More Wolfenstein

And this post will be more than just pictorial. For starters, this is a solid shooter. Very enjoyable and action packed, and not too short. It's not a heavy-weight though. It's no Half-Life 2. There's no meat to it, I should say, and that's fine because Return to Castle Wolftenstein didn't have too much meat to it either, though it had more than this game has. This game feels very arcade-like. It feels very console-like. Part of this I blame on what I call the "Achievement Insanity Era". Find all the gold achievement! Kill this many Nazis achievement! Blow up this many barrels achievement! Yeah. And suddenly your game has no plot, no story, and is nothing but a bunch of goals to achieve.

In any case, I didn't particularly pick this game up for a good story. I picked it up to kill Nazis like Brad Pitt in Inglorious Basterds. And there are plenty of Nazis to kill. Normal Nazis. Super-powered Nazis. Zombie Nazis. Oh yes. And really, the only complaint I have about the gameplay is that I wish there had been more stealth missions. I'm a fan of those. (Yes, I spent hours and hours playing the Splinter Cell games.) And there were levels such as these in RTCW. I remember my favorite level was one where I had to sneak through a German village with nothing but a silenced pistol and assassinate three high ranking Nazi officials. If I made a mistake, alarms were sounded all over the village and the mission was failed. I would have loved to have a mission such as that in this game, or even a level where it was actually possible to try and stealth through the whole thing. I was hopeful there would be since silencers were upgrade options for more than one of your weapons, but alas, every time I tried to sneak around, dozens of Nazis would magically know where I was and find me, even if I silently shot a Nazi who was miles away from any of his buddies. That was sort of disappointing.

I have no complains about the guns 'o blazing aspect of the game, however. Go figure.

And now, some commentated pictorial highlights:

These guys are fun, since I like mini-bosses where you have to do more than just empty a dozen clips of ammo into them to bring them down. To take down these badasses, you have to shoot the canisters on their back to make them explode. They have a cool death animation, too.

And you get their gun when they die, too. Mmm, disintegrating Nazis.


The level designs are very detailed and good-looking. It's a pleasure walking through them. Most of them are very straight-forward, as well. I only found myself unsure of which way to go about twice during the whole game. (Which you might laugh at, considering the HUGE ASS compass in front of your face at all times.)


This sequence was fun. You rode on the back of a train using a mounted gun, mowing down hundreds of sniffers. "They're coming out of the God damned walls!" (Actually, they were running on the walls, but I like that quote and wanted to use it.)


The Telsa Gun is probably my favorite. I like my Nazis extra-crispy.