I am planning to write a long review one day but currently I am not having the time and I will be waiting for new content and updates.
I played the RO mod and maps like Warsaw, Jucha, Rostov, Hedgehog, Berlin and Donets were my favorit. Because of studies, I lost track of RO between 2005 and 2006 but then was happy to see RO on steam and all in all I put more than 1600 hours into it. Then came RO2 and the first 5 hours I played were awful. Running and gunning all the way. Last week I couldn't play at all but since saturday, I am on again and I must say, I start to love it!
I will now compare some aspects between RO and RO2:
1. Maps
Up to now, I think that only half of the RO2 maps are fun. Red October Factory, Fallen Fighters and Commissar's House are awesome. Apartments (oh no, why is it following this series all the time?) and Gumrag are awful. I had so high hopes in the RO2 tanking as I am a big fan of it, but Gumrag is just pure failure in my eyes.
The majority of the maps favor autos and semis and that's bad for a guy that loves the Kar 98 as much as I do. Playing rifleman on a 64 player server running Apartments or Barracks is just, well, horrible/awful/fu**** up. On 32 player servers at least Barracks is okay. Apartments is not worth mentioning.
I hope that either TWI or modders will offer us great CA maps where the rifleman has the chance to make use of his strengths. And yes, I am thinking of CA maps like Arad, which I know many hate. It was just unbalanced towards the russian tanks. Same goes for Kryokovo. New maps will be coming and will erase this problem.
2. Weapons and weapon loadouts
This is a pure server thing. Given my location, I have to play on Asian servers most of the time and if there are people loving the "running and gunning" style, then it's found here. However, the Korean server I was on the last 3 nights reduced the assault class to 3 and the Elite-riflemen to 2 for 64 players and that's having a big impact. The game now offers the chance to play slower without fearing that one of the 15 enemies with autos/semis will kill you in the next 30 secs anyway. Spartanovka offers the chance of firefights happening now, which is great.
The Mkb problem is reduced, still there, but not so much anymore that it's killing my game experience.
3. RO2 features
(1)Reduced weapon-sway, (2)zoom (Fov) and (3)cover-system are to be mentioned as I think they have the most impact on the gameplay.
(1)Weapon-sway should be increased. Maybe not as much as it was in RO, but it must increase. When I am sprinting 200m, stand still (insta-stop) and aim, my first shot will be less accurate than normal. In this regard, RO2 has copied Day of Defeat when it went retail and that's not too good.
(2)Zoom is the point I mostly disagree on. I totally understand why people tend to implement this feature to give a correct feeling for distance, but basically, I don't know a single game that does it correct. Everybody is a sniper, or a partly sniper, making the Sniper-class being empty almost all the time. And heck, I remember that in RO, everybody wanted to be sniper, shouting to the guy occupying the class that he should give up the class cause he is a noob. This happened 2 minutes into a round. Now? Nobody cares about the sniper anymore...Thanks to the zoom.
(3)The cover-system is my most favorite game feature. It is easy to control and works almost perfectly. Anyone remembering that on most RO maps, you had the choice between standing up behind many sandbacks/windows and give 45% of your body away? The alternative, going prone often meant that you could not aim out of the window, cause you are missing those decisive 5 centimeters in height?
Conclusion:
I loved the RO mod and was happy to see RO1 after I lost track of the game for some time. RO2 sounded freaking awesome with all those ideas and I had the feeling, RO2 will be the perfect FPS but turned out that it's not. I still like the game very much and maybe in a couple of months, I will have fallen in love with it, who knows?
I am lucky though that except one crash to desktop, I haven't had a single issue with the game. Oh well, I did. Falling through the map when spawning. But that happened to me in RO as well and it seems to be fixed now. What I want to say is: RO created so high expectations that I probably would have been happy with a RO with better graphics and new maps as the standard it set was so high. RO2 is different, but seems to be awesome as well. If I had a lot of crashes, I would have probably thrown RO2 away as in the first couple of hours, I was like "What did TWI do to my beloved game?".
