Jennitiger1138's Blog - Jan to Mar 18 (1 follower)
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Jan01
Wolfenstein II: Mein LebenPermalink
OK, so for those of you who don't know Wolfenstein II has a one life achievement called Mein Leben, basically complete the game one go, no saves, on the hardest difficulty.

Now lets take a moment to consider this task, the hardest difficulty, I am death incarnate, is pretty brutal, a couple of shots from a rifle or a shotgun at mid range and ooop game over. However health and armour is fairly abundant as is ammo and you can take cover and lean out and shoot, large parts can be stealthed, sections can be run through to the end of the level and when you have to fight a good choke point sees the idiot AI come to you. So what's the problem, it sound like a breeze? Well it's true that once you have played through the game and practiced the harder parts, when to fight, when to stealth and when to run, the game on the IADI difficulty is not that bad, a full play through takes 4-4.5 hours.

Now I have started the Mein Leben setting 43 times and have made it no further than a part roughly 2 hours in, The Courthouse. Here is where the game throws everything out the window and proceeds to take a big steaming crap on you from a great height, it's an arena section, no running to the end of the level, no stealth, you have to fight. But, and here is the fun part, you start with only 1 gun and very limited ammo, yes there is the chance to grab another gun at the start so you can dual wield, but you have to have ammo, also you start with the health and armour from the previous level, so if you got torn up then, well your life span may be measured in nano seconds, there is health and armour dotted about but again you have to be able to get to them and I have on occasion lost more than I have gained getting it.

Now I have made it to this part on 16 of my 43 starts, so roughly 1 in 3, the others have failed usually through mistakes on my part (you can not be complacent or take any section for granted, bugs in the game, enemies pathing differently or them doing something different from what has gone every time before. My 16 failures have come about from the same thing, grenades. Don't get the impression that the enemies are the 'nade happy arseholes from say Call of Duty World at War, in fact they rarely throw them, generally they toss them if they do not have line of sight on you. The problem is down to the spot I take cover, which is the same as all videos show and recommend (and the spot I chose when I was playing through my first time). And the reason for this spot? it's next to an infinite ammo box and it's a dead end.

Now in all my attempts, I have grabbed my second gun, full health and armour carried over, sprint to my spot, load up on ammo and peek out and shoot and the enemies as they come. So far so good, at this point they toss grenades from my right to left which invariably lands to my left and slightly behind me, at this point I die. It's because I try and lob it back which generally gets me shot as I have left cover or realising I can not leave cover to toss it back and instead back further into my dead end where a staircase will shield me from the blast but I get shot as I am now out of cover and exposed from across the room or I plain do not see the grenade land, even with sound up and music off they are hard to spot, oh and the indicator is non existent unless you are looking at it.

Why don't you practice this spot before starting a Mein Leben run and wasting 2 hours 16 times? Well I have, many, many times but due to the fact that all the perks in the game increment regardless of hitting a checkpoint and thus making you more powerful in terms of damage, these practice runs are not representative of a restart from scratch, Mein Leben is on a new save and nothing carries over.

The game after the Courthouse is significantly easier in my opinion as you unlock a new skill which will double your health and you can fall back on the stealth, chokepoint and run tactics for the remainder of the game, yes the pressure ramps up the further you go and there are a couple of "spare underwear on standby" moments but nothing even coming close to the difficulty of this part.

Currently only 11 people have managed to complete this achievement and I really want to add myself to the list but unless I can get past the Courthouse I am no more likely than I am walking to Mars.
Posted by Jennitiger1138 on 01 January 18 at 19:51 | Last edited on 02 January 18 at 17:13 | There is 1 comment on this blog post - Please log in to comment on this blog.
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