Previous Next

Mien Leiben!!

Let's get something straight right off the bat, I won't say that this new Wolfenstein game from Raven is a fantastic shooter, it's not on that level of quality of something like Killzone 2, or Halo 3, but it's a damn fun shooter to play, at least when you're in the single player campaign. It's pretty much the equivalent of a B-Movie game, with a really goofy, over the top plotline attached to some innately fun gunplay, a few awesome weapons, and some decent level design that's hindered only by the linearity of it all. It's well worth playing at least, and while I might be hesitant to suggest picking it up at full retail price, you could at least go with a demo or rental to see if it's worth that much to you. Otherwise, maybe wait till it hits that $40 price point, and I think that's probably the perfect asking price for this one.

The game isn't a reboot or relaunch of the brand, even if it is the first time we've seen a new Wolfenstein game on consoles in quite a while. In fact, it's a pseudo-sequel to Return to Castle Wolfenstein on the Xbox, even though you don't realize that until you finally see it referenced about 75% of the way in. It's not particularly bogged down in continuity anyways, you'll see a familiar face pop up to let you know that, yes, this is in the same timeline, but outside of that you don't need to have some incredible familiarity with the mythos at play here. The game is simply about being super awesome spy B.J. Blazkowicz, the hero of the day in the Wolfenstein universe, and how many occult infused Nazi's you can blow away in between the 15 or so stages that the game offers up.

From Isenstadt you can take on a few missions, but the game never manages to be as open world as it might appear. Isenstadt itself is broken into a few sections, two Midtown sections, and then the final Downtown area that you can access later in the game. Within those sections you'll come across a few secrets to uncover, some of which are tied into using your Veil power (which I'll talk about in a minute) while others are in the form of the collectibles the game offers up, pieces of intel, gold, and other valuable items (which are basically just gold too). These are both tied into the upgrade system for your items and powers in Wolfenstein, and from the 8 weapons you can get within the game, there's a number of upgrades to unlock and buy, which will vastly improve your weapons from their starting points. Outside of that, you'll occasionally run into the locked door or two around Isenstadt, which usually signifies a Mission you haven't unlocked yet story wise. There are a couple side-missions to uncover, but there's really only about 3 or 4 that aren't tied into the main story or required, so they feel more like an afterthought to the main game than anything else.

Once you have a mission to attend to, you'll have a star appear on the compass that's at the top of your HUD, and you just follow that to get to the right spot. Alternatively you can bring up a map, but it's hardly necessary as the compass almost always does the trick. After you enter the mission you're basically ported to a level, just like any FPS, and that's where the fun starts. The combat in Wolfenstein isn't particularly deep, there's no interesting cover system at play, or anything new or exciting. I'm not really selling you on that B score at the moment, but there's something really fun about the way the levels are laid out, and how the enemy placements fall into that big battle, clear the room, and repeat style of FPS play that's super familiar and nice to fall back on at times.

All the stages have a number of hidden objects to find like in Isenstadt, which adds some replay value to the game and a bit of arbitrary length to a fairly short single player experience. Not going for 100 percent, I was able to finish around the 7-hour mark, which seems to be the norm from other people's experiences. I will say I was pretty annoyed that I couldn't go back to into Isenstadt and access the missions after the end game, if you just hit continue post-game you're dropped right into the end boss fight again, and if you hit new game, you don't get to keep your progress. So you'll want to be thorough the first time through if that's a big deal to you. After you finish the game you do unlock a cheat mode though, so you can start off with all weapons and powers right from the start, which makes things a little interesting. This does turn off achievements, so there's no quick achievement-farming going on.

Outside of your weapons for offenses, B.J. will gain access to four different supernatural powers over the course of the game. You'll start off with the basic Veil power, with the Veil being the other dimension that Black Sun stems from, which tints the world green, and reveals hidden ladder, secret doors, and helpfully highlights enemies for you, allowing you to pick Nazi's off at a distance or in the dark. From there you'll gain the ability to slow down time, create a bullet deflecting shield, and enhance the power of your weapons to tear through enemy shields and cause more damage. The game parcels these out at a somewhat steady pace, so you'll have plenty of time to get acquainted with each of them, and they do become more useful as the game progresses in difficulty. You'll end up using the default Veil power a lot, and because of this it's the one that eats up the least amount of power (which can be replenished in hazy pools of the stuff), while the other three will burn through your meter pretty quickly.

Outside of the single player mode, Wolfenstein offers up three multiplayer modes to choose from. You've got standard Team Deathmatch, and then Objective and Stopwatch modes. Objective and Stopwatch is basically the same thing, except in Stopwatch you're trying to be the fastest team to complete the Objectives. There's eight different maps to choose from, and the maps are actually well designed for Multiplayer in my opinion, and since the game only supports 12 players per round, they're spaced out just enough to give you a little breathing room in between spawns, but not so much that you'll spend more than 30 seconds looking for a firefight to get into. Unfortunately, multiplayer is a bit buggy, I would oftentimes spawn into the middle of a game in progress as a corpse, but yet I could move my prone body around the map until someone would shoot me, at which point I'd respawn and have a view of my character in the third person perspective, which isn't an actual option in the game. I'd have to quit out of the match in this scenario to fix it, and it happened enough that I'd consider it to be a moderately serious bug.

When Multiplayer works I did have some fun with it, but nobody wants to really play Objectives, so you're only going to get a Team Deathmatch experience out of the game for the most part. There's a fair amount of people playing, but the server list is smaller than you might expect, and I'm not sure there will be much support for the game 2-3 months from now. Also, judging from the top spots on the current leaderboards, I think there's an exploit or two for gold earning that needs to be fixed, or else someone has way too much time on their hands. Also, for some reason multiplayer doesn't look nearly as good as the single player game, the models and textures have taken a definite hit, and the animations are bit off.

There are three classes to choose from, and two sides. When you start a match you can pick both, and the three classes represented are Engineers, Medics, and Soldiers. Medics and Soldiers get the most play, but Engineers can be useful for opening up new paths, and allowing you to quickly burst around using their built in Veil ability. For every point of damage you dish out, you'll gain gold, which can then be spent on the game's version of "perks", like buying a flak jacket to reduce damage, or upgrading your classes available weapons. There's not really a lot of stuff to buy, so you won't need to play a great deal of multiplayer to unlock everything. Also, some of the things you can buy do give you an unfair advantage over players just starting up, which throws the balance of multiplayer out the window, so it's not a great experience for everyone, and certainly not always rewarding of skill.

Basically, don't pick up Wolfenstein for the multiplayer, especially if you're hoping for some type of Return to Castle Wolfenstein experience out of it. It's fun, and worth checking out, but hardly competitive or well polished. Instead, you'll be buying this game primarily for the single player experience, which isn't without its own set of faults, but still manages to be fun despite that. I enjoyed it even amidst all my griping, and I think FPS fans will get a kick out of it too. If nothing else, it helps close that gap between the major releases in the genre later this year, and it's certainly worth a rental or a possible purchase.