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DoomUK

What's your favourite Wolfenstein game?

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[because why the hell not?]


Personally, I think Return to Castle Wolfenstein represents the pinnacle of the Wolfenstein series. Wolf3D/Spear of Destiny were great in their time, but became outmoded the moment Doom was released, and have aged rather terribly in comparison to Id's magnum opus. Wolf 2009 was a "use once and dispose" sort of experience. Alas, I can't speak for Muse Software's Wolfenstein games as I've never played them.

I replayed RTCW recently and I found it just as enjoyable as ever. It's unfortunate there's no Mecha-Hitler as a final boss, but hey ho.

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I played Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny, Return to Castle Wolfenstein (not finished), Wolfenstein (not finished).

I didn't play Castle Wolfenstein 1 and 2, Spear of Destiny Lost Episodes or Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory.

My favourite is of course Wolfenstein 3D or Spear of Destiny (tie). Also fuck Doom, it's got some stupid design (Imps, slow Demons? Pleaseā€¦) that only third-party levels can make it challenging, while Wolfenstein 3D is more challenging as vanilla. Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Wolfenstein sucked because of Nazis speaking English and going too much into the fantasy realm. Wolfenstein 3D only had resuscitated military zombies, Spear of Destiny only had one small Doom-like hell map. But the other two went too far with the zombies and stuff, particularly RTCW, which was becoming less and less about shooting Nazis.

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RTCW obviously, I'm not all that fond of the first because of it's simplicity and would rather play Doom 1/2 over it, Wolf2 would come in second as I still somewhat enjoyed it despite its flaws, it's a shame that they disabled the mod side.

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Definitely RTCW, although I played the PS2 version. 7 extra levels, so why not?
While I understand that Wolf3D was one of the most revolutionary games ever, it - like DoomUK said - doesn't compare to doom at all.


printz, how do you know they're speaking English? B.J. could very well have been fluent in German and thus would be able to hear things as English as they spoke it. That's how I see it at least. How was it less about shooting Nazis too? I can only think of two levels which didn't contain them, both boss levels.

EDIT (not finished): On the PS2 version at least, there were a few levels of both Nazis and zombies/mummies, down in an ancient Egyptian burial chamber which had really tight ammo. After that they didn't appear for 6 levels. Beyond that boss fight with Olaric, the enemies were nothing BUT German soldiers for at least half of the game's content that was yet to follow.

Spoiler

Besides, dunno about you but I felt that the robots were really cool enemies. Don't care much about the other non-humans, but the robots, especially the chaingunners, were pretty eerie to face down in the mines.

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RTCW is actually fun. Which is more than what I can say about the flat, mazey hitscan spray party that is Wolf3D.

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Eris Falling said:

I played the PS2 version. 7 extra levels, so why not?

The Xbox version also had that prologue chapter IIRC. It's unfortunate those levels were never recreated for the PC game.

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Too bad there's no way of convincing ID to release the source of those console exclusive maps for pc players not to mention the engine part of the source code not released.

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Wolf 3D. RtCW was OK and I loved the 1950/60s war movie vibe of the first few levels and the dungeon area was pretty atmospheric but by the end I was fed up with leather-clad somersaulting nazi ninjas, anachronistic looking witches etc etc. The whole thing got a bit silly IMO. I know that the plot of Wolf has always been silly but by the end of RtCW the game had changed so much from the early sections that I enjoyed that, as an overall game, it didn't feel as good to me as I thought it was going to at the outset. So I say that Wolf3D is my favourite because, of Wolf3D and RtCW, I have played the older game more frequently than the newer one.

I never played any of the others but I did watch the most recent game being played. It looked like it had some fun stuff but also some less-fun stuff. I'm not sure how well I would have enjoyed it. Probably about the same as RtCW.

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I thought I would come off as a pariah if I mentioned RTCW as my first choice, but I see I am not alone. It's just such a tight experience. The food eating mechanic alone impressed me back in the day. Plus the game is just challenging, fun, and aesthetically pleasing. The sound design is also great.

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Clearly RTCW, even though it wasn't that great a game to begin with.
Wolfenstein 3D is one of those games that get tiresome very, very quickly. The levels are just all the same. Different layout but absolutely no variation. It's just nonsensical maze after nonsensical maze.

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Graf Zahl said:

. . .
Wolfenstein 3D is one of those games that get tiresome very, very quickly. The levels are just all the same. Different layout but absolutely no variation. It's just nonsensical maze after nonsensical maze.

WOLF3D also has some of the most wall-humpingly frustrating secrets ever. It's mostly forgiven because of the game's forerunner status and the limited resources id was working with at the time, but still...

