|
Author |
File Description |
terrythewhite |
Posted on 05/11/04 @ 12:00 AM
File Details |
Version: |
The Conquerors 1.0c |
This is my Wolfenstien 1.0 scenerio. Over the last months i've gotten people to test wolfenstien yet no one every replied. So now only being tested by a few people i'm submiting it to the blacksmith. It's based on the old pc game wolfenstien. It isn't exactly alike the game but it's close enough considering the difference in games. |
Author | Comments & Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
---|
zak (id: Chewmen_zak) |
Posted on 12/30/04 @ 12:00 AM
Introduction
--------------
Wolfenstien 1.1 is a scenario based on the PS2 game, also named Wolfenstein. It takes place during World War II. You are a special agent sent by the U.S. to assassinate Hitler while he’s visiting castle Wolfenstein. It is a fixed force scenario, although other soldiers, namely captive Jews you free, will join you throughout the game.
The castle of Wolfenstein is also a very large maze you have to pick your way through. Along the way, you will run into both friend and foe alike.
Playability: 2
----------------
I had no trouble with crashing or lag while playing this scenario. Everything went smoothly, there were no problems with the triggers. With all the change name and object select-activated triggers being correct, the designer must be commended for his diligence in making sure that they were working properly.
Something that could’ve been done better, however, is the objective(s). After I had killed Hitler, the endgame cinematic didn’t roll and victory wasn’t declared. This left me confused and irritated since nowhere had it said that killing Hitler wasn’t the end of the scenario. I sure thought it was. So I spent the next half hour trying to hunt down the remaining Nazis in order to kill them for a conquest victory. That didn’t work, as it is way too hard to track every single one down. It was also very frustrating because I had no idea of how many Nazis there were to start with. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t even sure there was a win trigger at all. Opening up the editor and hunting through a bushel of triggers proved that there was. To win, I had to bring one remaining soldier, and it didn’t even have to be the hero, to a place that I had been to near the beginning of the scenario. That was the last thing I would’ve guessed to be the win condition. Something the designer could’ve done to eradicate this problem is to simply put the win condition(s) in the objectives section before or sometime during the game.
Another area for improvement was the actual assassination of Hitler. When you enter the final layer of the castle, the view is changed to Hitler on a massive podium addressing his troops, more than 100 elite janissaries. Pretty typical for the tyrant, right? After he finishes that speech however, he basically walks to the gates of the final layer and begs to be shot! Having a longer range than he, I gladly fulfilled his death wish with three rounds from my arbalest/9 mm gun. The hints warn of his army giving chase right after his murder so I tucked tail and ran like the wind. All of that was totally unneeded. The janissaries were all stuck inside the walls by trigger-locked gates and palisade walls! And since they had a range shorter than mine by 3, I could’ve stood there and picked off half the army if I wanted to. If assassinating Hitler was that easy, World War II might’ve never happened. It was a grave disappointment to come that far and find the head boss no more harmful than your average mouse. One suggestion for alleviating the problem is to give Hitler more range, health, and/or attack. Another would be to make the assassination or escape afterwards harder to pull off by deleting all the obstacles keeping the janissaries in after Hitler’s death.
Although the power-ups were a great addition, most of them needed a major overhaul. I found that only the first weapon and upgrades, the 9 mm gun and silver and gold bullets, to be worth taking. After that any new weapon had less range and attack compared to the 9 mm, even the feared machine gun. Also, any health that I had gained from health packs were nullified as soon as I picked up the new weapon because picking up a new weapon meant switching units. A further quirk with the health packs is that the pack doesn’t heal your wounds. Instead, it increases your maximum health. I’m pretty sure that in WWII (and even now) you can’t increase your health past 100% of what you have now. A suggestion for change is to use the GeniEd2 program, created by Ykkrosh. Originally made for Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, it was improved and altered to work for AoK:TC. AnastasiaKafka posted an article regarding this phenomenal editor on the first of June 2004 (any information about the GeniEd2 program was obtained from that article). Ana says, “Yes, with GeniEd2 we can make changes for just about everything in the game; units, buildings, garrisoning, icon images, projectiles, and more!” The designer could use GeniEd2 to simulate a machine gun by lowering the reload time on a hand cannoneer to 0.01 seconds. It might look awkward but it would definitely look like a machine gun. It would also do more damage and make it worth picking up.
The castle maze was definitely very tricky, but it was far too simple after I obtained a siege ram/tank. Who needs to wind around enemy walls searching for openings and getting trapped in ambushes when you could easily avert all of it by just bashing through everything? With the help of the tank, I could demolish five tiles of fortified wall in less than a minute. Getting to Hitler has never been made so easy in video games. The easiest way to fix that would be to just not give players the tank!
Balance: 3
------------
I found the balance to be off on this scenario. Since I wasn’t given the option to choose the difficulty level in-game, I played the scenario under hardest. I wasn’t exactly sure if it did any good. The beginning of the scenario was impossibly difficult and the rest of it was far, far too easy. The beginning was so hard that after the 11th reload, I started to do random things in the hopes of getting lucky. The reason that the beginning is hard (for me at least) was that your character is ganged up on right from the start. Essentially, the game expects you to fight at an upgraded level seconds before you get the upgrade. And those seconds inflict enough damage to send you home airfreight in very small boxes (no reflection on any James Bond movies). After you receive those upgrades, however, the range and power of your weapon, which steadily increases throughout the game, give you an unbalancing advantage over all of your opponents. Before I had finished 10% of the game, I was already able to kill enemies with one round before they even got within range. I don’t think the Nazis were equipped that poorly. More playtesting of the scenario for balance might have made the game more of a challenge.
