Wolfenstein (A review)

Wolfenstein; Christ, we’ve been getting big-headed lately, haven’t we? It’s not “Wolfenstein 2”, or “Wolfenstein: Return of the man with a chocolate box concealed in his hairdo”, just Wolfenstein. It’s like what they did with Stark Trek, Friday the 13th and Final Destination. What, did some kind of Apocalypse happen while I wasn’t looking and now everything has to reset?

You know what future historians will say about us, right?

“There were two very different games within the same 20 year period both called Wolfenstein and the second one was not strictly speaking a remake of the first. From this we can conclude that the people of the 21st century were taking the piss.”

It feels weird to call it generic, since this is the franchise that practically invented the genre. But Wolfenstein (the new on that is) subscribes to so many of the clichés of current generation action games that it is like “The spy who loved me” of fps games. It’s so obnoxiously safe and committee designed that any attempt to critique it in my normal manner would be equally as dull. That is why I have decided to review it in limerick form.

In the tumultuous time before D-day, there once was a man named BJ. With chocolate box hair, a face like a bear and a jacket he picked up e-bay. He was out one day, murdering Germans, as they tried to enact London’s burning. He beat up some dudes and broke missile tubes, so their boat got blown up; that’ll learn them. But while there he made a discovery, that the Nazis had power like no othery. He brought back a bangle with some mystical angle, to which the allies responded “Oh buggery”.

In the secret service of queen Lizzy, BJ’s bosses find themselves in a tizzy. So they stand up and shout “BJ sort this all out, we’d do it ourselves but we’re busy”. So he’s sent to some big German town, where some serious shit’s going down. There’s an active resistance in need of assistance and everything’s gone greyish-brown. It soon becomes clear that the city has been invaded by occult committees; mystical preachers and slavering creatures and gymnasts with stonking great titties.

You may wonder if this is a sequel to a past Wolfenstein, or a prequel depicting our hero in a previous era when he wasn’t looked upon as an equal. It’s actually meant to succeed Return to Castle Wolfentein’s lead. This is pretty damn slow, because that was 8 years ago, and the memories have gone stale indeed.

The new Wolfenstein seeks to enthrall with an ongoing high-octane brawl. But it’s a game about war that we’ve all seen before and just like the title ads fuck all. Any pretends of freshness is gone at the very outset of stage one. You escape your pursuers by an underground sewer, so we start as we mean to go on. Your gun is of course your best friend, on which you must always depend, when you get into fights, you can look down the sights and bullets come out of the end. Weapon choice doesn’t start too exiting, 2 machine guns and a rifle for sniping. But later on BFG’s coming with guarantees to shoot various flavours of lightning.

There are soldiers all over the place, who can’t take two shots to the face, but before you for score may always respawn at a pretty disquieting pace. You don’t need to worry about health if you’re retarded and lousy at stealth, just get behind cover if you’re in a bother and it’ll all come back by itself. It won’t help you avoid the bumrape later on, when you get into scrapes with powerful blasters and big armoured bastards with weak points the size of a grape. To help out you have on your side, magic spells that some crystals provide. On the appropriate queue the world turns greenish blue so it looks like your monitor’s died.

You can take down the big lads in minutes, start a fight with ten men and still win it. Make your weapons divine or just use bullet time, which wasn’t that great when Max Payne did it. But the powers are hard to sustain. Your magic is too swiftly drained, in the middle of a fight you’ll end up in the shite and will suffer a whole world of pain. In between all the shooting, you also must think about looting, because if you want to upgrade someone has to be paid and the shopkeepers don’t like freebooting. Why do all games need upgrade elements, even ones where they aren’t quite relevant? It means all your big hitters start off in the shitter and your aim is unfirm and inelegant.

 So when you have extinguished the danger you backtrack through all of the chambers, searching every last nook for cash and checkbooks which you won’t find much fun I would wager. It seems clear that the in game reality has pretentions of nonlinearity. The game says “on your bike, go wherever you like as long as it’s in this principality.” But the freedom’s nothing but a mere gilded cage, which adds nothing to inspire or engage. It just means beating feet through the same boring streets only to get to the next fucking stage.

There’s little to do except hunt for secrets and money up front, but reward’s pretty lame, all the streets look the same and the bads keep respawning, the cunts. It’s not a totally asinine shore, there are optional missions to score, so I went out of my way but found to my dismay that in total there’s only like 4. Guess the ultimate question is “Why should I even bother to try?” Every last NPC fills me with apathy, am I expected to care when they die? I know what you’re going to say “Classey you slick internet paparazzi, sure it’s always fun to stick the butt of a gun up the arse of a goo-stepping nazi.”

Well if you like starting punch-ups in bars or your head has been lodged up your arse, Wolfenstein might at least give some joy to it but otherwise don’t bother. 2 stars.