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I actually loved the hell out of the Wolf 2009 demo version. The dialogue and story was bad, but I'm numb to that part of the gaming industry now.

It's sad that you can't really buy it at the moment though, except from 3rd parties.

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In terms of maps, I loved the snowy village scenes in RTCW. In terms of weapons, I loved the flamethrower and the tesla cannon in RTCW. In terms of enemies, I loved the Elite Guards with the sunglasses and the berets in RTCW. In terms of AI, I loved spying on all the characters of RTCW while using the "notarget" cheat and listening to their long realistic conversations with each other. It felt like being behind the scenes of a real-life movie set with actual people.
But in terms of atmospheric background music, I prefer Wolf3D.

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Vorpal said:

It's sad that you can't really buy it at the moment though, except from 3rd parties.

What, did Raven/Activision abandon it??

In any case, what I dislike about Wolfenstein and other related games is that realistically there are only a handful of recognizable weapons to choose from, so it becomes samey after playing several such games. But Wolf3D thankfully went generic with them.

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printz said:

In any case, what I dislike about Wolfenstein and other related games is that realistically there are only a handful of recognizable weapons to choose from, so it becomes samey after playing several such games. But Wolf3D thankfully went generic with them.

I don't follow. Weapons that you've never seen before are more generic than generic-looking weapons?

Belial said:

2009 wasn't so bad.

Well, I've played worse shooters. But that's not much of an accolade.

Not unlike Rage, shooting things in Wolf 2009 was a hell of a lot of fun. It was the game's only saving grace and the only reason I didn't stop playing it midway through. But I think I expect more out of a game than that.

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I really enjoyed Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

Loved the enemies, the weapons, the music, story pacing etc

However, its the only Wolfenstein game I have played, so for obvious reasons its my favourite :p

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DoomUK said:

I don't follow. Weapons that you've never seen before are more generic than generic-looking weapons?

I mean that being too realistic will result in all WW2-against-Nazis games feature you holding MP40, Mauser, Panzerschreck and so on, against SS-Totenkopf, Wehrmacht and so on. Not enough variety, because history gave us only so many resources to experiment with. Meanwhile, Wolf3D kept all guns and enemies vague and generic, letting us use the imagination (kinda like Doom).

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Has to be the recent one, it was just so fun picking up sledgehammers and axes then running towards a nazi platoon, and if all else failed it was hilarious to throw your new weapon at them, considerably more effective than most of the actual guns provided.

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mrthejoshmon said:

Has to be the recent one, it was just so fun picking up sledgehammers and axes then running towards a nazi platoon, and if all else failed it was hilarious to throw your new weapon at them, considerably more effective than most of the actual guns provided.


Ok, this actually sounds quite fun )

I never picked the new one up as everybody told me it was bad, if its cheap on Steam may give it ago, even if it is crap the above tactics should be entertaining for a while :)

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mrthejoshmon said:

considerably more effective than most of the actual guns provided.

Well I've noticed the main bullet weapons such as the mp40 and mp43 kill normal soldiers in just 1 or 2 body shots depending on if it has the damage upgrade or not, too easy really considering how RTCW required 4 body shots to kill a soldier, I checked the values using an unpacker I found and apparently the mp40 has a damage value of 7 unupgraded and a normal soldier has like 14 health.

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I've for the most part played RtCW, Wolf3D and SoD, but RtCW and Wolf3D the most. I've enjoyed RtCW the most though.

Only played the W2k9 demo which I thought was okay and a little of ET.

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Avoozl said:

Well I've noticed the main bullet weapons such as the mp40 and mp43 kill normal soldiers in just 1 or 2 body shots depending on if it has the damage upgrade or not, too easy really considering how RTCW required 4 body shots to kill a soldier, I checked the values using an unpacker I found and apparently the mp40 has a damage value of 7 unupgraded and a normal soldier has like 14 health.

hitting most with a melee weapon instantly kills them, its also a good thrown weapon too, I also enjoyed charging with the bayonet attachment, that was fun too.

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bcwood16 said:

Ok, this actually sounds quite fun )

I never picked the new one up as everybody told me it was bad, if its cheap on Steam may give it ago, even if it is crap the above tactics should be entertaining for a while :)


Unfortunately I don't believe Steam sells the most recent Wolfenstein anymore.

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Du Mhan Yhu said:

Looks awesome :D

Downloading now.

Unfortunately, I don't think it's gone beyond the tech demo phase. Which is too bad, because it shows definite promise.

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RTCW was cool except for that stupid stealth level in the forest.

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