Wolfenstein Review  

Ze Germans are vershipping Zatan again!  

Played on Xbox 360

by Coxster

On the first day – there was Wolfenstein, one the second, there was Doom.  

Wolfenstein was the game that started it all.  There has been a handful of different versions on just about every platform since it’s early beginnings, and it seems that this current generation won’t be escaping from getting it’s very own version. 

I’m sure there are many people out there who are getting tired of killing Nazis, but since Wolfenstein has always concentrated on an element of the occult and the Nazi obsession of anything supernatural, it’s always had a bit more legs to carry it than other factual renditions of the second World War.  While this new imagining of Wolfenstein lacks the WOW factor that the original held, it still certainly gets a big thumbs up by keeping the action fast, furious and most of all, fun.  

Wolfenstein isn’t a revolutionary shooter by any means of the imagination, it suffers from ideas that we have all seen a million times before.  You have slow motion ‘bullet-time’, hidden dimensional door revealing, gravity puzzles etc, that borrow from every game that has come before it.   From The Darkness to Prey, there are elements that feel as if they have influenced the design of this game, which is kind of funny when you stop and realize that the original Wolfenstein 3-D influenced the industry to spawn one of the most profitable and playable genres ever – the first person shooter.  

Luke...I'm not your father...just some spooky Nazi guy..

Now while you’ve no doubt seen many of the tricks that Wolfenstein pulls out of it’s hat in other games, that doesn’t mean this game is bad, maybe just a little bit uninspired when it comes to design.  Not every game that comes along needs to set the world on fire, but there is a benchmark of fun that needs to be reached and luckily Wolfenstein reaches it. 

For the first hour or two you’ll be running around the Nazi occupied city of Isenstadt meeting up with all different types of underground resistance fighters as well as your usual profit driven black market guys, but there are some nice characters here that end up being quite memorable as you go about your business of bringing down the local Nazi presence.  At first it feels like just another WW2 shooter but then the supernatural elements start to creep into the storyline and the gameplay and the storyline takes a few more twists and turns along the way. 

You play as BJ Blazcowicz, which has shown up in just about every Wolfenstein game made, and no we don’t know what the BJ stands for but we’re sure you have a good imagination about you to work it out your own version J .   The downside to BJ is that he is pretty two dimensional and lacks the depth that a character this old should of developed by now.  You never really care enough about the guy and as a result the story can tend to fall a bit flat.  If only they made him like an Indiana Jones type of character that was a soldier in WW2, give him a witty script that dealt with the dark subject matter in a adventurous light and the game would’ve benefited greatly.  As is, the story is about as thin as the paper it was written on.  Luckily the gameplay is actually very decent to make up for it.  

Hope you like the colour Aqua, there is a lot of it in this game. 

Early in the game, BJ becomes the new owner of a very mysterious medallion that gives him several powers, slowing of time, ability to see hidden doors, shield powers and one that gives you an adrenalin burst allowing you to dish out considerable damage on Nazi scum.  

While the medallion is a great idea in theory, there was very little incentive to use it as you can get around most of the enemies without the need to slow down time or use extra damage.  There are moments when the game requires that you have to use the Veil medallion to advance past an obstacle, but otherwise you’ll just want to engage the Nazis with some old fashioned weaponry.  

As you progress you’ll get to spend cash that you’ve earned along the way by upgrading weapons or buying new ones from the shady characters that lurk around various street corners and sewers.   You won’t get tons of cash so you’re not going to be able to buy everything early on the game so think about what you’re after and what your gameplan is going to be when you go on the offensive.  

Possible one of the best parts of this game was the satisfying sounds of the weapons.  Man, they just sound so spot on.  Satisfying pops and locks, booms and recoils, absolutely nailed it. There is a good array of weapons on offer – rocket launchers, grenades, MP40, sniper rifles but funnily enough there is no shotgun but you get a awesome flamethrower and some wonderful sci-fi guns.  The real stars are the guns that you usually don’t see everyday such as the kick-arse Telsa gun that literally vaporizes everything with in front of you with electricity.  It’s a gun for a man with baaawwwls and I’ve decided that it should appear in every game from now on.  I love that gun.  

The multiplayer in Wolfenstein is probably the biggest criticism I can give the entire game.  It is pretty much exactly the same as ‘Return to Castle Wolfenstein’ which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just that it feels a little old now.  There are three classes to choose from – Soldier, Engineer and Medic.  No explaining needed I’m sure.  Most of the maps are just standard WW2 era themed and you’ll be pretty much playing only Deathmatch as I couldn’t find a match with any of the other modes while I was writing this review.  Return to Castle Wolfenstein had plenty of legs back in the day but since times have changed and Wolfenstein hasn’t changed with them, I’m not entirely sure how popular online games are going to be.  I hope there is a community big enough to support it because I had some fun while it lasted, but I’ll be honest and say that it was nowhere near as much as half the games that are popular on Live right now.  

Does anyone agree that if this was real, the Germans probably would of won?

Wolfenstein was a hard one to score, on one hand it lacks any original ideas and doesn’t boast the nicest looking graphics you’ve seen in a game, yet on the other hand there is something gleefully fun about Wolfensteins gameplay and weaponry.   There’s nothing technically flawed about it, the framerate is fairly smooth, but the open world design is actually a clever illusion.  This game is just as linear as any other but at least you can pick what order you want to complete missions in.  There is something undeniably fun about it, even though it feels like you’ve seen everything this game has to offer somewhere else.  

Definitely only for those that love Wolfenstein and shooters.  Others looking for a high concept experience like Bioshock will have to keep on waiting.  This is all about guns, Nazis and shooting.  When you come to think about it, what more do you need in a game?