We recently had a chance to take new and updated looks at three upcoming PC games from our friends at Kalypso, and we have new details to report. Here is our story. Stories. Here are our stories.

Legends of Pegasus

Projected release date: 2012
Genre: Space Strategy, Turn-Based and Real-Time
Platform: PC
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Freshman game developer Novacore Studios is hard at work on Legends of Pegasus, an upcoming space strategy game whose colonization and space combat won't be entirely unlike those of Stardock's Sins of a Solar Empire. The game will include three playable races, including the humans, the X'or (a race of hostile aliens), and a third, unannounced race, and it will apparently have a dozen political factions with which you'll interact in the game's mission-based single-player campaign. In the campaign's story, you'll play as the commander of a starship fleet--in fact, humanity's final starship fleet, locked in a desperate battle to save Earth from alien invaders. However, just as your final battle is about to begin, a wormhole opens in space, dragging the fleet light-years away to an unknown sector of the universe, and so, like the fleet from Battlestar Galactica, your ships must eventually find their way home. However, they'll run into plenty of skirmish action on their way back and will also be able to colonize new worlds to harvest planetary resources and even set up trade routes by installing improvements into color-coded slots on terra firma on, and in orbit around, each new planet you find. And you'll of course be able to put your harvested resources to work in the form of research into new developments for your fleet. The game will also have a full ship customization system that lets you outfit designated hardpoints on each of your ships with various improvements, such as laser, torpedo, and plasma-class weaponry that can then be upgraded. And while exploration, economic development, and research will be turn-based, the game's combat system will take place in real time and in full 3D with full Z-axis combat. The game will let you play as any of the three races in multiplayer, but its single-player game is being built as an accessible experience with a great deal of built-in instruction and feedback in the form of tooltip explanations.

Airline Tycoon 2

Projected release date: October 11, 2011
Genre: Strategy, Management
Platform: PC
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Airline Tycoon 2 is the long, long, long-awaited sequel to the first management strategy game, and at long last, legions of Airline Tycoon fans will once again know the joy of running their own virtual airway. This sequel lets you choose one of four different playable characters who have specific strengths and weaknesses (such as finance, airplane design, and general management skills), and then stride out into the airport lobby to begin the joyous task of building up a successful airline by hiring flight crews, choosing air routes, and, best of all, building and customizing passenger planes. Planes come in different shapes and sizes (from smaller, luxury jets to large commercial liners) and can be outfitted with different types of seating, onboard storage compartments, and even decorative elements such as different types of signage to indicate the ever-important passenger restrooms. Plane parts vary in size and price, and while expensive parts are generally better, they may also break down more easily and require more maintenance. Similarly, experienced and skilled pilots and attendants will generally provide a better customer experience, but will cost a great deal more to hire and retain. You'll be able to make these monumental decisions throughout the course of the single-player campaign, as well as in the game's open-ended sandbox mode.

Global Ops: Commando Libya

Projected release date: 2012
Genre: Third-Person Shooter, Military
Platform: PC
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Global Ops: Commando Libya has an eyebrow-raising title, but we're assured that the game isn't about suppressing any uprisings. Instead, the game's story involves a terrorist threat posed by a fictitious faction that has taken up in the North African nation, and your role is as an American special forces soldier who has come to hunt down the terrorists, chew gum, and discover that he's all out of gum. The Unreal-engine powered game will have a full single-player campaign with nine missions that take place in Greenland, Europe, and eventually Libya. Also, you can adhere to cover and blind-fire your weapon from over or around cover--important tactics you've probably seen in modern third-person shooters. But don't let the real-world locations or realistic tactics fool you. This is going to be an over-the-top action game that doesn't take itself too seriously, though it will have a multiplayer mode reminiscent of the classic multiplayer shooter Counter-Strike, in which a team of terrorists square off against a team of counterterrorists.

