BJ vs The Third Reich - Return to Castle Wolfenstein

I've been playing through RTCW lately, never got the chance to play it at the time outside of a demo of the PS2 version

gotta say even with its flaws (enemies when shot aren't as responsive as i like/bullet spongey,kinda forgettable score,kinda heavy on the instant death) at its core it really is a solid little shooter from the early 2000s 

what about you lot where do you rank it in the series? do you have issues with it? how many times did you mash quick save/quick load? that one terrible stealth level YOU KNOW THE ONE!

It's been years since I've last played it, and there's parts I really like about it, namely the first section all taking place in castle Wolfenstein, the section in the village, and the labs where the creatures/abominations start attacking, but I find sections like the giant outdoor sniper section and the airstrip to drag the whole thing down. The catacombs section I'm also 50/50 on, I like the atmosphere and the kind of Indiana Jones feel to it.

Overall, I wish the entire game took place in a huge castle, with you unlocking more and more sections and returning to previous areas with changes. Think Arkham Asylum or even the Captain America game that came out for 360/PS3.

I enjoyed Wolfenstein 3D even though it was very Mazey.

Rtcw although is a fun little game I mus say I didn't get to much enjoyment from it, which is surprising because I enjoy almost all FPS from the mid 90s to early 2000s, especially ID FPS games. It didn't feel as polished as games like Quake and Doom IMO but at least it had a flamethrower that never gets old to use.

On the other hand I really enjoyed Wolfenstein: The New Order because it had a mix of seriousness as well as a completely ridiculous tone.I'm  really looking forward to the sequel coming out this year.

I used to enjoy this game (was overjoyed to get a then-modern take on one of my favorite series), but these days, I find it hard to get into it again.

I loved how it brought a semi-historical (bwahahahaha!) WW2 element to the series, while still being over-the-top silly. It has one of the best hand-held miniguns I've tried in an FPS and I'm a sucker for a good minigun. It had interesting locations (that are still an inspiration today) and it had a decent amount of humour when eavesdropping.

I also really adored how most levels gave you the choice of being stealthy or just gunning everything down with reckless abandon. Also secrets :)

But even back then, I was very disappointed with how bullet-spongey the enemies were (I was particularly unhappy with how useless the Luger is, since I loved how deadly your basic pistol in Wolf3d felt and I have a fondness for handguns).

I've never been a fan of bullet-spongey human-sized enemies; that would work for something really big and covered in armour ('natural' or otherwise) or the like, but not for a squishy soft Human.

I may be in the minority on this, but I felt the game had too many samey guns for its own good; I appreciate that it had weapons based on actual WW2 weaponry, but to a casual "I-want-cool-toys-that-shoot-stuff-in-various-cool-ways" person, it gets repetitive with multiple machineguns (submachineguns or assault rifles are, in video game terms, the same thing in my eyes); I felt the developer crammed too many weapons in there at the expense of making some of them actually useful and fun to use (looking at that useless Luger for one). I'd rather have fewer, but better designed guns.

And of course, there were the Stealth Only missions like the Forrest and that last village (though the village one did a much better job at doing a stealth mission and was semi-enjoyable).

There's also a laundry list of personal pet peeves and nitpicks that help bring the game down, however overall, I'd say it was an excellent little game for its time, that just hasn't aged all that well.

RtCW has not aged well at all, and a big part of that is the bullet sponginess of the enemies. But as a Goldeneye knockoff it's a decent enough game.

I'd like to see it remade; we already got a remake of the Castle Wolfenstein/Wolfsburg scenario in The Old Blood. It'd be cool to see the rest of RtCW's plot get retold.

RTCW is bullshit hard for the wrong reasons even on easy IIRC, I remember having an absolutely horrible time by late game on normal. Enemies lack pain chances, are too strong, do too much damage and are actually too smart, given it's the same AI programmer behind Kingpin so they're ruthless and great at owning you as if they were just cheating (won't forget a Black Guard who did a jump spin in the air when he was facing away from me as I attempted to empty my FG42 into him and he flips in front and pops me instantly).

Oh yeah, and fuck the Lopers, their electric attack hits you through the goddamn floor.

I absolutely love RTCW and have replayed it hundreds of times. The only enemies which were bullet sponges were the ubersoldiers, lopers, and the first and final bosses, you can still pretty much headshot all human enemies. I have found it extremely easy these days after playing it so much.

I have enjoyed it more than any of the newer Wolfenstein games released since. I don't think it has aged as poorly as much as everyone else is saying it has.

RTCW is a pretty solid game, the only complaints i have are the snipers in some missions, the sponge enemies and the recoil if you're not crouched, other than that, it's a enjoyable game, some of the sounds are pretty good, like the body collapsing sounds when a nazi dies, the flamethrower, as well the death screams, it's got some pretty good addons too, like Project 51, Pharaoh's Curse, which can be found here:https://gamebanana.com/maps/games/375, i don't think it has aged poorly, even though it has it's issues, it's still an enjoyable game.

