I wrote this in a forum argument about some people impressions on Red Orchestra 2 vs. their expectations for it compared to CoD:MW3 and BF3. The forum is hosted by a Game clan, made of PC Hardcore players, originally formed bakc in the day when they played Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, when the firsts Call of Duties came out and when the clan boomed when CoD4 came to life... I think that here will be a goos place also to state my opinion on this matter:

"Tripwire is a small studio, who came to be after some guys released a successful mod for Day of Defeat called Red Orchestra: Osfront 41-45. They are not Infinity Ward/Treyarch backed up by Activision (like CoD) or DICE backed up by EA (like BF). If I'm not mistaken, they didn't even had a publisher behind them for support. They did it all by themselves, with a short budget, trying to add as much value as possible and still charge $40 on a sea of games that charges $60 for way less content (and 4 $15 map packs...).

That aside, the little I know about game development is that an artist is way more expensive than a programmer and for a "pretty" game, one should have a ratio of at least 3 artists per programmer. I'm glad that they decided to differentiate themselves from the rest by improving gameplay and supplying a PC hardcore audience in need (that instead had to swallow down streamlined and dumbed-down console ports [Yeah, I'm looking at you, MW2]). The phenomena that we are seeing in the game industry (and in the movie industry as well) of serialized franchises instead of innovative content is unfortunately a symptom of this whole context, where people prefer to stay in their safe confort zone instead of trying anything new.

For myself, I just didn't buy it yet because I don't know if my 4-year old rig can run RO2 in satisfying settings, but I'm looking forward to playing this game, since the last great FPS multiplayer shooter that I played was COD4"

Today I finished Bioshock and Fallout (yes, the first one), both on PC. I finished the former in "The Good Way", saving all little sisters instead of harvesting them, in Hard mode. Pretty good game. And difficult. I will write a review after I finish my second run, now killing all the lil' girls to see if anything changes (I assume so, as [spoiler] Tanembaum wouldn't help me, and you wouldn't save the sisters in the end [End Spoiler]).

As for the latter, I've played through not quickly enough to save some towns, and did it in the "shoot everything that moves" way. My char had Small Guns, Barter and Speech as tag skills, and Finesse as the key perk. A very high weapon skill comboed with this perk gives about 60%-70% of criticals, dealing a LOT of damage. It was hard though fight the master, as some energy or big weapons would've been more efficient. Had to quick save and quick load a lot, but I managed to get through. I will start the Fallout 2 soon, but I have Red Alert 3 in the queue...