kingcomrade
Kingcomrade
I think Wolf is probably the best out of the 3 Doom 3 engine games. Doom 3 was kind of lame, I really liked Quake 4, but Wolfenstein was really fun to play. I played it once and was a little underwhelmed a while ago on a pirated version, but my dad got it for Christmas and I've played it through. First of all, a much better physics engine than either two of the others combined with a reaaaaally detailed environment with tons of stuff to blow up and blow around makes the environment really interactive.
I can't say I enjoyed the scavenger hunt parts, but I do have to admit that it's been part of Wolfenstein since at least Wolf 3d and it wasn't that bad and it actually does give you a reason to explore beyond Quake 4's idea of just having spare ammo around. And the environments ARE really pretty.
The real reason I enjoyed the game is pretty much one of two factors that decide whether I like a game. The guns are great. They're cool to use, sound good (especially the high-tech weapons), they blow shit around, seem reasonably balanced (I mean, in terms of Single Player where gameplay balance isn't really the issue rather than "is there a gun I hate using"). The tesla coil gun is fun to use, but the gun that really does it is the Particle Cannon. That gun made me laugh every time I used it for about two hours of gameplay. Oh, and the grenades are very beefy and are actually very useful in this game, unlike in a lot of others. I enjoyed using them.
The other of the two factors is the enemies and their behavior (is it varied and visible) and how they interact with the guns, and Wolf is a bit short these two. Mostly there are few enemies who aren't just plain Nazi soldiers (or functionally equivalent, like the flame troopers). They have a battle suit where you have to shoot off 3 things on his backpack to make him asplode (you can also use the rocket launcher to just brute force things). I didn't like those enemies a lot just because of how hard the little tesla coils on his back were to hit.
I wish the Veil powers could be active for longer. They are necessary for several enemies but you have to have the timing perfect or you will just wipe because you ran out of power. There's also a lot of variability in how useful they are. The first power, which is just a general boost to visibility, speed, etc. doesn't drain much veil power at all and I found myself using it a lot. The second power you get slows down time and it sucks power pretty quick, but I used it a lot to kill the armored troopers and against the really fast enemies the tesla coil couldn't just mow down. There's an upgrade you get for it that instagibs all lesser enemies around you which was GREAT for killing the one enemy in the game who really could startle me and kill me quick (nazi ninjas) but you get that pretty late.
The third power was a shield which I rarely used just because even with the fully upgraded veil bar it sucked power way to fast to be useful for much. There's an upgrade that makes it so you can run into people and vaporize them with your shields on, but like I said you don't have the veil battery to do this much since you have to run to the enemies first before your power runs out. I almost never used this power at all, really. It doesn't protect against melee attacks either so against the more powerful nazis who are mostly melee it isn't a good panic button (aka against nazi ninjas).
The last power you get makes your aim very steady and you do like twice the damage and can shoot through the shields that the Nazi wizards can put on the troopers, and upgraded can shoot through walls. I'm pretty sure it lets you shoot the power armored guys through their armor too, I'm not sure, I didn't try. Basically every time one of the special enemies appeared I usually used this to murder them quickly because they can kill you quick.
This game also is added to my list of "games which have a flamethrower that doesn't suck" which is a little funny because RTCW was a game that really pissed me off with how the flamer behaved. The range is decent even un-upgraded, too, which is really somethin that bugs me in other games (CoD 5 for example).
It's clearly designed for a console (menu style and everything) but it works just fine on a PC and I had no complaints or, besides the menu, anything that really made me go "I wouldn't have sucked so much at that part if I'd had an xbox controller."
I'd like to mention again that I'm really impressed with how this game looks compared to Doom 3 and Quake 4. I mean, those games are several years old now, but still it's the same base engine I'm pretty sure.
I can't say I enjoyed the scavenger hunt parts, but I do have to admit that it's been part of Wolfenstein since at least Wolf 3d and it wasn't that bad and it actually does give you a reason to explore beyond Quake 4's idea of just having spare ammo around. And the environments ARE really pretty.
The real reason I enjoyed the game is pretty much one of two factors that decide whether I like a game. The guns are great. They're cool to use, sound good (especially the high-tech weapons), they blow shit around, seem reasonably balanced (I mean, in terms of Single Player where gameplay balance isn't really the issue rather than "is there a gun I hate using"). The tesla coil gun is fun to use, but the gun that really does it is the Particle Cannon. That gun made me laugh every time I used it for about two hours of gameplay. Oh, and the grenades are very beefy and are actually very useful in this game, unlike in a lot of others. I enjoyed using them.
The other of the two factors is the enemies and their behavior (is it varied and visible) and how they interact with the guns, and Wolf is a bit short these two. Mostly there are few enemies who aren't just plain Nazi soldiers (or functionally equivalent, like the flame troopers). They have a battle suit where you have to shoot off 3 things on his backpack to make him asplode (you can also use the rocket launcher to just brute force things). I didn't like those enemies a lot just because of how hard the little tesla coils on his back were to hit.
I wish the Veil powers could be active for longer. They are necessary for several enemies but you have to have the timing perfect or you will just wipe because you ran out of power. There's also a lot of variability in how useful they are. The first power, which is just a general boost to visibility, speed, etc. doesn't drain much veil power at all and I found myself using it a lot. The second power you get slows down time and it sucks power pretty quick, but I used it a lot to kill the armored troopers and against the really fast enemies the tesla coil couldn't just mow down. There's an upgrade you get for it that instagibs all lesser enemies around you which was GREAT for killing the one enemy in the game who really could startle me and kill me quick (nazi ninjas) but you get that pretty late.
The third power was a shield which I rarely used just because even with the fully upgraded veil bar it sucked power way to fast to be useful for much. There's an upgrade that makes it so you can run into people and vaporize them with your shields on, but like I said you don't have the veil battery to do this much since you have to run to the enemies first before your power runs out. I almost never used this power at all, really. It doesn't protect against melee attacks either so against the more powerful nazis who are mostly melee it isn't a good panic button (aka against nazi ninjas).
The last power you get makes your aim very steady and you do like twice the damage and can shoot through the shields that the Nazi wizards can put on the troopers, and upgraded can shoot through walls. I'm pretty sure it lets you shoot the power armored guys through their armor too, I'm not sure, I didn't try. Basically every time one of the special enemies appeared I usually used this to murder them quickly because they can kill you quick.
This game also is added to my list of "games which have a flamethrower that doesn't suck" which is a little funny because RTCW was a game that really pissed me off with how the flamer behaved. The range is decent even un-upgraded, too, which is really somethin that bugs me in other games (CoD 5 for example).
It's clearly designed for a console (menu style and everything) but it works just fine on a PC and I had no complaints or, besides the menu, anything that really made me go "I wouldn't have sucked so much at that part if I'd had an xbox controller."
I'd like to mention again that I'm really impressed with how this game looks compared to Doom 3 and Quake 4. I mean, those games are several years old now, but still it's the same base engine I'm pretty sure.
