Caltrops - Castle Wolfenstein





	[quote name="Jerry Whorebach"]It uses a Call of Duty-style checkpoint-based save system, which would be fine for a straightforward shooter but conflicts badly with Wolfenstein's collectable system. There are about fifty doodads to find in each level (5 or 6 pieces of intel, which are used to unlock weapon or ability upgrades, 20-40 pieces of gold, which are used to pay for them, and maybe one Tome of Power or some shit) and finding them isn't exactly a delight (instead of the levels being designed around the collectables, as in a fun collect 'em up like Jak & Daxter or Braid, it's obvious the levels were designed purely as FPS corridors long before someone was assigned to go through and sprinkle bits of sparkly shit in every nook and cranny, presumably to discourage players from moving through the corridors too fast and missing all the high-quality wall textures they spent hundreds of fucking man hours on). The especially problematic thing is that the game doesn't save after you collect a collectable (how could it, when there are so many and they're placed so haphazardly, without completely trashing the encounter design?), so as you're moving through the levels you have to break every crate and barrel, open every locker, peer into every dark little hole looking for items... then do it ALL OVER AGAIN if you die before reaching the next checkpoint. This is a textbook rookie mistake, how does a studio like Raven that's been making FPSes since there have been FPSes (they did Shadowcaster on the original Wolfenstein 3D engine, FFS) still have no idea how to design one at the most fundamental level? Fortunately(?), the game is easy enough even on the hardest difficulty setting that you can pretty much ignore the entire upgrade system and just play it like Quake II. <b>Much more problematic</b> is how long it takes BJ to raise or lower his gun when you pull or release the aim-down-sights trigger, and every single thing about the weapon selection. Not the selection of weapons, but the actual act of selecting them - holding the right shoulder button brings up a radial menu of all your guns, while tapping it switches between your two favourites; however, sometimes the game WON'T RECOGNIZE A QUICK TAP (this is especially likely when the frame rate is tanking, which happens whenever things start to get even a little bit hectic - so, not too often then) and you end up having to hammer it like the fire button in Star Soldier, hoping that the next time your screen updates you're going to see a weapon swap animation instead of fucking nothing. Also, you can't initiate a reload while you're aiming down the sights, and... you know what, forget it, if publisher Activision didn't care enough to send ONE FUCKING GUY from the Call of Duty team over to test Raven's control scheme for five minutes and tell them exactly what was wrong with it, why should I bother spelling it all out now to the benefit of nobody anywhere? GET PSYCHED :([/quote]