It's been far too long since we last fought on the battlefields of Red Orchestra, the hyperrealistic World War II mod for Unreal Tournament 2004. Therefore, when we loaded up the Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad beta, we had a lot to unlearn. Years of regenerating health and energy shields taught us to jump into the middle of a firefight and watch the kill streak rise. In RO2, pulling a stunt like that got us shot in the face. Here, we needed to slow down and respect the fact that our character was a mere mortal--not a walking tank.

Utilizing cover was a must if we hoped to survive in the deadly world of RO2. We could snap to most walls, doorways, fallen columns, or other flat surfaces. Using the alt-fire to level our iron sights automatically drew us out of cover to take a shot. Using cover also steadied our aim, which was especially useful when using an unwieldy machine gun. However, in some cases, it was difficult to tell when we were actually stuck to a piece of cover, which led to some firing-straight-into-a-wall moments.

When it comes time to shoot another person, in the ideal scenario, you're nestled behind a piece of cover and the victim is off in the distance oblivious to your presence (while also jumping up and down and trying to find the grenade button). In practice, this was a rarity. Most firefights took place in close quarters inside bombed-out buildings or cramped hallways. These encounters were tense, terrifying, and over in just a few seconds.

There we were, jogging toward our allies at the front line. Suddenly, a man rounded the corner in front of us. There was a brief pause as we made sure we weren't about to shoot an ally. Then the bullets started flying. Two seconds later, one of us was dead. In those two seconds, our mind spun as we frantically processed gun recoil, character movement, and a half-dozen other factors in making the killing shot. The only problem was our opponent was usually a half-second faster.

Red Orchestra 2 was not the place to be a hero. We were a cog working alongside our 31 teammates in the game's massive 32-on-32 multiplayer capture-and-hold matches. Its highly lethal play style might not appeal to everyone, but it does make the payoff for good coordination and teamwork all the sweeter. After the match, the game tracked our progress with different weapons in its character progression system. It will also include a single-player mode, though it was still unavailable during our play session. Red Orchestra 2 will be released on the PC next week.

We recently attended a media event held by publisher Kalypso where it showed off four upcoming PC and console games: Air Conflicts: Secret Wars, Dungeons - The Dark Lord, Tropico 4, and Jagged Alliance: Back in Action. We picked up and played each game and have a few new details to report.

Air Conflicts: Secret Wars

Projected Release Date: September 8, 2011
Genre: WWII Flight Simulation (arcade-style)
Platform: PC | Xbox 360 | PS3
Show Me All Screenshots for This Game: PC | Xbox 360 | PS3

We took an updated look at the PlayStation 3 version of Air Conflicts: Secret Wars, an arcade-style flight combat game. Secret Wars will have seven different single-player campaigns, each with seven missions (a total of 49 in all), as well as dozens and dozens of flyable planes from both the WWI and WWII eras. It will also have competitive online multiplayer for up to four players simultaneously (one-on-one or two-on-two). In the campaign, you play as DeeDee, the daughter of a WWI flying ace who wastes her youth as a booze smuggler until she's drafted to join the French resistance and become a fighter pilot herself. Interestingly, Secret Wars will have different atmospheric effects, such as four different seasons (winter, spring, summer, fall), as well as different weather conditions, such as rain, which will affect your visibility. Though the game is focused on dogfighting, there will be other objectives, such as stealth operations that will require you to hunt priority targets while remaining low to the ground and out of your quarry's sight range. We took the game for a quick spin in a dogfighting match with a Spitfire and had a relatively easy time using the game's lenient physics model to bank, turn, and lean hard on our guns whenever an enemy craft so much as brushed against our gun sights. The game will be released this September for the PC, the Xbox 360, and the PS3.

