Finished this on the hardest difficulty.

Let me get the positives out of the way first.

Level design and pacing is top notch and keeps you engaged. As an action shooter fps, there's always danger at every corner, and the game in a certain manner acclimates you to efficiently dealing with enemies of numerous kinds. The game offers you different type of guns that you get as you progress on. My favorite is the thermal sniper that effectively kills an human enemy with one shot, but the downside is that the weapon has limited ammo and there's no replacement for it for the game. Since this is a shooter that came from the early 2000s, alongside the old Call of Duty and Medal of Honor games, health and ammo are picked up throughout the levels. On harder difficulties, you'll probably need to do a bit of item management since you get only a limited amount of these pick-ups, and you can't afford to freely shoot your guns out.

Okay. Now. For the negatives (derogatory).

Who said this was the fucking peak of Wolfenstein? Whatever I said earlier is horrendously mauled to absolute death by how this plays out. Bulletsponge enemies are one of this game's worst fucking sins. The amount of times this game forces you to save/load because the enemies are also insufferable hitscan machines, especially those damn Tyrant ass ripoffs, that shoot your health down in mere nanoseconds. This brutal system forces you to play conservatively and strips the games of any ounce of fun to be had. Also, most of the games guns shoot so unsatisfyingly dumb, awkward, and at most times they seem to glitch and not hit their target. The sniper rifle is one example of this, since I have used it enough times to know it doesn't hit the target 7 times out of 10.

What made the devs think that loading the game with more than one of those Tyrant brutes was a good idea? They are easily the hardest obstacle you'll face in this game due to their sheer bullshittery aimlocking at you, and you will find yourself circling around pillars and hoping your measly ass minigun can finish them off.

Grenades don't throw well in this game and Blazkowicz just tosses them halfheartedly, as if this WWII is just a fucking bowling game. This renders the grenades ABSOLUTELY useless and you should not bother using them, because one thing that also nullifies their function is the fact that enemies will just avoid them whenever you throw them.

Stealth in this game is also useless and it's just a trite accessory to add to this game's espionage nature. You could be five hundred kilometers away, hidden by a thick fog, and somehow a Nazi with just an MP40 from that distance will start shooting at you and all his bullets will hit yours sorry little ass.

I did not care for the story. The writing is decent, and the plot at most is nonexistent. The ending is abrupt and completes the tasteless flavor of "you win" in your mouth.

The Paderborn level is what I wished this whole game should've been, since a dazzling amount of untapped potential in atmosphere, stealth, storytelling, and action is in that one level, and that one level is the only good memory I will keep of this game. Listening to Fur Elise while I aim my Sten at the back of an unsuspecting German officer is the apogee of immersion this game has ever had, and I am somewhat bitter they didn't realize the magic beneath all the jank they made.

City

“The centennial forest
penetrates the city
but the forest is inside
of the sea.

There are arrows in the air
and warriors that wonder
lost between branches
of coral.

On top of the new houses
holm oaks move
and the sky has huge
crystal curves.”

Ciudad, Palimpsestos I, "Primeras Canciones", Federico García Lorca (1922)

What are crabs to the pointing of my most divine index finger? I watch them scramble away to the directions I intended them to go, heaving on their behinds domes of human trash and aluminum cans, made inviting to them by the gnarly industry paint and their animalistic simplicity, ever so gullible. With my finger, I made them go to find better houses, perhaps out of the intrinsic human value of kindness, or just the mortal syndrome to play God every now and then, satisfying some undefined high goal before we become additions to the dust in the air, inhaled by the basest of organisms, then exhaled somewhere else, or nowhere.

Or there’s more reason to this instant impulse of pointing one’s hand, to guide mindless crustaceans out of their sordid state of habitation into natural ways to house themselves. Perhaps, being void of anything dualistic for the moment, exempt from good and evil and all that talk, what made you point your fingers through the waters and compel unmindful sea creatures to a change of place? Is it truly because the game indirectly alludes this manner to us, or is it more than just the game?

Am I the evil, cruel tyrant if I refuse to house these little crabs into better domains? Am I enlightened, or rectified in the eyes of the world if I do the vice versa? What is truly gaming? What are crabs? Why and why?

Such questions must be given answers, but they remain dormant, asleep in the futility of mystery.