The courthouse absolutely whipped my ass on the second-highest difficulty I’m playing on and really made me up my game. You can check out me grinding through it on the old yt channel which now serves as a dumping ground for twitch VODs.
I’m actually finding a lot of the side missions to be the toughest parts because they have no checkpoints as far as I can tell. Although last time I played I beast moded the last couple I tried so I think I’m just getting better. Honestly though I’ve had to play some sections like 40 times and I do feel like things are unfair occasionally overall I think the game rides the knife edge very successfully and mostly I feel like I’m getting through most fights by the skin of my teeth and it’s exhilirating.
I very, very, very much enjoy the whole “stealth until it goes to shit” gameflow. Sure it can result in near instant death if it goes to shit in the wrong spot but insulating yourself against that happening is part of the learned skill of the game. Most importantly, your stealth usually breaks at different moments each time you retry, forcing you to learn to be flexible and reactive in a way I really enjoy.
I will still play this 2-player thing eventually but all levelups in FPSes can jump of a cliff and fucking die (that includes the perks in Wolf 1 and 2 but you can pretty much ignore them so it’s ok I guess)
I’ll pretty much always prefer a lot of places to get mowed down repeatedly, just to feel the rush of beating a stage eventually, then be consistently given opportunities to that to waves of enemies. Even on a power trip like BJ’s.
I really like the idea of incentivized use of techniques and approaches to enemy layout, whether planned or quick problem solving. Their system may not be the ideal but getting some kind of applicable bonus, at least cosmetic flourishes go a long way in drawing you toward using what’s been crafted for disposal. Outside your comfort flex, and strong level designs will draw that out.
that level kind of made me want some sort of endless mode like max payne 2’s dead man walking or something with other maps and challenges as well designed as the courthouse
The Courthouse was a brutal set piece but I was probably stuck at the last battle for much longer, after a while I said to hell with it and made a quicksave roughly halfway through it on a run that had gone well to that point. I play a lot of videogames but not a lot of first person shooters and I think there is sometimes a bit of an… underappreciation on SB regarding how hard the genre is for those who weren’t weened on original Doom and the like.
This is why I nope’d out on the Doom reboot after playing the demo for it. I finished it but even that first stage felt near the limit of my personal abilities, and the SB near-consensus of “finally a FPS with bite” was enough to tell me I’d be better off spending my energies elsewhere.
yeah the last battle (which doesn’t seem like it’s going to be the last battle until you realize it is) was the only thing that tripped me up as much as the courthouse too
also I’m generally only barely good enough to play multi shooters semi-competitively and I find that “play single player games on the second highest difficulty” is usually a pretty durable plan
I was on… normal or whatever its gimmick name was. I think it was the first difficulty level that didn’t have a mocking name. I was dangerously close to knocking it down for the final battle but I’m stubborn/went the quick save route instead.
The universal feeling I got from people who played Doom was “if you are gonna play on easy then don’t bother” which… okay fair enough!
A lot of how you are supposed to play these games is super movement heavy and reckless, and relies a lot on using cover for split second periods of time by thinking about how you can route through the environment, and it’s definitely really hard but also I think very rewarding.
Hey seems like this is the time I can complain that while there is a lot of left messaging in the game the overwhelming messaging in the notes you find the buildboards the loading screens is how fucking great it is in Nazi land and I know we are supposed to look at that and go FUCK THIS it is so present that it really turned knots in my stomach. If your game is 50% nazi killing and 50% nazi praising it’s still got a lot of blatant nazi praising in it.
Then fake beatles songs but in German lol that rules nazis rule. What great attention to detail! All of wolfeinstein 3D but you are the nazi!
well the world of the game is a nazi world. it should be showing how most things not directly harmed would just continue on without skipping a beat under nazi rule.
yeah I mostly read that as a commentary that if germany won and took over US territory, most american people and institutions would happily go along with it.
and this is arguably the most incisive commentary the game makes, much more so than grace explicitly saying “america has always been like this”.
