Wolfenstein II: The Freedom Chronicles - Episode 2 DLC

[b] It's worth being said as a preface; above all, this is NOT worth the original asking price. Get this on a deep sale or something. $10 for essentially an asset-flip of pre-existing Wolfenstein II levels with literally no new features added is an absolute disgrace. [/b] This is better. $10 is a disgrace - I have to stress that again - but as far as the Freedom Chronicles go, this is the best one by far and is actually a pretty decent level in its own right even when you compare it to the base game. Playing as Claudia Black is always a treat and the game does a pretty good job at pushing you to use a specific playstyle that only seemed barely superficial in the base game - in this case, it's stealth. You [b] could [/b] stealth your way through Wolfenstein II, but come on - it's a Wolfenstein game! If you're not blowing Nazi bodies apart with loud, obnoxious weaponry, can you even say you got your money's worth? Well, you're given the perfect excuse to scratch your stealthing itch in this one. The whole thing, from the level design to the soundtrack to the very narrative, gears you towards using stealth. You play as a former OSS agent who has come back to kill Nazis and avenge her husband. She's a woman, her whole background is being a spy, she was married to a spy - face it, you're a stealthy spy! You're also given the 'torso contortion' ability from the base game (which can be missed as you have to pick between it or two other abilities) and each level is a well-designed maze of air vents to crawl through and props to take cover behind as you use your throwing knives and silenced pistol to take the enemies out one by one. Of course, you always have the choice of saying 'f*ck it' and blitzing through the levels guns-blazing (though, unlike the other FC levels, this game actually punishes you for doing that by limiting your armour to 40) but I feel like that would be going against what they intended with this. Rather than it just being 'more Wolfenstein', they wanted to experiment with a different kind of playstyle and that's something you should keep in mind if you want to get the most out of this. But, again, I feel like they could have done more. They could have gone further with the premise. The rules of stealth are basically the same as the base game - the only difference being that the levels themselves are just more designed with stealth in mind. They could have switched it up by maybe making it so Death's running and sprinting don't make any more noise than crouching? Or maybe that a headshot from her pistol when undetected one-shot kills no matter who the enemy is? Speeding up her stealth kill animation to incentivise getting in close and not just picking them off from a distance? Just some ideas, but any three of those probably would have done a decent enough job at incentivising that playstyle even more than just the level design. The DLC's fine as it is, but as always with these Freedom Chronicles - they could have done more, and that's the ultimate problem. But unlike the other two, this one's fun enough to play as is.