I would've given this game a 7.5 but I decided to round up to 8 to satisfy Metacritic. Finally, after completing both story lines in the game, I feel I'm ready to write my review.
Don't let anyone fool you: this game is not an old school shooter. Return to Castle Wolfenstein was the last Wolfenstein title that could ever claim go be old school. This game tries it's hardest to blend theI would've given this game a 7.5 but I decided to round up to 8 to satisfy Metacritic. Finally, after completing both story lines in the game, I feel I'm ready to write my review.
Don't let anyone fool you: this game is not an old school shooter. Return to Castle Wolfenstein was the last Wolfenstein title that could ever claim go be old school. This game tries it's hardest to blend the old school mechanics with new school mechanics to satisfy a ever-diversifying gaming audience. Does this make it a bad game, or does it detract from the experience? Not at all. However, it does show that it isn't what it was touted to be.
I won't waste time writing down the story or game plot premise here, only that it really does take second fiddle to the gameplay itself, as previous Wolfenstein titles have (among most other id franchises). And as far as gameplay goes, it is generally linear in terms of how you have to go through a level on a certain path. However, at many times, it gives you the option to take a stealth approach or a combat heavy approach. The stealth mechanics are fairly monotonous, as it comes down to just finding and killing an officer who is able to call in reinforcements, and then performing assassinations on all the other soldiers in the area. If you do find yourself in a stealth section, you do have the option to go in guns blazing and killing everyone with dual wielded weapons (all weapons can be dual wielded with an identical one), but you do get the impression that these sections were designed around stealth, and are thus heavily encouraged to approach it as such.
The enemy types aren't all that varied, as they really only fall under a few main types: hounds, soldiers, officers, and giant robots (there are also these REALLY annoying drone things that show up sometimes, but they are fairly rare; there also a few challenging bosses you have to face). However, their AI is fairly well programmed, and they do what they are supposed to do and present some challenge, so there's not much to complain about here.
The level design is fairly good, and you find yourself in a lot of varied environments, like castles, open battlefields, urban settings, and even the moon, and all are designed fairly well and open, though there is a strong sense of a path that you need to take through the level to accomplish your goal.
The characters are well done as well, having been fleshed out significantly better than in other Wolfenstein and id franchise games, excluding Blazowicz himself and his live interest Anya. I mean, Wyatt in the later game has some kind of responsibility complex, and still acts like a kid, while Fergus later in the game (in the other storyline) tries to cover up his sadness with humor; this gives them personality. However, BJ and Anya just kind of chill out and go with whatever comes to them. This is evident when BJ and Anya begin their relationship: I mean, BJ wakes up after a 14 year coma where Anya took care of him, then they're with some old people and explaining the situation of the world to him, then BJ kills a bunch of Nazis, then goes on a train and is almost shot by Frau Engel, then him and Anya have sex for the sole reason that there is only one bed in their cabin on the train. Also, might I add: the two sex scenes are incredibly stupid, juvenile, and unnecessary.
This brings me to another point that is probably the worst part of this game: there's just a bunch of unnecessary crap thrown into the story for absolutely no reason. Now I'm not talking about the recreation of the first level of Wolf3D that you can play; that was cool. I mean a lot of the stuff just felt over the top. First off, there's an incredible amount of blood and gore: the executions you can do are damn brutal, you see innocent people getting shot in the head, you yourself get stabbed multiple times, and you even see a guy's eyes gouged out and his brain sucked out with a drill as his back is flayed open. It was pretty disgusting. Also, adding into BJ's personality of just rolling with everything, it seemed really unnecessary and stupid to have him tripping acid (yes, this happens if you trigger it) with a guy that just compared him to a Nazi. I don't know if these unnecessary parts were put in to cater to the newer gamers with different views on the world, or what.
Now, to end, I'll put in the Xbox 360 specific points.
The game actually looks really good for a 360 game, with incredibly textures on weapons, enemies, and important spots in the environment. However, the rest of the textures in the ambient environment are very muddy and low res (obviously a limitation of the hardware). Also, the dynamic shadows are very pixellated, despite it being rendered from OpenGL. Also, the post processing and particle effects are toned down from PC and 8th Gen , but if it weren't for the muddy textures in the world, they would be fairly comparable.
Overall, I recommend it to shooter/Wolfenstein fans: 8-10 hours of brutal fun.… Expand
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