Dungeons - The Dark Lord

Projected Release Date: September 27, 2011
Genre: Fantasy-Themed Strategy
Platform: PC
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Dungeons - The Dark Lord is the follow-up to Dungeons, the fantasy-themed dungeon management simulator that was released in February. The Dark Lord's primary addition will be online multiplayer, which was the most requested feature from the original game's fans. The Dark Lord's multiplayer, which we unfortunately didn't get a chance to try, will pit players against each other in their own dungeons as they attempt to build better, more-profitable lairs of their own while occasionally sending out raiding parties into their foe's domain. The Dark Lord will also add new playable dungeon lord characters, such as a yeti, a zombie king, and a demon queen, which we played in the game's available tutorial missions. Like in the original game, you must build up your dungeon by hollowing out sections of cavern and building rooms that will add various bonuses to your domain or lure ambitious adventurers to their demises. The Dark Lord seems to play very similarly to the original game; the demon queen character we played was easily controllable either with mouse clicks or with a zoomed-in view that let us use the W, A, S, and D keys to control her movement while mashing on our left mouse button to attack our foes in melee. Dungeons - The Dark Lord will be unleashed this September for the PC.

Tropico 4

Projected Release Date: August 30, 2011
Genre: Strategy, Management
Platform: PC | Xbox 360
Show Me All Screenshots for This Game: PC | Xbox 360

Tropico 4 is, of course, the fourth game in the "Caribbean island simulator" series and the direct follow-up to Kalypso's Tropico 3. The new game will, as we've discussed in our previous coverage on it, include tons of new features that will build on the success of the last game. Like in the last game, you'll play as a new dictator running the island of Tropico, and you must build your empire's economy while successfully interacting with eight political factions (capitalist, communist, intellectual, religious, militarist, environmentalist, nationalist, and loyalist). You must also interact with world superpowers, such as the US and the Soviet Union (which may declare war on you), as well as China, Europe, and the Middle East (which won't invade but may still impose the dreaded economic sanctions on your fledgling nation). While the game doesn't seem all that different from our last look at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, it has clearly benefited from the extra time that Kalypso has allowed to polish the game further. Tropico 4 will be released at the end of this month.

Jagged Alliance: Back in Action

Projected Release Date: Q1 2012
Genre: Military Turn-Based Strategy
Platform: PC
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Finally, we got our hands on an updated version of Jagged Alliance: Back in Action to find that the game continues to shape up as a 3D remake of Jagged Alliance 2. The laptop computer interface, which lets you check your email and deploy to various hot spots in Arulco has now been added to the game. But we were able to play through only one mission, the Arulco airport, with our lone team member, the Hungarian demolitions wunderkind Barry Unger. This updated version of the game had character voices implemented, but in this case, the voices were from the original Jagged Alliance 2. We've been told previously that the original plan for Back in Action was to have rerecorded voices, so presumably, this voice was just a placeholder. (Though frankly, we wouldn't mind if the new game simply had the old Jagged Alliance 2 voices, which were excellent.) Our version of Barry was powered up for demo purposes and flying solo, and as you may recall, he's not the world's greatest marksman. His revolver and demo pack weren't really the best weapon loadout to take on an airport guarded by entrenched militia. However, this session at least gave us a chance to try out the game's plan-and-go command queuing, which let us quickly and easily order Barry to walk, run, crouch, go prone, or line up potshots against his foes. And because the game conveniently displays your enemies' line of sight as a glowing cone on the ground, we had no problem taking down a few scattered guards here and there. Jagged Alliance: Back in Action was recently delayed to the beginning of 2012.

Russia's largest game publisher, 1C, recently held a press event to show off its lineup of upcoming PC and console games. We've already brought you hands-on impressions of Men of War: Vietnam and Off-Road Drive. And now, here are our impressions of the rest.

Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad

Projected release date: August 30, 2011
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Platform: PC
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We got our first chance to try out the single-player game in Red Orchestra 2, which will populate the game's multiplayer maps with computer-controlled bot characters on both sides of the conflict. As the game's name implies, it will take place in Stalingrad, the site of some of the bloodiest and costliest battles of World War II. The game's campaign will include a handful of missions for both the Germans and the Russians (you'll actually skip around between both sides, rather than play one side all the way through). And between each mission, you'll receive your orders in the form of a short cinematic sequence in which your army's commanding general will brief you on your objectives and the importance of your efforts in the larger war effort. In the actual single-player game, you'll play as one of the soldiers in the game's usual three fireteam squads (rifle, assault, or machine gunners). But you will have the ability to give simple orders to your remaining fireteams by mousing over locations in the world and then pulling up a radial menu to give simple commands like "attack," "move," and "reinforce." Given the way that you'll spawn in as a member of one of the three teams and how each team, if not given high-level tactical orders (or individually micromanaged down to a single man) will act autonomously, developer Tripwire Interactive is confident that no single-player match will ever play out the same way twice.

We played through a mission as the Russian army and found ourselves doing our best to pincer enemy forces into one location by sending the second fireteam to a single flank, sending the third team to the opposite flank, and then charging in with our current team. In Red Orchestra 2, just like in the original game, gunfire is usually lethal, and wounded soldiers may be able to take a few potshots before fading out of consciousness, but in the single-player game, after you die, you respawn as a different member of one of your fireteams. In effect, the number of squaddies you have surviving is effectively your store of extra lives, and as you complete each of the multiple objectives on any Red Orchestra 2 map, your faction will reinforce with fresh squadmates that will fill out each fireteam's ranks. Tripwire was eager to point out that the game is a PC exclusive, and it will come with a server browser, support for dedicated servers, and also ship with a modification software development kit. As a matter of fact, the mod SDK has already been available to members of the Red Orchestra fan community for about eight months, so hopefully there will be plenty of interesting mods available for it when the game launches later this year.

Royal Quest

Projected release date: 2012
Genre: Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, Free-to-Play
Platform: PC
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Royal Quest is a free-to-play fantasy online role-playing game from Katauri Interactive, the developer of Kings Bounty: The Legend and that game's subsequent expansions. Publisher 1C suggests that this new free-to-play game will continue to emphasize what Katauri considers most important: colorful fantasy adventures with detailed artwork. At the 1C event, we watched a video trailer for the game that showed a party of human characters interacting with a great many different monsters, some of which were immediately recognizable as familiar fantasy archetypes (orcs, dragons, and the like), and some of which were recognizable because of their resemblance to critters we've seen in other games. These included a giant bird mount with a strong resemblance to Final Fantasy's chocobos and a slithering monster that looked a heck of a lot like Starcraft's hydralisks. In any case, once we got a chance to sit down with the game, we found it to be in a very early state, and because we started with a low-level fighter character, we didn't have a ton of options.

Our fighter began his career inside a stony castle keep--a safe house with merchants and quest-giving characters--and we visited a merchant to purchase an egg to hatch our first mount, a creature that resembled a small raptor dinosaur. Then we ventured outside the castle to take on our first challenge, a patch of killer venus fly traps that sprayed giant soap-bubble-like projectiles at us. The gameplay seemed to resemble the kind of mouse-driven, hack-and-slash stuff you may have seen in other free-to-play online games from Asia and Europe, complete with a hotkey bank at the bottom of the screen to house your character's abilities. We're told that the details on the game's "cash-op," the in-game store that lets you buy in-game items with real money out of pocket, haven't been finalized. But if nothing else, you'll be able to purchase new apparel for your characters. You character can join one of four base classes (fighter, rogue, priest, wizard) but can later change class to a more-advanced profession. Royal Quest is tentatively scheduled to launch in April 2012 in Russia, with a worldwide launch to follow later that year.

