Recent reviews by skurrier

It should have been so awesome, the intersection of Machine Games' Wolfenstein series which I love and Arcane's Dishonored series which I also love.

And it was, for a while.

The Zeppelin you start on was pure Wolfenstein over-the-top insanity, the girls were fun to play with, and the enemies were challenging-but-not-too-much to get past, you were fighting your way through a linear level with clear objectives as the General got increasingly annoyed with your antics.

But then it ended, we landed with a bump and things started to go downhill.

***

The architecture of the four open areas was incredible, Arcane clearly put their heart and soul into every little corner. Every element, from the large streetscapes littered with stuff to the little apartments and corners you could get into were lovely varied spaces to shoot soldiers in. These places felt lived in and purposeful, like their occupants had just left. The catacombs were the standard Wolfenstein home base, but as always, executed with colour and flair and it felt just as lived in and varied as the bunker or the submarine, just lined with bones and rock instead of steel or concrete.

I didn't mind the levelling and grinding, and the sidequests required for that provided an excellent opportunity to have some fun romps around the four expansive chunks of the city.

The weapon and skill upgrade system was standard RPG fare, even if the weapon upgrades were just a choice between accuracy, DPS and damage in various forms.

And all four "raid" missions were fun romps through beautiful over-the-top opulent spaces, ploughing through waves and waves of various soldiers on your way to move the plot forwards.

The story was fine. I won't go into detail, but it was believable enough to make sense and insane enough to be the story of a Wolfenstein game. I only wish there was more of it.

*****

It's just that while all of these components were excellent and the game ran well (once I switched to Proton on Linux) and overall I can't find any fault in almost any of the various parts of it, it just doesn't really fit together to make a coherent whole.

Everything was compromised in one form or another to make the other bits fit:

The extensive story of previous iterations got stuffed into cutscenes and radio chatter, leaving it feeling almost like it was optional.

Enemies in all areas constantly level up to match your skills - so there's no differentiation between the four open-world areas: there's nowhere obvious to start after the zeppelin, just four places to go to and three missions you're told you can't do yet. This sort of open-world progression is something that Borderlands does well: you start in some starter area with low level enemies and low level weapons, then as you move the story forwards and tick off side quests and level up, you unlock more and more challenging areas with higher and higher level enemies. Wolfenstein Youngblood's model of giving you a bunch of side quests and three missions you can't do just felt confusing: Why was I going to area #2 on my first side quest? Why did these side quests take me on zig-zagging trips throughout the city? Why are all three story missions available from the start?

There was no real weapon progression either, this was something the previous games did well, particularly Wolfenstein The Old Blood: you started with a knife and gained weapons as you progressed, generally getting a weapon just before you needed it. In Wolfenstein Young Blood other than the heavy or kraftwerk weapons, you're just given everything and expected to pick and choose, making it possible to get into situations you couldn't just shoot your way out of.

The previous Wolfenstein games had excellent optional-stealth mechanics: you could stealth effectively from the very beginning and once you'd gained the silencer for the pistol it became reasonably straightforward to slowly sneak through an area, taking out soldiers as you went through. Here the only real nod to stealth was the cloak skill, except it was compromised in the interests of upgradability to the point where it was useless at the start and by the time you'd upgraded it enough to stealth around effectively, you were late in the game and it was just as effective to shoot them.

Then there's the level design: all those people-just-left scenes were beautiful and gave the setting life, but they didn't have the narrative punch of previous Arcane games. In Dishonored, particularly the first game, Arcane added an extra waft of life to these places by adding weepers: even though the story was always the same - people lived here, they became the weepers you just killed, and here are the last artifacts of their life - they were varied and interesting and fleshed out the setting and the lore. However, Wolfenstein Youngblood doesn't have anything even remotely like weepers to put there, so they were just empty rooms that sometimes contained soldiers disconnected from the overall story of the game.

And then we get to the undergrounds. Definitely a great way to break up the missions, but they were all the same: drop down a level, go through a heavy door, enter a world of dark tunnels full of trash and junk. The first one was interesting and cool, the second one was a bit samey, and after visiting all of them at least twice, the only ones I actually remember any part of were those which had beautiful surprises where the drudgery opened out into something unique and special. Also why were the soldiers hanging around in the dark again?

The treasure hunting missions added in the 1.07 patch that appear after the story ends were interesting and new, particularly the two new undergrounds they add, but also felt like they were just a way to re-use every area of the game by making players re-visit them and didn't really add to the story. That was the whole problem with the side missions: yes, they were all in-theme and fit in the story, it's just that almost none of them really extended it, they were just "go there, do the thing" and you're done.


Overall it's a game worth playing, once, until you get bored of it, after buying it on a deep discount.

Which is a shame as every element and every area of every level had obviously been polished to a beautiful shine. People had poured their hearts into this game. It just isn't good enough to make it over the line to become a "good" game: it's components felt compromised and didn't integrate well, making it feel like an imitation of the Wolfenstein games I love. Almost like someone had taken elements of the games I love to make their own strange new thing.

I enjoyed it, mostly because it truly was the intersection of two game serieses that I do love, but my tastes are not your tastes and my tastes are weird. I will finish it and will make an effort to 100% it, but I'm unlikely to play it again.

If you love the Wolfenstein games, in spite of their flaws, then this is a game worth playing. For everyone else, maybe not, there are better Arcane games and better Wolfenstein games out there already.

A bizarre journey through vintage computing and mythology.

Awesomely terrifying and terrifyingly awesome. Definitely recommended!

Arguably, replacing the graphic novel sequences in the first two games with cutsenese was the logical next step, however they went too far with just about every corridor, room or yard started and ended with a cutscene. This gets tiring. It also makes it rather annoying to quit for the night after the current round of running and shooting. That said, the story is slick and engaging enough to keep you playing, despite the massive plot holes.

Gameplay is classic Max Payne, run around, shoot lots of guns and people, fly through the air in slo-mo, kill baddies, make film-noir style quips about the situation and repeat. Parts of it were rather frustrating, particularly when the cover mechanic failed for whatever reason, i.e. getting into cover so you're on the side of the pillar where the baddies are, or the only obvious cover not actually shielding you from the baddies.

Overall I'd recommend it, but don't expect to want to play it again.

ETA: The worst thing that stuck out at me was that I came across a section which was essentially copy-pasted from another, down to the distinctive piece of cover you started the first instance at.

Incredibly beautiful, excellent storyline and an engaging atmosphere. It's like Dear Esther with puzzles.

Sadly let down by it's length. It feels like a very large place with not much to do in it. While the puzzles are engaging, there's a lot of space between them and it doesn't feel like there's enough to do to make it feel "full".

Or maybe I've been playing too many other games where the environment is more "rich" - this is the only criticism I have of Dear Esther too.

Strongly recommended when on sale.

A worthy entry in the Bioshock series. Compelling story, good gameplay, excellent graphics.

Anything I could say about the game other than "play it" would ruin it. So play it.

It's like the gaming equivalent of an high-action beach holiday: Calm, refreshing, rapid, tense and very enjoyable. I hope DICE / EA gets off their collective ass and makes a sequel.

Stupid fun, that's all I can really say, it's somewhere between too short and too long and the story could use more resolution