You can connect to servers that your Steam friends are on from within the in-game browser. So that's probably a yes on some level. All TWI games use Steamworks pretty intensively.
Anybody interested in watching me stream the beta, if that's even allowed? I only have Livestream, so it will probably be a low-ish quality, but I should be able to demonstrate things people ask in the chat in almost realtime. This is all assuming Procaster works with the game.
There's no NDA or embargo.
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I'm loving the game. Love. Ing. It. It's just what I've been wanting....a shooter where people actually try to stay alive. To me it's still very RO, based on my limited experience. The difference is that the engagement ranges are so much smaller, at times, and it's not hard to find targets OR to kill them. There's so many windows and fields of fire that you're guaranteed to kill someone before a game is done unless it's a countdown match gone wrong.
You really feel like you earn your kills in this too, because aiming is just hard enough that you if you're not paying attention, being lazy or whatever, you're going to miss and the other dude, or 4 of his friends, will fill your brains with lead. Unlike BC2 where, by comparison, everything is spray and pray. You know that all it takes is one bullet in the right spot and you get your kill or you get owned...and it makes you play a lot more methodically.
It's still RO in the fact too that, there's going to be some rifleman waaaayyy at the back looking for heads in windows and you always gotta be mindful of that.
All the different features and functions are really nice, from checking your clip weight to the cover system, the weight system when picking up additional weapons. There's a lot to learn and master and it's great to play a shooter that finally doesn't shy away from realism as a part of gameplay. Taking that 5 seconds to check your clip before you pop your head out a window....might be the difference between life and death.
That said, it is still a beta and not all of these features work great or make a whole lot of sense right now. Just like RO it has the same issue for newbies where, there's SO much going on, you often get "locked" into something.
For example. Taking cover. You lock on to cover and from there you can move along it, pop up, blind fire and do most of the stuff you normally do out of cover. But not everything. So let's say you're in cover, you aim down sights and suddenly you want to break cover. Well, you can't. Not until you toggle aim down sights off. Same story with prone. You can go prone only in areas where you can fit. You can also go prone while in cover. But if you do, you're locked into the only available position. So let's say you get in cover, go prone, and press the throw grenade key. Well, now you're stuck on your grenade until you unprone, and break away from cover, in that order.
So to a newbie, there are a lot of WTF is going on moments and there's all the contradictions and conflicts that come with systems like these. For relatively newbie FPS players...it might be kind of annoying and seem like overkill.
The whole squad/class selection menu is overloaded with info and you barely have time to register half of what's going on before you're in-game. You can't get the role you want most of the time because everyone is in such a damn hurry. The tactical hud thing, when it's not bugging out completely and not showing up or whatever, dumps a ton of info on the screen and it's not exactly readable. Squad cohesion is kind of a nightmare, as is just trying to get in the same squad, since class roles are divided amongst squads. So if you want to play with your buds in the same squad, chances are, you're not going to get to play what you want.
Half the time I try to pull up the squad screen, it acts like it's press to hold. But the second I move the mouse, whether i'm holding or not, the screen disappears.
All the leveling and stat tracking mechanics are looking neat, but similarly, they're kind of incomprehensible in the beta right now. You know you have an honor level, weapon and class role levels. You know you're getting points for killing people, fulfilling objectives and supporting your team, and that all translates into honor and experience. But how exactly that's all paced and measured....who knows. I saw the words "Leveled up with MN195823" whatever the rifle number is, about 20 times in an hour or so. So there's a lot of promise....but honestly it's all coming at once and isn't working or hooked up properly yet....so it kind of seems like a mess.
Once you figure it all out though, it's pretty magical, and for someone totally burnt out on modern FPS....this is really nice. Once people on the modding scene start making maps.......it's going to be amazing. I only wish I had a SP mode right now to fool with....but giving into MP was still good none the less.
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Topic: Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad - Rising Storm banzai charges your HDD (Read 26420 times)