RPS: Related, a few readers mentioned how much they enjoyed using the dynamic campaign generator mod. Any plans for something like that?

Kramer: Yes we do have, for quite some time actually. I will put it this way, if we succeed as we hope we do with Men of War: Assault Squad, it’s something that’s certainly a possibility for Men of War 2. Please bear with me that I can’t unveil details, I only can say that I think that online games (especially coop) and dynamic (online) campaigns are the future for the series.

In cover behind some steel rails and debris, I check the magazine on my Russian SVT-40 semi-automatic rifle. There’s no on-screen counter for bullets; you hold the R key to swipe the clip from your weapon, and a message reports if the clip feels heavy or light. This might sound like realism for realism’s sake, but in practice, it simply means that reloading is a tactical decision. Gibson chimes in over my shoulder when I ask about the design.

“You never know exactly how much ammo you have in your gun, so you end up having those ‘oh crap’ moments where you run around the corner to shoot at enemies, pull the trigger, and nothing happens. It gives the player a brief moment of panic.”

On that, operating a weapon in Red Orchestra 2 is the reason I was enthusiastically tethered to Gibson’s desk for an entire day. Without being too romantic about it: being pupil-deep in a sniper scope, the optics jar with every slide-pull of your bolt-action Mosin Nagant rifle, the black outline that vignettes your vision wavers within the scope, lightly disorienting. Few games have given me the feeling that I’m operating such active, mechanical weapons.

More subtly, I love the delay RO2 introduces between death notifications. It sounds absolutely simple: if you kill someone, a pop-up won’t appear until five or six seconds after they’ve expired. That gap in immediate feedback stirs drama—even when you’re sure you’ve tagged a German between the lungs, there’s a bit of breath-holding after every kill. You forget how much organic tension you’ve been missing out on when a bright “+10” isn’t stamped on the screen to pat you on the back every time you shoot someone.

That raw, scrappy-feeling gunplay strikes a compromise I’ve been waiting for for years: a nuanced multiplayer shooter that doesn’t place success at the top of its learning curve like an out-of-reach peanut butter jar. Every tint of realism feels purposefully ancillary—in the dozen-plus rounds I played, gunfights never hinged on how well I utilized cover—I could survive without it by crouching, leaning, crawling on my stomach or yelling at my squad leader to toss a smoke grenade to cover a flanking move.

Knowing that these intricate parts exist within a tank mirrors the fun I have when downing humans in RO2. More than 10 separately-housed systems can be picked apart. In my final tank fight, I’d lost my engine, but my enemy hadn’t bothered to finish me. Immobilized, I swapped to the gunner seat (transitioned by a Mirror’s Edge-style crouch-crawl through the cockpit in first-person), shoved my dead crewmate aside, and scrounged a kill on the turret.