Castle, nazis, monsters, occult, adrenaline pumping music, secrets to explore ( no need for achievements or any upgrade BS). 100/100.
To everyone that didn't had the pleasure of playing this timeless classic, get it now, on sale or not. It needs to be in your library and played at least once. Thank god it runs smooth on Windows 11. You may need a widescreen fix or just play it like that. You will never regret it.
It has sugar, spice and everything nice.
One of the best uses of the Quake 3 Engine.
PROS:
+ Gameplay has aged like a fine wine.
+ Multiple ways to go about accomplishing objectives.
+ Weapons are varied AND useful.
+ Enemy AI is sharp.
+ LOW hardware requirements; netbook/streambook friendly.
+ Playable on Mac and Linux via Wine.
+ Great LAN party game.
CONS:
- Graphics are 6th gen (PS2 era).
- The Catacombs mission drags a bit.
This game is pretty much perfection. This is how you make a sequel to a legendary game like Wolf 3D. It has decent story, incredible gunplay, variety in missions, enemies and weapons, all with graphics that still hold up to this day.
But even better, you can use some of the stellar community mods to bump this game up from amazing to extraordinary. Most notably the Venom mod. It improves the graphics in a huge way and even improves the enemy AI. Really brings this game to new life even in 2020.
I make sure to replay it game at least once every year. It is a sweet, compact and pretty much flawless package that all other shooters should take notes from and proves that to be old-school, you don't have to go back all the way to the 90s.
By far the best Wolfenstein game and one of the best FPS games ever. If you haven't played it yet, you are doing yourself a disservice.
If you only own one Wolfenstein game, make it this one. No other game in the series had the right mix of gameplay, music or pacing like this had. It's simply ID's finest hour. The best, and it can even be improved more via the Venom or RealRTCW mods. Look for them, and others, on ModDB.
Damn those hitscanners. Nearly every single mob in this game is hitscan. At first you're like, oh I'll be real careful and snipe them before they spot me. But after a while you realize they WILL get the drop on you first, so the best tactic becomes quicksave spam and reloading after some guy hits you for sixty damage from his Mauser. Then carefully peek around the corner to find that little opportunity to snipe his legs or whatever body part peeks out. Quicksave, go next.
Enemies barely respond to getting hit. They take body shots like absolute champs, you'll get a minor grunt at best. They're not stopped in their tracks, they don't stop shooting, nothing. They don't have animation frames for getting hit. Quake 2 did this much better, in fact Quake 2 did a lot of things better, which is a sad realization.
The music is repetitive. The soundtrack of the sub pen level is literally TWO BARS. I usually don't give games a hard time for the music but this is ultra lazy. The maps are equally barren. Barely any props or decals, just big empty industrial spaces. Recycled hallways - often even on the same floor - and monotone color schemes. "Nazi architecture", sure. No but really it's just a lack of development. There's barely any colored lighting. You get the occasional ambient red lighting and there's some nice 32 bit light-sourcing from industrial lights and spots every now and then but otherwise it's tremendously absent, even compared to Quake 2 let alone Unreal.
I'm gonna cop bad ratings for this, but I have at least finished this game. The downvotes will be from people who remember playing this game two decades ago but haven't passed the second map since. Well, I have. I love Unreal, Half Life is good, Blood is good, I do a Quake 2 playthrough almost ever year. I've finished all those classics, I've finished Doom 2016 many times, big fan of Fear, Deadspace 1 and 2. I have context. I know what I'm talking about. RTCW doesn't belong in that list of great shooters.
