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Return to Castle Wolfenstein
- Weapon pickups in Return to Castle Wolfenstein provide random amounts of ammo within a certain range. This is especially bad with the Panzerfaustnote because it is quite rare and every shot matters when you're up against Proto and Uber Soldats. Due to this many players resorted to Save Scumming to get the maximum amount from every pickup they found.
- There's a toggle option in the menu that forces you to press the Use key to manually pick up weapons and items, emulating what would become standard with The New Order. Most players leave it off because, even if they're coming from The New Order and are used to it, it's not quite fully-developed here, most notably refusing to let you pick up some required items until you turn it back off.
Wolfenstein (2009)
- Enemies respawning after you've already cleared an area in the 2009 Wolfenstein. You may have finished a mission and go to backtrack to the central hub, only to discover that the seemingly-empty central stage has once again been littered with additional fresh troops who are trying to impede you. This aspect of the game was repeatedly called out by reviews, who said that it had a detrimental impact on the flow of the missions.
Wolfenstein: The New Order/The Old Blood
- To some, the need to press the Use key on every individual object to pick it up in The New Order, from the expected like objective items even to simple pieces of metal to add a single point to your armor meter. While it has its uses (such as being able to save better health and armor pickups if you're already near to your maximum and would be wasting most of their boost trying to solve a puzzle rather than getting shot at), it's still baffling even to those who don't mind it, considering how good the game otherwise is at emulating the late-'90s/early-2000s era of shooters, where everything was picked up by just running over it.
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus
- Annoying in that it's actually a vital part of shooter gameplay: player damage feedback. While the previous game wasn't the most consistent or efficient with it either, in The New Colossus, there's barely any indication that you've been taking damage beyond the blurring and some darkening of the screen edges. The result is that there could be an enemy behind you plugging you with a shotgun and you may not have a single idea he's doing that until you notice you're taking damage while no one in front is shooting. Considering the Nintendo Hard nature of the game, especially since you spend half of it with only 50 max health, it's entirely possible and even extremely likely that you'll keel over dead and not have any idea what just killed you because two soldiers chewed through your health and armor out of view and the game made no effort to tell you.
- Unlike New Order, in which stealth was a viable (and even suggested) way of moving through many levels, it has been greatly downgraded in this installment. No longer does the player have the ability to choose a perk to help them find officers on the map, while enemies in general have had their armor and perception greatly increased, not to mention the player not having the ability to move bodies out of sight. As a result, players are generally advised to ignore stealth entirely and simply go through missions guns-blazing.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood
- Youngblood doesn't pause when the player enters a menu, meaning that if this is done during an active firefight, it will leave them vulnerable to attack and become extremely easy to down. Unlike games such as Alien: Isolation (where the lack of ability to pause is a gameplay mechanic that's largely tied to the presence of a single, unkillable enemy), attempting to pause the game in the middle of a hectic scenario in Youngblood is a surefire recipe for a quick death.
- Enemies have different weaknesses to certain guns, which are represented as small (very small) icons below their health bars. The problem is that the system isn't particularly intuitive, and it can be difficult to figure out which weapon corresponds to which type of armor. In addition, it doesn't take into account the possibility of you not upgrading the "right" weapon or running out of ammo for it, forcing you to engage enemies with the "wrong" weapon, meaning you have to consume even more ammo to take them down. As a result of this system, you don't have the freedom to switch up your weapon loadouts however you like based on your playstyle, instead having to pay constant attention on saving the right weapon for the right enemy.
- Should you die to a boss, you will be kicked back to the beginning of the stage they were in, meaning you will have to replay up to 20 minutes worth of gameplay just to get back to the boss. Even worse, your ammo doesn't refresh when you are sent back to a checkpoint, and you respawn with the amount of ammo you had when you died. This means you can potentially restart an entire level or boss fight with no ammunition.
- The "buddy" system in the single-player mode was criticized for not working as intended (mainly due to the AI being as thick as shit), with the AI sister often being downed, forcing the player to resurrect her constantly during boss fights. Conversely, the AI will often refuse to revive the player when they are downed, in many cases refusing to do so even when they are near each other. This was criticized for having a detrimental effect on the flow of gameplay, especially within the later stages.
- Enemies respawning after you've cleared a hub area. Yes, one of the most maligned mechanics from the 2009 reboot (itself an example of this) rears its ugly head again, compounded by the fact that you might be short on ammo or not realize this has happened until it's too late.
