Wolfenstein, Imperfect and Bizarre

The best part about playing Wolfenstein is that I got to jump into one of my favorite universes, and get to kill some Nazis in brilliantly gory ways. Unfortunately, this installment of the game graphically is missing some undefinable soul. ‘Id’ commonly makes great shooters, and I’m not quite sure what happened here. It’s not that the fun is gone exactly, but rather the game play just feels dated. The controls haven’t been updated much beyond the 2001 entry ‘Return to Castle Wolfenstein’ or even ‘Wolfenstein 3D’ for that matter.

The entire game is precipitated on fighting magic Nazis who have been a part of some paranormal experiments. It creates for a really fun first act with some twists that are exciting, and as the story plods on the whole idea sort of diminishes/implodes on itself. While a couple of boss fights break away from the monotony I felt like I kept on falling into the FPS run and gun rut. Which would be fine, but I’ve just been too spoiled by duck and cover games that feel more tactical. The assortment of guns are pretty standard here, and as always there are a couple of stand outs which are a really good time to wield. The only complaint I have with the armament is that like most Wolfenstein games it takes awhile to get to the “fun guns”.

The setup for this revisionist history/sci-fi combo pack is very Wolfenstein-esque, and the adventure is helmed by our good friend B.J. Blaskowicz. The cut scenes are always something I look forward to, and here they are simply lack luster. Maybe they just didn’t have the time or couldn’t find character animators who did much better than wooden, but something strange is happening with the lip sync that seems circa 1999. It’s this sort of unenthusiastic attempt at an obviously well funded game that makes it miss the mark in pretty obvious ways.

It’s not for lack of landscapes because there really are some well made backdrops here that give you a feeling of “being there”, but the game play just doesn’t make it too worthwhile to struggle through level after level. At times the game is much harder than others, and I had difficulty getting through spots that didn’t seem to warrant it. Then again it could have been just me and my inconsistent skills. The one thing I really couldn’t get enough of was how gravity would suddenly break down, and the melee turned into chaos. It’s also interesting to jump into ‘The Veil’ which seems very reminiscent of when Frodo wears the Ring. In this place you get special powers that allow you to be temporarily superhuman. It’s one of those worlds that you end up relying on to get past all the hard parts in a desperate quest to see the next mediocre cut scene.

On an Absolute scale of -10 thru +10 where | -10 = amazingly bad | 0 = terrible | +10 = truly perfect. I have to give this entry a 4. It has just enough to set itself apart from awful, but nothing new to really get it over the hump. I would have given some extra points for amazing cut scenes because I’m a real sucker for them, but they just didn’t work for me here.

I haven’t really gotten a chance to delve into the multiplayer as of yet, but from what I hear it’s worthy enough for FPS fans. As for me I think my journey ends here. If I have more killing to do it will be in GoW2 or when L4D2 comes out in November.