Star Wolves 3: Ashes of Victory

Projected release date: 2011
Genre: Sci-Fi Strategy/Role-Playing Game
Platform: PC
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We got our hands on Star Wolves 3: Ashes of Victory and went through character creation and customization. This space-exploration role-playing game will let you play as a hotshot starship pilot who, with the help of his three wingmen, must fight for truth, justice, and peace throughout the galaxy--or something along those lines. At the start of the game, you customize your character by choosing to specialize in a specific skill line, such as piloting, gunnery, or missiles by spending what will ultimately be dozens of points to specialize in skills like ship handling, ship speed, ship repair, and various weapon proficiencies. You do the same with your three wingmen (or to be more precise, two wingmen and one wingwoman) and then start the game aboard your character's mothership. This is a large, slow vessel, which, like each of your pilot's fighter ships, is customizable with different slots for weapon emplacements, as well as engine and shield improvements. At the outset of the campaign, you must follow a friendly pilot into hostile space, pursuing space bandits who are attacking a nearby space station. Star Wolves 3 takes place in fully 3D space with X-, Y-, and Z-axis movement and camera controls that let you scroll and zoom around your fleet in three dimensions. But thankfully, the game has a minimap to go with its larger star map and its many-icon-having game interface in the lower corner of the screen. Star Wolves 3: Ashes of Victory will be released later this year.

Men of War: Vietnam is taking the brutal Men of War series to the equally brutal battlegrounds of the Vietnam War. New weapons, new maps, and an era-appropriate rock-and-roll soundtrack are all coming together in this real-time strategy game. For the uninitiated, the Men of War games resemble a hyper-lethal version of THQ's Company of Heroes games. And from what we played of Vietnam, this one is no exception.

While some games set during the Vietnam War are content to tell their tale from the eyes of US soldiers exclusively, Men of War: Vietnam widens its scope with two single-player campaigns covering both the Americans and the Vietcong. Of the four missions we had available, the first dropped us into a convoy of allied Soviet and Vietcong troops on approach to an American base. The convoy's trip was cut short by a surprise attack from an American helicopter, but we got the chance to turn the tables on our attackers by hiding in the jungle and conducting some guerrilla warfare.

Like in previous Men of War games, if we wanted to be successful we couldn't just order our men to move and shoot. Depending on their loadout, each solider brought a different flavor of pain to the fight, be it a satchel of grenades or a deadly sniper rifle. Micromanagement of our troops was key, and if we found one we really liked, there was always the direct-control option. This let us control an individual unit using some simplified third-person shooter controls. However, our aim wasn't all that great, so we decided to let the AI handle the marksmanship.

Once the dust had settled, we made sure to scavenge the dead for extra supplies. Ammo was abundant but not limitless, and finding some extra bandages to patch up our wounded was always a plus. Our next task was to flank an American-occupied antiair installation. During the assault, we decided to be a little sneaky by breaking our light machine gunner away from the group to have him flank around to the right. This was a bad call. While messing with that unit we missed the grenade the Americans had tossed at our other troops. When we turned our attention back to them, it was just in time to see the trio get blasted into the air.

A later mission switched sides and put us in control of some American GIs assigned to investigate some civilian villages. Early on we encountered a group of civilians digging up an empty field. When we approached, they promptly dropped their shovels and took up assault rifles, though it didn't do them much good. Further down the same path we got the chance to ambush a Vietcong ambush party, leading to a lethal jungle firefight. Once again we split a specialist from the group, a sniper, and perched him on a tall cliff side. Using his special ability, we sniped a few key targets and took the pressure off our men.

Based on what we played, Men of War: Vietnam is certainly upholding the steep difficulty curve of its predecessors. Quick wits will be a requirement for survival, but if you need a helping hand you can invite up to three of your friends to help you out in four-player cooperative play. Men of War: Vietnam will be released on the PC later this year.

NIS America announced its 2011 lineup at an event in San Francisco, so it looks like we're in for another epic Japanese strategy role-playing game that will last hundreds of hours. While it stays true to the Disgaea formula, the visuals are a step up from the sprites that we're so used to seeing. Each character is wonderfully detailed on the grid, so it's like moving around little anime figurines. It's colorful, it's quirky, and there are prinnies; what more do you need? We had an opportunity to sit down with the lead programmer and director of the game, Masahiro Yamamoto, to talk about the new features in Disgaea 4. See the interview below for more information. But if you want to see the game in action with the new visuals (and hilarious narration), I'd highly suggest the trailer, which is also embedded below.

