lilmanjs wrote:I loved the ending of your storyline. does this mean that I get to be the last mod with an Annotated guide.
lilmanjs, it doesn't mean that at all. It just means that the Henry Irons character will not participate in any adventures dated later than 1948.
I tried my hand at Floor 9 on Episode 5 using the machine gun instead of the knife, and there was no comparison at all. It takes a whole lot longer with the knife as primary weapon, but it's a lot more satisfying. The scenario where there is a Mutant and an SS behind an open pillared area, and off to the left, there's two red stone blocks forming an open entrance to a room full of Mutants, that was very hard to do with the knife.
The Final Fight was definitely the best knife mod I've played. I started using the knife when I played The Golden Episodes in July, 2005 because there didn't seem to be a lot of extra ammo. It was pretty easy to use the knife in that one because there were mainly square corners at doorways, and you always got to fight them face to face and one at a time. I then continued to use the Knife for the annotated A Touch of Nazi, Operation Heimzalung, and Spear Resurrection. Of course it is impossible to do Project Eisenritter with the knife. In these annotateds, a big part of the reason why I use the knife is so I can leave all the ammo and health powerups behind for the saved game at the end of the floor. The enemies were A LOT 'smarter' in The Final Fight than the other ones I've played. Some of the scenarios where you have to lure Officers or Mutants back a long distance were really fun, because you have to go get them, and bring them back one at a time. They seem to have some sort of perimeter in which they stay, and you can only get them to come after you if you get inside it, and also don't move too far away too quickly. The obstacles around some of the door entrances made for some good challenges as well.
I actually used the HKMS-940 early in episode 1, on floor 10, so I didn't get entirely into Henry mode until a couple of floors in. Although I had been using the knife most of the time, I hadn't tried it against Mutants yet. I don't think there's any thrill in a Wolfenstein game bigger than a one minute plus knife battle against a Mutant, where you have to adjust your stabbing point multiple times. If you don't, you'll have a stalemate, and he'll get you when your index finger gets tired.
There was only the one floor, I can't remember which episode, but there are a whole lot of guards in a wood panelled hallway as you come out of the elevator, one guard straight on, and others from around the corners on the right and left; I'm not sure you can get through that one with just a pistol and ten rounds, without a lot of health damage. If you can remind me which one that is, I'll try it.
My enjoyment of the game is in making it as challenging as possible. Later on, I'll probably just pick a random floor here and there, walk through the end of floor saved game, then play to just get to the elevator alive, but with no saving allowed. I use guns almost exclusively when I'm playing that way, but then I'm playing as BJ instead of as Henry.
If you like the Henry Irons character, maybe you would consider doing a mod, or just a floor, where ammo is scarce, and you have to use the knife a fair bit of the time, or you won't have enough ammo to start the next floor. Is it possible to assign a point value to unused ammo, say, by defining the total number of bullets on a floor, and deducting the value on one bullet for each shot fired by or at BJ?
Henry's sort of like a movie actor, so multiple takes are usually required. For me, it just seems to be a more cerebral way to play. The game can be easier, but it doesn't have to be.
There's also the mysterious 'Jordan' listed in the epilogue as the third surviving member of the Scorpion Squad. It's not made clear if Jordan is a first or last name, or what his fighting style is, only that he's still doing missions in 1948.
As for Henry Irons, He was invented on December 16. After I completed the episode 1 and 2 notes, I reread the Read This! contained in the game, and decided to build on that story. I didn't use any of the stories that follow a completed episode. Maybe the episode 1 & 2 notes are from George Herman, and Henry's notes begin with episode 3, because that's where he found the Mutant George Herman. There is a shooting gallery in episode 2, but that could just be a Scorpion Squad thing, leaving some target practice for another member following you.
It actually worked out well that I released the annotated editions in three parts, because there is a distinct difference between the storyline and notes in each two-episode section. I found the game more interesting to play, so I decided to make the annotated version more interesting to read. All the tips about stabbing angles, luring, etc are contained in the notes for the first four episodes, so if you want to go knife for the last two episodes, it's assumed that you can figure out what Irons did by the locations of the dead bodies, but just as importantly, by the places where you encounter multiple opponents, but few or no bodies. This is partially explained in the epilogue. Henry leaves BJ a gingerbread crumb trail of Nazis leading to each key.
Unfortunately, there's really no way to tell how many bodies may be on the same spot. One thing I've noticed on all of the 'knife' mods I've played is that there is an absolute limit to how much extra ammo can be on the floor at any given time. After a certain point, they stop dropping anything when you stab them, and you can't recover it if you shoot somewhere else. If that problem could be solved, then you could determine how many dead bodies are on a given spot, (not counting dogs), by firing all the ammo on the completed floor saved game, and taking note of how much you pick up when you cross the corpse piles.
If you load one of the end-of-floor saved games, in the storyline you are BJ walking around the floor that Irons has already cleared, that's why you see the dead bodies where Irons killed them, and the health and ammo powerups that Irons didn't need, but not the treasure, because Irons took that for himself. And, while walking around the empty floor, it's BJ's face we see at the bottom of the screen. Every so often, BJ encounters a shooting gallery that Irons has left for him.
If you look at the file creation dates for my saved games, you will see some large gaps in episodes 1 & 2. I completed one floor between September 29 and October 20, and there was a five week gap between the last saved game on episode 1 and the first saved game on episode 2. The last four episodes were completed in about four weeks. I became more interested in completing the full six episodes after seeing some positive comments in this forum about the first installment. I didn't have any feedback on my previous annotated versions, but looking back on them, most don't have all that much detail, and I didn't do a storyline on any of the previous ones. If there was a message board like this back then, I didn't know about it.
I can't be sure if or when I will do another annotated mod, but if someone would like to make a poll as to which mod they'd most like to see annotated, I would consider the results, how many respond, which one they want to see. Maybe it would be for a brand new or forthcoming game, that nobody's played yet.
You did a great job making this game, so I thought I would give it a worthy companion. Glad you thought so.
Re: Annotated Files For The Final Fight - Episodes 5 & 6
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