Operation: Rheingold, Episode 2: "Gestapo

what the fuck is it with creating stronger hitscanners and placing them everywhere that people think is actually fun?

Rheingold 2 has just about as much Dehacked work as Arctic Wolf, providing loads of destructable objects (mugs, clocks, prisoners) plus lots of hitscan enemies. the setting is grimmer and grayer, providing rats as the first batch of actual foes along with turrets and loads of Gestapo officials soon following. again, their health values are much higher, the more advanced ones who apparently drop the new chaingun replacement could easily shrug a rocket to the face. again, this is a problem when you put so many of these guys into your maps, and the end of MAP02 along with much of MAP03 seem to put these guys everywhere. not to say some of the other souped-up hitscanners aren't lacking in health either, because they have quite a lot too. as far as I can tell weapon progression is a bit slow too, with the machine gun showing up in a secret on the first map and the SSG and chaingun replacements showing up in the second, rest follow soonafter. the boss monsters got several changes that are akin to the ones in Arctic Wolf, the Hans clones that shoot their chainguns fire instantaneously which is actually unavoidable, while the rocket variants also instanteneously fire (and why is it translucent again?). Panzer tanks on the last level also shoot translucent rockets for some reason (also they shoot even if you are out of range). health is difficult to find, although it's done better than in Arctic Wolf, thankfully.

so now what does Rheingold 2 do pretty well? level layouts. finally, there's no stupidly done symmetry. although there are still some samey rooms, they're pretty well designed and as I said before, destructable objects are fun to shoot. the three levels are all quite large, especially the latter two. still a bit of backtracking so use the automap markers if needed. now MAP03 I mentioned earlier, it would be nice, but those uber-SS ruin it, along with the chaingun shooting Hans clones that are in some of the main hallways, which is cheap to say the least. also those barricades to prevent access on the streets? I can walk right through them for some dumb reason.

I really wanted to like this, seeing as how both Rheingolds are well-received by everyone else especially by WolfenDoom standards, and this one has the better levels, but the changes to some of the enemies is more frustrating to handle than exciting. now if Laz had decided to continue the Rheingold series (there were several more episodes planned), obviously the level layouts here are a good example of what should be done.