Disgaea 4 is set to be released exclusively on the PlayStation 3 this September.

It's no secret that video games based on movies get a bad rap. However, Sega is looking to lift some of this negative stigma with its series of Thor: God of Thunder video games. Instead of just retreading the events of the upcoming movie, these games have been given the liberty to tell their own tale outside of the movie's narrative. Marvel Comics writer Matt Fraction, known for his work on Uncanny X-Men and numerous Thor comics, has been assisting as a story consultant in crafting a tale specific for these games. It will chronicle Thor's journey across the numerous worlds of Norse mythology to battle enemies lifted straight from the comics, including Ymir, Surtur, and Ulik.

The first version of the game I checked out was on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, which was a third-person action game. The areas I saw focused primarily on combat, which was very straightforward and built around accessibility. Fighting was a mixture of normal hits with Thor's legendary hammer, Mjolnir, interspersed with the elemental powers, which acted as finishing moves. The direction pad could be used to switch between Thor's three elemental powers: wind, lighting, and thunder. If an enemy got out of range, Thor could attack from a distance by locking on to and strafing around an enemy while lobbing his hammer into its face. Check out the video below to see the Odin son in action.

The Wii version took a similar approach with the same third-person action, but it had a different visual style. It looked more like the comics, unlike the previous game, which more resembled the movie, with its bright, colorful palette and numerous unlocked outfits for the title character taken from his numerous incarnations. I started out in a boss fight against the flame giant Surtur and his minions. This encounter introduced me to the game's combat, which was very reminiscent of the previous version's combat. However, because this was on the Wii, combo finishers were executed using specific motions with the Wii Remote rather than mere button press. Using the direction pad and gesturing with the Wii Remote, I could also access Thor's numerous elemental powers. One summoned a typhoon to knock enemies around; another called upon a lighting storm to stun targets; the third supercharged Thor's hammer for additional damage.

After shattering Surtur's giant, flaming sword, I wailed on his weak spot by throwing the supercharged Mjolnir at it repeatedly until he finally submitted. The second area I played in showed off a mechanic unique to this version: flight. Thor took to the skies in a simple rail shooter sequence where I used the Wii Remote to point and shoot lighting wherever I pleased (which was everywhere). I could also hold down the fire button and paint the cursor across multiple targets to strike them all at once, a technique that was useful for catching smaller enemies.

The last version I saw was on the Nintendo DS, and it turned out to be my favorite. Developed by WayForward Technologies (Contra 4), this version of the game featured yet another unique art design. This time, it was in the form of some highly detailed and stylish sprite designs. The game itself was a 2D side-scrolling brawler that utilized both screens on which to smack foes around. The first area I saw took me through the game's tutorial, which was set amid a massive invasion of Asgard by trolls (described as the rats, kobolds, or bandits of the Thor universe). As I got reacquainted with the god of thunder for the third time that day, I was relieved to see that the game had steered away from including gimmicky touch-screen controls. After routing the fiends, I skipped ahead and faced off against the frost giant Ymir. This was the game's first, and certainly not last, dual-screen boss encounter. Down on the bottom screen, I had to fight off Ymir's frozen fiends while dodging a barrage of icy boulders before leaping up to the top screen onto the giant's shoulders and introducing his face to the backside of my hammer.

Every version of the game had something different to bring to the experience, and it was refreshing to see developers given more creative liberty in how they adapt these licensed games. You can find the whole set just in time for the cinematic release this May.

Might & Magic: Heroes VI is making a lot of changes to the Heroes of Might & Magic series (not the least of which is changing the actual name of the series), but many of these new additions will add to the series in intriguing new ways. One of Heroes VI's most unusual new additions is the Sanctuary faction, also known as the Nagas.

