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George B

Wolfenstein

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Anyone playing this baby?

I have been looking forward to a sequel to RTCW for a long time. As a stalwart wolfenstein: enemy territory player, I know that myself and most of my community/clan were hoping for a new multiplayer game to latch onto seeing as Quake Wars never seemed to take.**

Well, so much for that... the MP had a fork in it almost out of the box and despite the efforts of a few mod teams, it looks like it's back to W:Et andTF2 multiplayer for me.

But... it is a fun franchise, maybe the single player will be fun... and it is... kinda...

There are a few annoying things, I guess I can start with them.

The gold collecting mechanic is crappy... the level design is pretty good and you generally feel like you should keep pushing on, but to do so is to risk missing out on valuable hidden gold stashes... so you go from a dramatic combat moment to walking around an empty room for a minute knocking over every crate and barrel, looking for cash. Of course, you could ignore the gold but then how would you buy upgrades? The game frequently reminds you (text pop-ups during loading screens mostly) that a) weapons are no good if not upgraded and B) that there is not enough money to buy all the upgrades so choose carefully... so to increase my ability to play through and enjoy the game, I have to interrupt gameplay after every nazi closet to do a gold sweep...

Solutions? Why limit the amount of cash in the game? Maybe to 'incentiveize' (not a word?) additional playthroughs? Why not have the nazi's you kill during random encounters in the city drop gold, or have a bounty system set up where the various resistance groups offer you cash for killing off nazi officers during these random encounters? That would add some weight to the multiple random encounters you fight through while navigating from one level to the next with in the central hub of the city.

The game also suffers from 'not being far cry 2 syndrome'... why do I have to press tab and wait for my map to load up, interrupting the action, the music and gameplay! Boo! I want to look at it while I run from veil pool to veil pool...

The story isn't that great, seems to me that it takes itself too seriously. They should think about taking the game in the direction that red alert went... you already have silly nazi occult monster thingies, and you have the square jawed american stereotype, why not take it all the way and add some humour... it might make me more interested in listening to all the v/o that I began to skip over heartlessly after sitting through a few... geez the guy's name is B.J. after all, have some fun with it!!

Played a level last night, the cannery, and it had a bunch of little traps you can spring on unsuspecting nazis: a falling tank, a set bunch of steam valves, a giant fan to blow them through a vent etc... problem is, by the time you reach the cannery you have played enough that you have gotten into the groove of fighting from the entrances to each room to limit the number of bad guys who can hit you, so by the time you get to the trap's triggers, you have already cleared out the room... boo!

What's good? The veil powers are lots of fun and add a nice twist to gameplay. Using the "see enemies through walls" upgrade is pretty sweet, it's comperable to what Shadowrun was trying to do it taking aimbot/wallhack mechanics and incorporating them into the game proper. Trying to manage your Veil meter while using the shield and other abilities to their fullest is fun. The weapons are pretty solid as well, you get your standard mp-40/43 and also you over the top magic death ray tesla cannons... I'm about 2/3 of the way through (I guess) and it's a solid but wrote first person shooter.

Also: it looks good, and "it will blow your mind"

** a classic case of "we just want our exact old game but with a graphics overhaul and a bunch of new players to kill"... in other words, a design quagmire for any dev team working on MP (in this case, endrant studios)

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The game also suffers from 'not being far cry 2 syndrome'

A tragic condition that affects all too many games, even today.

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I played through the whole thing. If I had had anything better to do I wouldn't have bothered once the 'new game' shine had worn off. Also it was free because my friend bought it and couldn't play it due to some driver issue.(The issue being it would screw up his system settings bad enough that he would have to uninstall and reinstall his video drivers.)

I am glad it was free for me because I would have felt ripped off if I had spent money on it. The only cool parts for me were some of the looks of the crazy giant underground nazi lairs. Everything else was mediocre.

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It was major "meh". It was like an 1998 game with better graphics. Enemies were really retarded. An overal level design was really boring.

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i rented this game a couple weeks ago and was surprised to see almost no one else playing or talking about it. It seems like everyone wrote the game off as another average FPS,which this is. But unlike most average games this one isnt short of the simple "fun factor".

Its fun to jump into the game, running through the city killing nazis and crazy occult monsters.

I agree with OP on the money, traps and "not far cry 2" thing 100%. When im playing i wonder why they didnt make it fully open world, why they didnt develop the sneak mechanics. Its like the stopped half way through development.

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Also the voice acting was very annoying. It was worse than Oblivion, they only had 1 guy do the voices for everybody that wasn't a special character.

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A tragic condition that affects all too many games, even today.

Most games don't even know they have it. Get your games tested...

so they'll have a tomorrow to count on...and a brighter today.

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It was major "meh". It was like an 1998 game with better graphics. Enemies were really retarded. An overal level design was really boring.

I agree entirely. I finished it last night and it was terribly underwhelming... The AI is ridiculously bad throughout the game. The whole escort mechanic was basically only useful as a demonstration of how awfully the AI worked. The levels look good but you spend so much time in 'veil' mode that all that texture work is for naught.

I will say I found the sound design to be especially good. And the whole veil combat mechanic what with the empower, shield and mire effects are really fun, also there are some neat-o weapons in the game (you have to try zapping a nazi a quick jolt of the tesla coil to enjoy his electrocution dance).

It is fun to play a 1998 game with good graphics, as long as you ignore everything that happened since 98. Which I was able to do for short bursts, but as soon as I began playing critically again the game fell apart... Feels like maybe the whole Id/Activision break-up might have affected the game's development, and it will certainly negatively affect the chances of any expansions or fixes to the multiplayer being released...

Someone take this franchise and make a tongue-in cheek noir shooter occult thingy, or bury it forever... good riddance, B.J.Blazkowicz.

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