Give it some time if you don't currently like it.
I played the RO mod and maps like Warsaw, Jucha, Rostov, Hedgehog, Berlin and Donets were my favorit. Because of studies, I lost track of RO between 2005 and 2006 but then was happy to see RO on steam and all in all I put more than 1600 hours into it. Then came RO2 and the first 5 hours I played were awful. Running and gunning all the way. Last week I couldn't play at all but since saturday, I am on again and I must say, I start to love it!
I will now compare some aspects between RO and RO2:
1. Maps
Up to now, I think that only half of the RO2 maps are fun. Red October Factory, Fallen Fighters and Commissar's House are awesome. Apartments (oh no, why is it following this series all the time?) and Gumrag are awful. I had so high hopes in the RO2 tanking as I am a big fan of it, but Gumrag is just pure failure in my eyes.
The majority of the maps favor autos and semis and that's bad for a guy that loves the Kar 98 as much as I do. Playing rifleman on a 64 player server running Apartments or Barracks is just, well, horrible/awful/fu**** up. On 32 player servers at least Barracks is okay. Apartments is not worth mentioning.
I hope that either TWI or modders will offer us great CA maps where the rifleman has the chance to make use of his strengths. And yes, I am thinking of CA maps like Arad, which I know many hate. It was just unbalanced towards the russian tanks. Same goes for Kryokovo. New maps will be coming and will erase this problem.
2. Weapons and weapon loadouts
This is a pure server thing. Given my location, I have to play on Asian servers most of the time and if there are people loving the "running and gunning" style, then it's found here. However, the Korean server I was on the last 3 nights reduced the assault class to 3 and the Elite-riflemen to 2 for 64 players and that's having a big impact. The game now offers the chance to play slower without fearing that one of the 15 enemies with autos/semis will kill you in the next 30 secs anyway. Spartanovka offers the chance of firefights happening now, which is great.
The Mkb problem is reduced, still there, but not so much anymore that it's killing my game experience.
3. RO2 features
(1)Reduced weapon-sway, (2)zoom (Fov) and (3)cover-system are to be mentioned as I think they have the most impact on the gameplay.
(1)Weapon-sway should be increased. Maybe not as much as it was in RO, but it must increase. When I am sprinting 200m, stand still (insta-stop) and aim, my first shot will be less accurate than normal. In this regard, RO2 has copied Day of Defeat when it went retail and that's not too good.
(2)Zoom is the point I mostly disagree on. I totally understand why people tend to implement this feature to give a correct feeling for distance, but basically, I don't know a single game that does it correct. Everybody is a sniper, or a partly sniper, making the Sniper-class being empty almost all the time. And heck, I remember that in RO, everybody wanted to be sniper, shouting to the guy occupying the class that he should give up the class cause he is a noob. This happened 2 minutes into a round. Now? Nobody cares about the sniper anymore...Thanks to the zoom.
(3)The cover-system is my most favorite game feature. It is easy to control and works almost perfectly. Anyone remembering that on most RO maps, you had the choice between standing up behind many sandbacks/windows and give 45% of your body away? The alternative, going prone often meant that you could not aim out of the window, cause you are missing those decisive 5 centimeters in height?
Conclusion:
I loved the RO mod and was happy to see RO1 after I lost track of the game for some time. RO2 sounded freaking awesome with all those ideas and I had the feeling, RO2 will be the perfect FPS but turned out that it's not. I still like the game very much and maybe in a couple of months, I will have fallen in love with it, who knows?
I am lucky though that except one crash to desktop, I haven't had a single issue with the game. Oh well, I did. Falling through the map when spawning. But that happened to me in RO as well and it seems to be fixed now. What I want to say is: RO created so high expectations that I probably would have been happy with a RO with better graphics and new maps as the standard it set was so high. RO2 is different, but seems to be awesome as well. If I had a lot of crashes, I would have probably thrown RO2 away as in the first couple of hours, I was like "What did TWI do to my beloved game?".
Give it some time if you don't currently like it.
