This historic shooter merges supernatural creatures, paranormal wizardry and necromancy into the Nazis evil ascendancy
Contains: Strong Bloody Violence and Fantasy Horror
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wolfenstein is a Historic First-Person shooter set within World War II that incorporates sci-fi elements to the Nazis evil schemes to take over the world.
-------------------------------------------
STORY - 2/5
-------------------------------------------
Set within the World War II era, the Nazi take-over-the-world formula is spiced up by supernatural occults, paranormal wizardry and necromancy as they look to harness the power of rare nachtsonne crystals necessary to access the "Black Sun" dimension and subsequently unleash a mystical wraith on the world and all mankind. Protagonist B.J. Blaskowicz must protect the residents of a small city called Isenstadt which is the headquarters for several groups of resistance fighters who are searching for the Nazi secrets and looking to put an end to their power-hungry dominance.
The science fiction twist to the usual, predictable WWII storylines isn't amplified enough to make you feel any passion of hatred towards the Nazis evil intentions. Brief cutscenes at rare intervals showcase the important story events, otherwise the game relies heavily on spoken dialogue during gameplay character interaction and regularly found intelligence documents and telegraph messages obtained during missions or in the small sandbox design of the game's setting. There are a variety of side missions and story missions, and completing each provides a deeper, knowledgeable insight into the secret experiments the Nazis are hiding aswell as inspiring your allies to fight back at the antagonists who are ever-increasing in power.
-------------------------------------------
CHARACTERS - 1/5
-------------------------------------------
A cast of uninteresting characters that each speak unenthusiastically lower your expectation for any sign of a satisfactory story, and in fact diminish that hope before it even manages to try and catapult you into the blender of fantasy horror fiction. The story never attempts to explore the character's weak personalities and motivations, and so you never feel anything towards their actions and their hopes of progress, despite such evil antagonists that look set to infuriate you on sight and that you'll no doubt relish in killing.
-------------------------------------------
GAMEPLAY - 4/5
-------------------------------------------
The historic buildings and traditional weapons all indicate a regular shooter within the WW2 era, but the Nazis have been mixing with something they don't fully understand, and have conjured up enemies that emulate each other, and so this Historic First-Person shooter set within a famous period of the timeline takes a turn to the mystical, unthinkable and unexplainable and introduces weapons and creatures from another dimension seemingly running parallel to ours. The science fiction change of direction involves a unique medallion that feeds off the energy of the Veil - a barrier between the real world and a dimension known as the Black Sun. When the Veil is activated, a layer of the world seemingly peels away, not only proposing the possibility of another dimension hidden underneath, but factually showing you that another universe does indeed exist outside the laws of reality. The powers that the medallion is capable of performing are all typical special powers where you've most likely shifted time into slow motion, had significantly increased weapon damage, a force shield that blocks bullets and heightened vision senses before, but they are still put to effective use and are certainly required to overcome the large army of Nazis in challenging set pieces and supernatural creatures in boss fights. There is limited amounts of energy for entering the veil and when you are running low the screen will momentarily resort to black and white colours before slowly refilling. Recharging the veil powers within the medallion can be done by standing in scattered pools of veil energy, and during the activation of the veil, paranormal creatures called Geists converge around the glowing blue pool. These Geists can be used as an advantage if an enemy is within the proximity by sending out an electrical shock that will proceed through numerous opponents in a dangerous electrical current of streaming energy that shortly stuns them. But not all Geists are passive, and if you shoot lots of them, menacing versions appear to converge on your position that are threatening, quick, and deal a nasty shock if not dealt with in time.
