"just another boring shooter".. Not horrible, but there are so much better investments out there right now.
- Easy ride for the FPS inexperienced
- Might be good if you are craving Wolfenstein specifically (If you are a fan)
- Multiplayer is nice
- Campaign is long for an FPS
CONS
- Too damn easy (if you are a shooter veteran)
- Almost inexistent AI. (Nazis will take cover for no reason and let you shoot them freely even if you are just next to them!)
- Weak story
- Disappointing level design and environments
- Copies many ideas from other games, and does not get them exactly right
- Lacks finish and inspiration, it is kind of a bland FPS.
REVIEW
Well it was so boring I almost don't even find the motivation to write an in-depth review.
First thing that bugged me was the level design. It is like something from 6 years ago or worse. Of course the textures have high resolution and all, but the 3D modeling of the environments is bland and lacking on may aspects. Some objects and structures have scale that is way off, like you walk in a street and feel like an 8" giant... the street feeling too narrow and the walls way too thick and boxy with no details in their shape and perspective. Or the textures of a brick wall, with bricks shapes perfectly aligned like red rectangles, and the wall having no details... the whole thing having not a shadow of an attempt at realism or even a graphical style. Same thing can be said about the surrounding environments in general, they have no real depth, and even if they tried giving this game a "sandboxy" feel with shops, missions, and dispersed NPCs, again the level design fails miserably at making any "believable" place you would enjoy visiting. What is worse is they dispersed some "collectable" items (mainly gold and intelligence documents) all around the levels, which forces you to actually painfully inspect every corner of the game, bringing the underwhelming level design even more to your attention.
Chairs, tables, boxes, and the usual junk fill up the levels just like a game right out of the 90s, moving, jumping, and bumping into objects never feels right... Shooting nazis in the chest sometimes removes a limb or blows off their face, taking cover behind walls is not realistic as sometimes you still get hit by bullets, etc. Almost every aspect of the game feels clumsy and fake because it lacks something, and I honestly did not get a single minute of immersion in the whole time I played this game... The way it lacks polish and attention to detail constantly reminds you that you are looking at pixels and polygons on a computer screen.
Second thing is the gameplay, I used the hard difficulty level yet I blasted through the levels like the wind, only thing slowing me down is looking for those stupid gold/money and technology collectables. The AI is really bad and offers no tactical challenge... Actually fights were so easy and boring and similar to a million other games that I almost fell asleep in the middle of a fight... it is THAT unchallenging. Killing tons of nazis has no taste whatsoever since their AI is almost inexistent. No challenge = no sens of accomplishment. At one point some weird liquid leaks out and the nazis soldiers start floating in the air... I think that scene was meant to impress, but all that went through my mind was "oh they were dying like sitting ducks already, now they helplessly float in the air while I freely shoot them... lame :(".
The special powers, bullet time, weapons upgrades, missions reports, collectables, and other "gameplay mechanics" feel like gimmicks. They do inflate the list of features on the game box, but none of them is done in any exciting way... They just feel shallow, and all of them have been done in other games in MUCH better, satisfying ways.
All in all a fairly mediocre game considering it has the ID logo on it. I felt it was a big disappointment... And its price does not help either. Unless you are already a Wolfenstein fan (especially its multiplayer), or really enjoy shooting retarded nazis for some reason, I'd say skip it entirely. There are so many great value games being released at this time of the year that spending money on this title is just a huge waste of perfectly good entertainment time.