Who in the name of hell designed & tested that last level? Has ANYONE finished it without cheats?
The section with the 6-8 super heavy soldiers who can take a 40mm grenade to the face & keep fighting was bad enough. The next section with a half dozen of the same troops AND Krieger jumping about like a jedi was what prompted me to cheat. Following that, the volcano bowl section with how many rocket supermutants? Must be at least 20 nemies in total, half of them being the rocket superheavies who are bloody hard to kill one on one much less with the rest of the bowl army blasting the living shit out of you. You can't even sprint to the elevator & scarper because you have to circumnavigate the entire bowl to get to the small room on the other side that enables the lift.
Fucking ridiculous. Rather a shame really because otherwise the game was pretty damned good

Yes i did, it was the most frustrating level i've ever played but i did it.
killed krieger by spamming grenades from a corner. also killing the (super)mutants is alot easier if you use the heavy machinegun you find after krieger, instead of the rocketlauncher
(yeah, makes sense)

i've done it before, though i'll agree it is a bit over the top.

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<raises hand> Me... I know - I am not quite normal, but it was Normal difficulty level, I promise. :P

Just completed the Volcano level now. Loved it, apart from the fact that I made a bit of a mockery of it...
The bit with Krieger jumping around was the hardest. I beat it by throwing a grenade to the left, then to the right, then shotgunning Krieger until he was down. The others in the room weren't too hard after that... :p
I equipped myself with the sniper rifle and a lot of automatic weapons from the armoury before the bowl area, unfortunately my shotgun had run out of ammo by this point. Essentially what I did was get down to the ground and hide behind the right wall, just before the second door into the bowl area. The rocket mutants are alerted to your presence so they come stomping along, but then, amazingly, they just stand there. They musn't be able to look down very well. So basically I just machine gunned their arms until they died, making a nice pile of bodies.
I snipered the other mutants by using the heat sensor and switching between lying down and standing.
The soldiers at the end, just before Doyle were a joke. They all had rocket launchers, which was retarded. All I did was throw rocks at them. And they blew themselves up, scared to death of my rocks. Seriously, try it, it's a joke.
Then I shot Doyles arm. How anti-climatic was that?

It was years since I played that level but I beat it by finding some weird angle too shoot out of the door.

I also found an odd angle on top of some boulders off to the right. That let me take down a few of them with what little ammunition I recall having left.
I also made use of the Quicksave/Quickload feature in a few rough spots though because it was either use that or throw a temper tantrum. I'm a little too old to be doing that. ;)

This game is hard enough on before you even get half way through...I'm used to easy run and gun shooters like Call of Duty. xP

I beat the game in 2004 when it was released. It is very hard, but I managed to kill doyle and the mutants who protect Doyle. I put one of the chairs under the gate (was hard work to get them there^^) and then the gate didn't close, so I was able to get back and take ammo from the boxes.

I beat it with a friend when it came out. Played it on the hardest difficulty.
It was very challenging, but it was also very rewarding when you got the the next checkpoint.
Wish more FPS-games used checkpoints, instead of quicksaving and quickloading every 5 seconds.

I have finished it once, and yes, it was one of the most frustrating moments of computer gaming that I have ever had. I have reloaded the level countless times and managed to find a gap in the rock where I could hide and pick them off one by one. That level was really unbalanced compared to the rest of the game.

I beat the volcano level with the rocket mutants by walking so they could see me, then running back to the door. Then the mutants walked up to the concrete thing the door is on top of. I then walked out and showed myself again, causing them to fire rockets at me. The explosions then made them fall into the lava.

The jumpy mutants I picked off easily with the sniper rifle.

The volcano level is easy once you "cheat" the game just a little:
In the armory you will find a few chairs. One will do just fine.
You have to shoot it all the way to the last door - the one that locks as you pass it.
You have to place the chair on top of the opened door so that it doesn't close when you move back. Also make sure you place the chair as close to the wall as possible. Otherwise the big guys will misfire a rocket into it and the door will close.

After placing the chair as described, just open the door, lure the mutants and retreat to the podium at the beginning of the corridor leading outside. Lie down and wait for the mutants, shooting them off one by one. At the same time you can also return to the armory to replenish ammo anytime you like, the big boys will never come inside...

Anyway, I never had to enter any cheat codes on this level, but I also never play on hard or something and I had to reload at Krieger plenty of times...

I love it so much when the player can use the game engine against itself.
Great find.

And Yes I also did the whole game without cheats, the first time on medium.
And the last level just took me 100 or so attempts to finish ;)