4 hours ago, Avoozl said:

The only enemies which were bullet sponges were the ubersoldiers, lopers, and the first and final bosses, you can still pretty much headshot all human enemies.

 

Just to clarify that when I use the term "bullet spongey" I'm not merely referring to enemies that suck up a lot of damage, but also stuff like not reacting appropriately to getting shot with bullets, though I confess that I may be using the term wrong. Most Human enemies in RtCW don't have too much health, but they barely ever react to getting winged most of the time. It immediately breaks all suspension of disbelief and takes me out of the illusion of firing actual firearms against Human opponents.

Yes, you can get headshots, but I tend to consider it a cheap way of beating encounters. As you said, it makes it too easy.

I generally don't have as much of a problem with the Ubersoldiers, Lopers and Bosses being bullet spongey, because they are big, inhuman enemies that look like they can shrug off bullets. Unlike Humans, I've never come across a Loper in real life, so I wouldn't know how tough it really would be :P

I don't know what people mean by the enemies being bullet sponges in this game. They seem to go down fine if you aim at the heads, often in 1 shot even from weak guns like the MP40. The paratroopers can suck a fat chode though they're way too tanky for a human character to take half a mag of 7.62 cal rounds from an FG42.

Also a lot of people might not realise when enemies get staggered they're invincible so you're basically wasting ammo shooting at them.

RtCW is a great game. I particularly love that nice Half-Life feel of "early 2000s 3D shooter with smart, fast-moving enemies" that it seems to evoke.

To me RtCW's Nazi soldiers always hit a near-absolute sweet spot of intelligence and difficulty. While they went down in a few bullets, they still flanked, strafed, took cover when wounded, and did all of this mostly without hard scripting, unlike Half-Life's HECU grunts (who had rather basic AI moves but had lots of level scripting to assist them). What I hated about Half-Life's HECU was that they took shittons of bullets to kill and had very high accuracy; often I found myself cowering from them, waiting for them to run through a corner so I could shotgun them to death, which highlighted a stupid vulnerability in their AI. For people who haven't played HL, I can compare the HECU to Paratroopers who trade a bit of gun power for sheer movement speed.

In comparison, RtCW's Nazis had low enough health to gun down in a few shots, and were inaccurate enough to allow you to actually shoot at them instead of hiding until they stopped blazing away. That meant I could press an offensive and feel like an action movie hero. If I could change the AI at all, I'd make it communicate with each other (so you could have actual squad tactics, not just individual soldiers moving and firing) and slightly increase each Nazi's health (from 20 to, say, 30 or 35) so that they could take cover before dying, but overall I'm happy with the AI and difficulty there.

Things I didn't like about RtCW were mostly that goddamned rocket base infiltration level where alerting ONE guard would fail you (not to mention the mission was buggy as fuck), the Paratroopers being aimbots with overpowered guns and unrealistic durability, a lot of the American firearms being worthless owing to their rare ammo, and the Mauser-equipped snipers being very difficult to locate before firing.

8 hours ago, SavageCorona said:

I don't know what people mean by the enemies being bullet sponges in this game. They seem to go down fine if you aim at the heads, often in 1 shot even from weak guns like the MP40. The paratroopers can suck a fat chode though they're way too tanky for a human character to take half a mag of 7.62 cal rounds from an FG42.

 

Also a lot of people might not realise when enemies get staggered they're invincible so you're basically wasting ammo shooting at them.

Common trash troops like the Wehrmacht aren't dangerous and the game is very fun in its early scenarios (minus that mandatory stealth section) but the SS/Black Guard as stated are extremely resilient and it's suicide to use anything less than their own against them. Even the Thompson with it's .45 ACP stopping power will get you killed or seriously injured trying to take them on, and yeah as @dsm stated the handguns are a joke in RTCW. Anything less than an MP40 is unacceptable performance in this game.

I didn't know that about their stagger state (when it does trigger) that they're immune to damage, that's terrible design as they didn't convey it to the player whatsoever.

I do think the game's overall premise and visual design is great though, there's a lot of variety between scenarios and the graphics aged pretty well, with good sound design also, and it CAN be fun, but because it's not a particularly long game by any stretch it gets way too difficult far too quickly and becomes a save/load spamfest by the end when you're struggling to maintain health above red numbers.

15 minutes ago, Rifle Infantry said:

What I hated about Half-Life's HECU was that they took shittons of bullets to kill and had very high accuracy; often I found myself cowering from them, waiting for them to run through a corner so I could shotgun them to death, which highlighted a stupid vulnerability in their AI.

Yeah, quite a lot of people remember the HECU with rose-tinted nostalgia goggles, but if they ever went back to the game today they'd be in for a rude awakening. Now FEAR, that game has amazing squad AI, with minimum scripting depending on what area or set-piece it is and we haven't had quite a combat AI like that since in FPS games.

holy shit I didn't know about the immunity during pain animations. That's what made Alien Trilogy for PS1 so bad -- whenever a stun anim triggered bullets would go right through the sprite, making the vaunted pulse rifle almost useless.