FOREST COMPOUND- RETURN TO CASTLE WOLFENSTEIN
It seems like forcing players to be sneaky and silent in games that were clearly not built for that purpose used to be something that developers like they had to cross of a checklist in the early 2000s. Return to Castle Wolfenstein was an excellent game, but the forced stealth mission in Deathshead’s forest compound near the beginning of the game is decidedly not excellent. Anytime you were spotted by a nazi, the enemies triggered an alarm, which led to an insta-fail. But what about you kill a nazi after they notice you and start firing at you? Well, the other nazis still trigger the alarm, leading to, you guessed it, an insta-fail. But what if you just killed all the nazis in the level silently? Great idea, right? Except you couldn’t do that, because if at least one nazi wasn’t left alive, the game gave you an insta-freaking-fail. This was, well and truly, the definition of a chore.