The small city that is traversable by foot is made in to an open world design where missions can be taken on, enemies take up positions across town to stall your progress, and black market dealers are available for numerous veil and weapon upgrades. During the spectacle of bloody violence and horror fantasy that accompanies every mission objective, various items, intel and valuables can be found hidden around the environments, and shimmer appropriately to show they are of interest and interactable. Gold is valuable to collect for upgrades, and while you get rewards for completing missions, it won't be a substantial enough amount to provide your weapons with suitable enhancements that will have a lasting effect until the final conflict, and so exploring each corner becomes a necessity if you favour powerful and upgraded equipment. The First-person shooting action is reasonably solid and enjoyable with perfect hit detection and suitably believable death animations that correspond to the wound received, and the large amount of breakable objects in each segment of explosive and gory action injects some intensity to make the shooting seem a little more eventful.
Wolfenstein sustains the feeling of enjoyment throughout much of the game, and the healthy amount of powerful and fun-to-shoot weapons combined with mystical powers that have their fair share of reliable upgrades keeps the momentum in decent tempo without ever feeling repetitive or tedious. Veil power exposes certain enemy weak points and explosive objects of interest within view, and this power requires careful but frequent use if you want to uncover secrets within the environment aswell as provide positive advantages to strengthen your chances of defeating the Germans in a war that needs to be desperately balanced out.
-------------------------------------------
GRAPHICS - 2/5
-------------------------------------------
Aging technology is at fault behind the reason for digression during the game's mediocre-looking cutscenes and dated visuals during gameplay, where quality and sharpness are noticeably lacking and, more often, completely absent. Your first impression upon the graphics will certainly not be a positive one, and the cutscene that supports that negative outlook is prone to rigid character animations that do little to deliver a convincing expression for what they are implying on the mission, an unsmooth camera that is distracting from the subject matter and an overall mediocre look, which if had had some refinement into the condition of these visuals, could possibly have added some strength to the plot and characters.
The visuals throughout gameplay lack sharpness and integrity, and when combined with unimpressive art design that copies itself too often, you just feel the game required more time in the development cycle. However, the visuals aren't all bad. Great lighting effects in environments and some cool visual effects from futuristic weapons improve your perception of the graphics department enough so that they become bearable. Whether you enter the veil and witness a layer of the environment seemingly peel away, or become stunned by the intense, bizarre beam of blue fluid that disintegrates the flesh off enemies when firing the Particle Cannon, you know you are witnessing some impressive visual effects that spark up your view of the game in contrast to the aspects that diminish that respect.
But despite being a fast-paced shooter sudden drops in framerate are briefly apparent when the veil is activated, a moment which may hinder the visual illusion highlighting the separation between dimensions.
-------------------------------------------
SOUND - 3/5
-------------------------------------------
Decent music that adapts to the action and plausible sound effects from all manner of the both fantasy and historical weapons drown out the disappointing and barely passable voice acting where each spoken line is delivered coolly rather than convincingly.
The splatter of blood is a common visual and audio effect, and the impressive death animation after shooting an enemy in the neck is the highlight of the lot, as the Nazi antagonist drops to his knees gargling blood from the punctured tube in his neck, completely helpless and completely out of commission, and just another corpse to add to the rising tally of dead Nazi soldiers.
-------------------------------------------
CONTROLS - 4/5
-------------------------------------------
The control configurations are quick and easy to memorise and include noticeable similarities to the typical First-Person shooter video game; most commonly L1 aim, R2 shoot. Changing weapons is basic in theory, where you hold down R2 to bring up a weapon radial while the gameplay freezes to select which gun you wish to use, and for quick change you tap R2 which takes you to the previous weapon selected, but somehow this simple procedure to quick-swap weapons is occasionally unresponsive, and you may find yourself having to tap it repeatedly until you get the response you want.
-------------------------------------------
ATMOSPHERE - 2/5
-------------------------------------------
The environments, while clearly portraying the correct period it's trying to establish in your view throughout, look rather dull and repetitive, and the alternative universe is implied through to the Black Sun dimension by utilising the veil, but never generates much of an augmented effect from the historic backdrop more frequently seen. The unorthodox sandbox design is appreciated once you come to grips with the confusing map system, and the city, despite looking dull, presents the right impression of the WWII era with well presented Nazis down every street.
