The Best WWII War Simulation

I've played many games before and have even reviewed some here on my Blog, but this is a bit of a review and some dirt on this awesome game. One game I have to truly say is different than all the rest. Now mind you this game started out as a MOD for Unreal Tournament and won Nvidias "Make Something Unreal" competition a few years back. They've since re-released this MOD into a full functioning and retail game and changed the name and added maps and features.

Tripwire is the company that has released this and it's available through Steam which is the same platform you can get Day of Defeat and Counter Strike and some other little known titles such as Half Life and Half Life 2. Now you've heard of all those games so now what makes this one special or different.

First if you are a Battlefield 2 fan this game is NOT for you. If you enjoy Call of Duty 2 or Day of Defeat then this one may NOT even be for you either but it might sway you. The reason I say this is because it's much different than any of these titles. Graphically it's a very beautiful game with a ton of detail and the gameplay isn't run and gun like many other games I've already mentioned.

The game I am referring to is Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45. This was originally the MOD Red Orchestra. They've since added a few more features and maps and of course the name change and it sells for a mere 25 bucks on Steam.

What is great about this being added to Steam is that when a patch comes out it will auto-update through your Steam client before you can even play it and of course with many of the games I mentioned earlier you can get those there as well for a few more dollars.

There are a few bugs with the game but with games such as Battlefield 2 with more bugs than a South American Rain Forest the few that this game has are barely noticed.

As I mentioned earlier it's different, a lot to get used to, first off when you fire your bolt action gun you have to actually fire again to use the bolt action to put another bullet in the chamber and when you run out of bullets you have to reload of course. There are machine guns and some semi-auto guns and you even have tanks and other vehicles. These vehicles aren't like Battlefield 2 either, they are far more Sim based. You don't just jump in and drive off. This game is also very much geared toward teamplay. Many of the vehicles have multiple seats and weapons and it's best to have a full tank when going into a flag zone. I just wish they could have or add air battles to this game and if they could then personally I don't think any other game could actually touch it.

Two of the bugs I'd like to mention is that when people stand in front of a doorway you can't pass them or push them out of the way. There are also times where you seem to get stuck on items such as tables, trees, and other things. Another one is if you are real close to an enemy and empty a clip at them you may not hit them at all depends on the distance from them. Not sure if the latter is by design. Stops the spray and pray play of many BF2 likes.

The great features are no bunny hopping, you can jump but like once, fatigue, and the more fatigued the harder it is to shoot, oh and I almost forgot to mention Iron Sights ONLY... No red X, just pure Iron Sights. Shooting from the hip works but is pretty much a lost cause unless you know how to pull it off properly. Need to look down your guns sight in this game even at close range. Also emptying a clip at someone will most likely miss them and it's because of the silhouette effect because of the recoil. You can also shoot the weapons out of the players hands, hit them in the hand with a cocked grenade and watch it fall beside them and watch them blow. You can call in air strikes but only after you use binoculars and picking a spot to hit but you are limited to the amount of times this can be done in a period of time. There are also the gore factors of dismemberment and blood.

It is team flag capture based game and there is a limit on the amount of reinforcements a team has and a time limit or whichever comes first. Don't worry you can respawn over and over to a certain extent. This is one of those games most people used to those I mentioned earlier, will I'm sure HATE, but once you get your first kill or see guys blowing up from a grenade or air strike you'll be amazed at the detail. The longer you play it, the more you want to return to it. There are classes as with all other games of this type and usually in most servers there are a set number of each. This eliminates everyone being a sniper (You BF2 folks know what I mean)... LOL.

All I can say about this game is it's awesome and for the true sim player out there this is one for you. You can't just play it once and for less than 15 minutes because I could honestly tell you that you'll probably think first off that I'm crazy and that the game sucks but believe me it beats all the other games out there and could do much more with more people coming over to it in the future. With it being on Steam they can add maps and other great items to it in time and of course crush what bugs may be in it. It also has anti-cheat measures of it's own and voice chat within the game to the public or the team. I can only say give it a try and don't give up too early. You'll see it is far more realistic than any other game currently available and definately one of the best WWII games currently available. If this were a review I would give it a

8.5

With the few bugs and no air battles is really the only reason it's that low... LOW??? As I said graphically it's great, sound is another plus, the gameplay at times a bit twitchy but for shear realizm (INSANE)... Get out there boys and girls and get your copy and I'll see ya on the battlefield.

Creating an Ultimate Boot CD or Thumb Drive (Pen/Flash)

To get started here are the tools you need. I've supplied links to items you can get for free anything that doesn't have a link of course you should have a legal copy.

