Rising Storm is the next game in the award-winning Red Orchestra franchise. You know the great gameplay, innovative features and realistic audio and graphics of RO2 - Rising Storm PC will take this to the Pacific Theater, adding even more features, new levels, new weapons and new factions. The game will allow the player to fight across iconic locations from the famous island-hopping campaigns in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945, as the US Army and Marine Corps fight it out with the Imperial Japanese army and Special Naval Landing Forces.
Players will experience beach assaults, jungle fighting, close quarters night fighting and more across Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and Saipan, among other iconic battles. The player is able to take the part of either side – American or Japanese – battling it out online in multiplayer on up to 64-player servers. Rising Storm also introduces an entirely new type of gameplay to the franchise - asymmetrical warfare.
The Americans have the apparent advantage in firepower with their fast firing semi-automatic rifles, fully automatic weapons, and devastating flamethrower. The Japanese balance this out with gameplay elements that model their raw courage, ferocity, and cunning use of equipment. Their knee mortars allow them to rain indirect fire down on their enemies from anywhere in the map.
Grenades can be planted and turned into booby-traps for unwary GIs. The Japanese put very high store on close-quarter combat, with a bayonet on almost every weapon – even machine guns and SMGs. Their banzai charge suppresses the enemy making it difficult for them to return fire and gives them an opportunity to close in to use bayonets and katanas on their opponents.
So if you are looking for a thrilling Pacific theatre WWII shooter and don’t mind having to master it to gain the respect of your fellow players, you should definitely be playing Rising Storm right now.
This time the battle takes us out of the cold Stalingrad to the warm islands of the South Pacific. With few changes, but as addictive as Red Orchestra 2, Raising Storm continues to be one of the best multiplayer games out there.
The maps are devastatingly effective. [Aug 2013, p.74]
Quotation Forthcoming.
This is refreshingly different from run of the mill action like Call of Duty. Even after the engine update it isn’t pretty, but what it lacks in beauty it makes up for with striking realism and a tense atmosphere.
Rising Storm brings no shame on Red Orchestra 2. Quite the opposite, it strengthens its position as a multiplayer shooter game. The game's atmosphere, graphics, Japanese banzai attacks, and American weaponry along with balanced maps will get you. You will not find a better adapted battlefield of the Pacific War.
I expected something close to Battlefield but Rising Storm is far more demanding. It’s been a while since I cursed so much while playing an online shooter. With every round I was telling myself it’s enough, but I kept coming back to get my butt kicked again. Try it – you might enjoy it too. [CD-Action 08/2013, p.73]