Some missions feel just about right, and one in particular that involves cautiously moving through a hospital-turned-bloodbath makes every step feel a treacherous one as you hunt the supernatural creature responsible for all the gory slaughter that is now taking refuge in the shadows as a cloaked assassin.
Another nice, well done aspect that is uncommon in games is that the Nazis provide their collective thoughts and knowledge for intel with narrated dialogue put to the text, and occasionally searching for the intel requires a simple brief hold of the triangle button that displays a well crafted animation that makes it look like you are actually searching drawers and files in search of evidence of Nazi activities.
-------------------------------------------
ENEMY AI - 3/5
-------------------------------------------
For their unforgivable sins on victimised mankind during WWII, you'll possibly relish in slaughtering the evil Nazi race during Wolfenstein before they take their final resting place in the darkest depth of hell. They sometimes pause if you catch them off guard when trying to be stealthy, but once they are alerted to your presence and their numbers are high, they prefer to hide in cover and throw grenades frequently to flush you out of your cover position. Your Nazi adversaries recognise and a shout reports to allies in the midst of battle about what exotic weapon you're using, and even try and take advantage when you are reloading. But their opportunities go in vein as you come out on top victorious every time while they suffer the inevitable fate of death.
Supernatural and paranormal enemies enter the realm of your time to aid their allies in conflict throughout the course of the game, and these range from invisibly disguised creatures that slash you with blades and cloaked sorcerers with magical tendencies. The sorcerers can shield human Nazis by using the veil energy and so it makes the combat more challenging when you are forced to dispose of the more mystical foes first to get at the lesser enemies. Within the body structure of these supernatural enemies are absorbed veil powers combined with fantasy magic, and this sometimes makes the supernatural enemies immune or resistant to some of your veil powers, making them considerably more challenging to expose their weaknesses. However, some of the strange entities cause cheap deaths if you don't recognise the brief hints to their presence and can make some situations trial-and-error frustrations that are unnecessary and stall your progress unfortunately. Many boss fights crop up during Wolfenstein and each boss (usually larger than you) requires careful use of your veil powers to defeat them, but many of these are either too short or just annoying.
-------------------------------------------
LENGTH - 4/5
-------------------------------------------
After hours of vanquishing the evil Nazi race, you'll encounter the final boss battle, and if you searched for collectibles and completed all side missions available before that last hurdle to victory then you can reach up 12 hours worth of gameplay time in this fun but flawed First-Person shooter.
-------------------------------------------
REPLAY VALUE - 3/5
-------------------------------------------
Wolfenstein isn't like your standard First-Person shooter. Not only does it implement an unorthodox and unexpected small sandbox design based on the city of Isenstadt, but upon completing missions you are given the opportunity to replay them at any point during the game with the weapons and veil powers you acquired up to the furthest point you've reached in the story. It's far from making the experience realistic, but it's different, and it's appreciated if you want to replay a specifically enjoyable mission or want to find all secret intel and valuables.
Yes there'll be more games out there that are more visually stable, with effectively solid mechanics and more refined core elements for success, but Wolfenstein's pace that keeps a steady amount of bloody gunplay mixed with fantasy elements right out of the science fiction universe sustains the fun factor aspect that is vital for continuing with a game right through to the end, and so while this historic first-person shooter mixed with sci-fi elements isn't going to get it's name plastered on the wall and define the genre, it's a christening well worth attending for the pleasurable results of Nazi evil being prevented in an alternative history.
==========================
OVERALL SUMMARY - 7.5/10
==========================
Good Points: Good mix of futuristic and historic weapons that are equally fun to shoot, A welcome science fiction twist to the WWII era, Dependable amount of slowly unveiled weapon and power upgrades, Great lighting effects, Intel documents are neatly presented with narrated speech over the text, Sustained fun factor throughout gameplay.
Bad Points: Plot and characters are stale despite the merge of history and science fiction, Various small flaws present themselves in gameplay, Poor graphics, Boss fights are either too quick or just annoying.