1.) Windows XP SP2 CD
2.) Barts PE Builder
3.) UBCD4WIN
4.) UBCD4WIN Drivers Pack 1.8 Final
5.) Windows 2003 Server Ramdrive files
6.) HP Flash/Pen Drive Format Tool

That's it, 6 items. Now to move on. First download BartPE Builder and install it, it will create a folder usually called pebuilder or similar depending on the version available, you can download a zipped version and create the pebuilder folder yourself and extract it there or use the installer or exe version. Once you have that installed now copy your XP SP2 CD to the hard drive this will save you errors later, call it whatever you like, example: c:\pebuilder\Win XP SP2 - this way everything is within one folder (Pebuilder).

Now create another folder called srsp1 in the root of pebuilder, example: c:\pebuilder\srsp1 and extract to this folder the Windows 2003 Server Ramdrive files. We'll come back to why these are needed later. These are NOT needed to create an Ultimate Boot CD but are needed for doing an Ultimate Boot USB Thumb Drive.

To build a default BartPE bootable CD then you can skip using any UBCD4WIN items. I'm going the extra mile here instead and giving you the Ultimate - who wants mediocre.

Now download the UBCD4WIN files and drivers and follow the instructions included as to how to install these, when clicking the exe files it tells you the path to choose for installation. Here is the simple lowdown on that. You will want to delete everything under the c:\pebuilder\plugin folder, leaving the plugin folder intact, then you'll extract the UBCD4WIN files to c:\pebuilder and it will auto install into the plugin folder. The UBCD4WIN 1.8 Drivers pack will be extracted to the c:\pebuilder\drivers folder.

Install the HP Flash/Pen Drive Format Tool - Well come back to this later also.

Now to create the UBCD4WIN you will run pebuilder.exe and agree and say NO to search for Source and on the top field you can click the button to the right and browse to your newly created c:\pebuilder\Win XP SP2 folder, everything else you can leave default, to enable or disable plugins you click this button on lower left and then highlight what you want or don't want and click the Enable/Disable button. Once this is done close back out to the main window and move the radio button to Create ISO. Now click Build and that's it and when it's complete make sure there are NO errors. That's it it's that easy to create and UBCD4WIN. Now use a burning program and burn your ISO image and you'll now have an ultimate boot CD. You can also if you are like me and use Firefox over Internet Explorer you can download the latest plugin 1.5.0.1 HERE. Under c:\pebuilder\plugin you can delete everything under the firefox folder and extract the .cab file into that folder.

Now to have even more fun lets create a bootable Pen/Flash Thumb drive. This is where those srsp1 (Windows 2003 Server Files) are needed. Now under the pebuilder folder are 3 files peusb.txt, peusb.cmd, and peusb.bin. If you can't follow my directions you can read the peusb.txt file and I've included everything in this Post so the hard work has already been done for you all.

If you haven't created an ISO yet and don't want an Ultimate Boot Disk but want to only do the Pen/Flash drive then you can do everything mentioned above but this time do not move the radio button to create an ISO image and leave it on NONE. You will have to remove many of the plugins by disabling them. This all depends on the size of your Pen/Flash drive. As an example I used a 256 MB Thumb drive and removed all the plugins except Firefox, I installed Ghost (Need a legal copy for this plugin), and left many of the smaller items, but I might add very few plugins can be used with such a small thumb drive. Size does matter here, you can test by toying around until you don't receive errors during the running of peusb. The larger your Pen/Flash drive the more you can have enabled. If you have a 1 Gig or higher thumb drive you can leave everything enabled.

Take your thumb, pen, flash drive and plug into your USB of your computer and note what drive letter it becomes. Now with the HP Flash/Pen Drive Format Tool you installed earlier run it and it should automatically find your Pen drive and you can choose how to format it - this is the part you MUST do. Format the Pen/Flash drive as FAT...

Run pebuilder so that it creates the BartPE folder with what plugins you wanted but this time it will not create an ISO image, just the folder - upon every run it auto deletes this folder and recreates it.

Now open up a command prompt to c:\pebuilder and here you type peusb -f (Drive Letter:) without the parenthesis and replace Drive Letter with the drive letter your Pen/Flash drive currently is. Watch for errors. If you don't run out of space or receive errors it should come back and state you are good to go.

Now there is a catch to having a BOOTABLE Pen/Flash Drive. First is having it formatted as FAT and second is that your computer has an option in BIOS to allow for booting off USB Devices. Not all computers, especially older ones are able to do this. This will need to be enabled or set within bios before it will work period.

Now here is another tidbit of information so that when you want to create say a CD instead but don't want to create coasters and want to test that it will boot and that it actually works. You will need to download another tool and save a web page as a favorite.

Here we go onto this other item that can be very useful especially for bootable ISO Images, not just a BartPE or UBCD4WIN bootable ISO or CD - example: Vista DVD.

1.) VMWare Player
2.) VMX Builder Page

Install VMWare Player. Now go out to VMX Builder Page and do this.

