'd be displaced first.
introduced into genre ruled by Battlefield 1942
BF1942 currently has 9000 players online [gamespy.com], a huge chunk of them in the non-WWII Desert Combat [desertcombat.com] scenario*. Meanwhile, the Activision's Quake-engine games (forked throughout several variants) have 16000 players total.
*It's really funny how the success of Desert Combat has undercut EA's future plans for the "Battlefield" franchise. They were plainly intending to step through 20th century wars in a commercial series, starting with Vietnam, and now a free mod to their own game is becoming suffocating competition to their new releases.
Re:Good History Book for background (Score:3, Interesting)
"Enemy At the Gates came close, maybe in it's first 10 minutes."
If you want a decent film about stalingrad you should try this one: Stalingrad [imdb.com], it's a german film about german soilders. Germans never have to put in some happy ending or try to cover up that they where bastards. To put is short: its cold and hopeless.