Like I had mentioned earlier in the Playability section, killing Hitler was far too easy and getting away afterwards was even easier. Also, in-game triggers tout the bosses you have to face along the way as nearly invincible behemoths. Something killed as easily as your average villager is definitely not a nearly invincible behemoth.
One bonus (and also something that kept the balance rating a 3 instead of a 2) is that the Jewish captives that tag along throughout the scenario are very, very weak. If they were strong then I might’ve been able to waste the Nazis in a way that would make Eisenhower proud and at a speed that would leave Patton eating my dust trails. This scenario would be highly commendable as a propaganda effort, but propaganda efforts are usually not in the best interest of gaming. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. I picked up about 10 Jews and ended up with four. The only reason any survived at all was because I garrisoned them in my ram/tank.
Creativity: 4
---------------
The way I feel about this scenario is it had some original and great ideas that could’ve been executed better. The power-ups were a great idea, but they either helped you too much or power-downed your unit. The different levels inside the castle itself and having a boss at the end of each level would be a stellar aspect of this scenario had the bosses been made to be an actual challenge. Otherwise, the WWII theme is original. Note: Due to the need to get this review out at a reasonable time, the rest of the categories will be much shorter.
Map Design: 4
----------------
It is better than just a random map. The castle maze is done quite intricately and the forest that envelops Wolfenstein is well done. It kind of reminds me of the Sherwood Forest map in random map games. Overall, it was a fairly good map.
However, more corners could’ve been added to the castle walls to make it look more realistic and appealing. A nice addition to the forest would be a pond somewhere and different forms of flora (plants).
Story/Instructions: 3
------------------------
There was a brief story/briefing in the Instructions, but it wasn’t much. The story wasn’t really advanced through in-game triggers. And with the unit changes along with each upgrade, the main character’s name was no longer “Agent 21” like it was when the scenario started. As mentioned earlier in playability, the instructions on how to win were lacking, causing me to not know how to win after I had killed Hitler. Also, there were several capitalization errors and one spelling mistake.
The history section was good, however. I consider myself to be a WWII buff, and I still learned something new from it.
Final Thoughts
-----------------
I felt that, overall, it had a good foundation and concept, but the finer technical and other details needed work and improvement.
OVERALL RATING: 3.2 |
Stephen Richards
Official Reviewer |
Posted on 02/11/05 @ 12:00 AM
Unusually for AoK, the backdrop for this scenario is World War II. You are an Allied agent on a mission to assassinate Hitler. In doing so you must negotiate your way through a labyrinthine Nazi castle complex in order to assassinate various eminent Nazis, culminating in the arch-baddie himself.
PLAYABILITY (3)
Initially, the history (not for the faint-hearted), unusual plot and map design caught my interest and I was interested to see what might unfold. There is some fun to be had, but after a while I found it slightly repetitive due to the endless maze and the succession of (mainly) archers popping up one at a time. A minor irritation was that otfen when clicking somewhere to move my men I clicked on a piece of wall and they started attacking it instead (perhaps the walls could be allied?). The health pack idea is fine but the 'power-ups' need to be reconsidered as one often receives a less powerful weapon than one had previously. (Another small suggestion: remove the previous soldier rather than killing it.) There was a minor bug with the objective to kill Helga as she 'spoke' after I had killed her and the objective did not disappear for some time; however this does not seriously affect gameplay.
BALANCE (2)
It is too easy. I played on hard and despite the power-up problem mentioned above, one is rarely presented with a sizeable group of enemies at any one time. Also, there are monks dotted about. The real let-down is the series of uber-Nazis to be killed who do not present any additional challenge and, contrary to what the hints say, killing Hitler is a real doddle as he stands behind a locked gate begging to be done over. If only real life were like this...
CREATIVITY (4)
This is a relatively strong point of the scenario. As mentioned, the overall concept is original, the map is generally good, the series of projectile-weapons is good, and there is a lot of inventive renaming of units.
MAP DESIGN (4)
The map is good. The area outside the fortress is suitably forest-like and the maze is, even if repetitive, well done. The author has clearly invested a lot of effort in this.
STORY/INSTRUCTIONS (4)
Few complaints here either. The history is well-researched and provides a chilling reminder, if anyone needs one, of the pathological and inhumanely mechanistic way in which Nazis condemned to death vast numbers of people simply because they didn't think they were 'right'. The instructions, hints and objectives were all fine except for a few spelling and grammatical mistakes. (Speaking of which, the title is spelt "Wolfenstien" in the Blacksmith but "Wolfenstine" in-game.) |
HGDL v0.8.2 |
Rating |
---|
3.3 | Breakdown |
---|
Playability | 2.5 | Balance | 2.5 | Creativity | 4.0 | Map Design | 4.0 | Story/Instructions | 3.5 |
Statistics |
Downloads: | 960 |
Favorites: [] | 0 |
Size: | 188.90 KB |
Added: | 05/11/04 |
|