You can search for software based vmx builders but this page is actually very easy. Only issue is when you run the vmx file from the latest vmware player it will report that it's an outdated vmx file do you want to upgrade just say YES. Ok now back to the subject. Once at the vmx builder page you'll see where you can give it a name, name it anything you want. Now for Guest OS since you are using Win XP SP2 with your pebuilder.iso choose XP Pro from the drop down and only choose about a quarter or half of the amount of RAM you have on your system. Now you can enable USB by checking the box and check other items you'd like but the key is to pick IDE0:Master and for file name type c:\pebuilder\pebuilder.iso or where ever you saved your iso image to when built with pebuilder and of course the name you gave it. Next choose Device Type drop down to cdrom-image and check the box Start Connected. If you want network you can choose those also. Next - once everything is set up. Go to the upper Right hand side of the page and choose or click Generate VMX File, on the next page will be a bunch of text within a window. Right Click in Windows and choose Select All and Copy this text and Paste this into a text document and save it, but change the extension from .txt to .vmx.

Now you can open up VMWare Player and point it to your newly created .vmx file and it should boot up your pebuilder.iso image file or whatever iso image file you create and pointed to in the vmx file (If it's bootable) and bingo you now can test before you burn coasters. You can edit this same file and just change the path or file name whenever you create other bootable iso files or ones you may download. Thought I'd let you in on this extra little secret as well.

Well I hope you enjoy building your first BartPE CD or UBCD4WIN or even what I call the UBUSB4WIN. I also hope you enjoy the secret iso test items such as vmware player and builder.

Xbox 360 (Coming Games and a few Reviews)

Well folks some games are finally coming out for the old Xbox 360. Most who have wanted one probably have gotten one by now, the 360 that is. New games will be coming out in the next month and March could be one of the biggest months for the Xbox 360.

Here is a list of games to be coming this month and into the next:

March 7
College Hoops 2k6
Burnout Revenge
Ghost Reacon Advanced Warfighter

March 23
Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII
Elder Scrolls: Oblivion Collectors Edition
The Outfit

March 28
Far Cry: Instincts Predator
Rumble Roses: XX
Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires

April 4
Top Spin 2
Tomb Raider

April 11
Major League Baseball 2k6
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat

April 20
Final Fantasy XI

Now with games like those listed, this could be two very incredible months for the Xbox 360. Now for games that have just been released which I currently own and have played.

Fight Night 3
Full Auto

Both games are great in their genre. If you love blowing up things and racing you can't beat Full Auto, the graphics are very well done and the destruction is a plus. The damage caused to things around the streets is just amazing. This game is just a sign of things to come especially with Burnout Revenge only days away (I know this one will rock), this series usually never fails me. If I were to review Full Auto I'd probably rate it about 8.0 and this is due to the sheer fun you'll have playing alone or online with others.

Now to my next game Fight Night 3. Graphically this is the game to beat PERIOD!!! This game which probably doesn't even use all the graphics power of the Xbox 360 is something you just have to see for yourself to believe, words can't even tell you how good it looks. This game shows what the system can do and let me just tell you if you enjoy boxing there is no game even close. I'd give this a 9.0 simply for it's graphics alone.

I can warn you though you may go through quite a bit of controllers with this one because of how they set it up for punching, blocking etc. It's really a cool way to have things and it's not EASY, no button smashing here that's for sure. Other sites rated this game as easy and I can't see where they got that from?

If any of the newer games even have graphics on par with Fight Night 3 it's going to start getting really, really sick in the near future. I mean the guys sweat, the fighters look incredible and even the backgrounds are well done and I can't say enough about the eye candy this game produces. I just wish there was more. To me boxing is ok but watching my buddy play someone online and listening to the trash talk that goes on and even watching my buddies punching the crap out of each other just adds to the enjoyment of this game.

I just hope a good WWII game or Flight Sim will have these kinds of graphics. Not sure how good the game The Outfit will be or Blazing Angels and another game Over G, I've seen some movies for all 3 of these games and they look fantastic. I'm really looking for a game like Battlefield 1942 with superior graphics and all the vehicle fun we've come to know and love with a game like that.

Well only time will tell what kinds of other games will make it to the Xbox 360 but I hope the way things are going currently and graphically especially will give us all something to start drooling over. Until next time.

Return of Comments!!!

Well thanks to Blogspot seeing this becoming an issue and finally getting something to hopefully kill the old comment spam for good. I mentioned early on that I had to disable comments due to the overwhelming attacks that started hitting my comments on my blog. One issue is that for about 4 or more of my posts still will not have comments to those individual posts.

Either way they have since been turned back on and will be available from here on out unless for some reason it becomes an issue again with spam.

From what I understand is a BOT can simply find comments and guest books and simply spam the heck out of them and by implementing number or letter verification will eliminate these types of spam from generating.

After much reading it seems that only about 0.01% are actually manually submitted or generated. So having this new form of verification or having some form of moderation should eliminate it once and for all. Lets hope so.

I will be back with a new post soon. Hope you enjoy the return of comments and hope to hear from you all soon.