Given the name, you might guess that these snakelike people were somehow influenced by the six-armed, sword-wielding academy creature from Heroes of Might & Magic III. But they're actually a brand new faction of snake people whose design was apparently influenced by the samurai of the Japanese Sengoku-Jidai era, as well as Shaolin monks and East Indian mysticism. The faction's philosophy focuses on oneness with self, honorable single combat, and embracing nature in its architecture.

The Sanctuary faction's primary use of magic is tied to water; whether that is through bless spells that strengthen its armies or through offensive spells that summon tsunamis to smash its enemies. The faction's might hero is the shogun, and its armies will include sword-wielding snakemen, snake-haired priestesses, and a powerful dragon known as the kirin. Watch the trailer and enjoy exclusive new screenshots of this faction in action.

Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad is one of many new games on display at the 2011 Game Developers Conference, and in one of our many sorties to the show floor, we took the opportunity to see the game in action. As the game's title suggests, it will take place in and around the city formerly known as Stalingrad. This city is perhaps most infamous for the Battle of Stalingrad--a bloody World War II skirmish that is said to have incurred more than 1 million casualties. Red Orchestra 2 will launch with 10 different maps, four difficulty settings, and two new vehicles: the T-34 medium tank and the Panzer IV medium tank. Tripwire intends, however, to push out new updates to the game on a regular basis as soon as it possibly can. The first update will include four additional vehicles, but the studio also hopes to turn out new maps and other content after the game's initial launch.

We sat down to watch a single-player demonstration of the Danzig map--not the final name of the map (because this map, like all the others, is based in Stalingrad), though its layout will be very similar to the popular Danzig map in the original game. If you happen to be in the position of squad leader (a specialized role you'll have dibs on if you've successfully pulled off a great many kills, objectives, and other accomplishments in Red Orchestra 2--all documented and saved in your Steam profile), you can give quick and easy move-and-fire orders to your teammates. You do so by hovering your mouse over the intended position and pulling up the in-game radial menu to issue orders for movement, support, and calling in artillery. There's even an order to refuse to take that last order--this last one is available if you're not the squad leader and you…disagree with your fearless leader's last directive.

Red Orchestra 2 will ship with three different game modes: Territories, the previous game's control-point-capture mode (not unlike the original Conquest mode from the Battlefield series), which makes its return from the first game; Firefight, essentially a team deathmatch mode intended to draw in new players (realism settings can actually be relaxed); and Countdown, which is essentially a modified version of Territories that still challenges teams to move on a single series of progressive objectives but gives players only one life to live until their team reaches the next objective. Countdown has a very short timer for each objective--something in the neighborhood of two minutes or so. Thus, Tripwire hopes that this mode will be far less frustrating than in other shooters with "one life to live" modes where getting killed early means sitting on the sidelines until the entire game is over.

Like with the original game, Red Orchestra will otherwise continue to focus on highly realistic shooter gameplay. For example, taking heavy fire will still put your character into a state of suppression where your view blurs and your character breathes more heavily, causing more barrel drift when trying to fire your weapon. In addition, as part of Red Orchestra 2's new slow death system, if you take a severe enough wound that causes you to bleed out before dying, you'll still be able to reach for your gun and wildly fire off a few new shots before your view fades to black.

Perhaps most impressively, the game will have a new material penetration system that will affect whether bullets of a certain caliber and fired by certain weapons can pierce certain types of cover and strike the soldiers hiding on the other side. In addition, the new game will have destructible environmental objects that can turn temporary cover into flaming rubble. We watched a T-34, realistically modeled from the inside out (while inside the tank, you must man one station or another, such as driver or gunner, and will need to physically switch seats should one of your squadmates get killed), open fire on rickety wooden buildings in a countryside map. This partially smashed the roof with a single shot and then tore the rest of the roof, and the four walls down, with a few more successive shells. Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad will add more of the realistic combat its fans love, along with new features that new players should find appealing. The game will ship later this year.