#rtcw

i remember enjoying this game a whole bunch as a kid, but on replaying the game i think a lot of that fun came from me messing around with console commands. RtCW isn’t a bad game, it isn’t a mediocre game, it’s a fairly fun game with some personality, but it’s not as fun as i remember it being.

like a lot of games, there’s a bunch of small problems i have that all compound on each other and add up, stuff like

reticule bloom based on how much you fire on some weapons and based on how much you move and turn with other weapons, making fighting at anything other than medium-ish range kind of weird and funky

every enemy in the game can do an absurd amount of damage to you if you fail to take care of them within a timeframe of like two seconds

some enemies have consistent hitsun but others have zero hitstun and will just keep shooting you while you fill them with bullets, this is especially bad at close/point-blank ranges. you never want enemies close to you

the fucking leaping enemies with the electricity coming out of them are the absolute worst i hate them

the best guns in the game are the sten gun and the FG42, there’s hardly ever a reason to use anything else because those two guns can mop up 90% of the enemies in the game no problem

there’s no mid-level autosaves (not really a huge problem but if you forget to quicksave occasionally, you might take a random rocket to the face and have to start the whole level over)

some levels have loads of health packs and meals, other levels have next to none

the tesla gun destroys you when enemies use it against you but it doesn’t do jack fucking shit when you use it against enemies

same goes for the flamethrower but not as severe

there’s literally no reason to ever use the thompson, ammo for it is extremely scarce compared to the MP40/sten gun

i could not for the life of me figure out how to throw a grenade properly

there’s forced stealth sections in the game and it’s sometimes difficult to know how/when enemies spotted you, sometimes it feels completely random, and there’s only really one stealth level that can be a pain

there’s three boss fights, the first and last one are stupidly easy but the second one is a huge bitch because he has the aforementioned tesla gun and there’s exactly one (1) piece of cover in the area

occasional performance dips if there were too many dead bodies on screen at once

extremely minor nitpick but skipping cutscenes isn’t instant, you have to wait 5-10 seconds after you hit the skip button while the screen sssslloowwwwlllyyyy fades to black

bj’s design in RtCW is just... a dude. nothing special.

the optimal way to play the game is to either take it very slowly and stealth as much as possible or to just kinda know/get a feel for where enemies are going to be and headshot them before they can do anything (which is what i did because i play twitch shooters on the regular). playing it any other way gets you killed, or at least severely hurt.

of course, that’s not to say the game is all bad. for instance

you can interact/destroy tons of stuff in the environment. including nazi flags, paintings of hitler, corkboards of nazi intel, etc. take the third reich down a peg

you have a dedicated kick button (duke bj’s mighty boot!)

you can destroy stuff by kicking it

you can pick up and throw chairs. there’s literally no point to it but you can if you want to.

if you stealth your way through some levels, you can eavesdrop on some amusing conversations with the german soldiers before stabbing them with a rusty knife

all the guns are pretty satisfying to shoot, they make good noise and do good damage outside of the ones i talked about above

nazis are fun to shoot at and die in a satisfying way

i like it when the undead explode into bones

oh yeah the plot of the game is that a division of the ss is trying occult stuff in an effort to make super soldiers. their ultimate plan is to raise an ancient german warlord from the dead, but the moment they do he just kills them and turns them undead

deathshead first appeared in this game and he’s still a motherfucker

i quite liked a lot of the environments and level design in the game, i only got lost once

there’s a lot of variety in the levels, from castle wolfenstein itself to forests to compounds to secret labs to underground crypts

bj can get some SERIOUS speed through bunnyhopping/strafejumping, it’s insane how fast he can go

the game has a cyanide button which kills you instantly, which i’m sure the developers put in as a joke

there’s a gun called the snooper rifle

at the end of the game, bj “getting some well deserved r&r” is him blasting nazis on the battlefield, which sums up his character perfectly

Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001)

The climax of Mission 2: Dark Secret is here! ⚔️ Watch as Helga von Bulow, obsessed with occult power, is consumed by dark forces and transforms into a terrifying monster 👹 inside the Wulfburg Church.

This is one of the most iconic boss fights in Return to Castle Wolfenstein, where B.J. Blazkowicz must use his arsenal, strategy, and precision to defeat the monster Helga becomes.

Once victorious, B.J. claims the Dagger of Warding, a legendary artifact crucial to the fight against Heinrich’s supernatural army. This short highlights the cinematic transformation, boss fight mechanics, and victory cutscene that wraps up the Dark Secret mission arc.