Review: Wolfenstein, Part 2

Actually, I found myself enjoying the game quite a lot at some points, but was unnerved by a lot of issues at other points. First of all, I still don’t like the graphics. They are not up to par with current standards. The greenish shader and glow effects in the “Veil” look nice for 30 seconds, but seeing that you kinda spend the whole last third of the game in the Veil, any enthusiasm for the effects quickly wears out. Let’s go on with the bad stuff (you really came here for that anyway, didn’t you?)

Then, there is a couple of issues with the models, level design and scripting. There’s a scene in which a lot of opponents run up a straight wall (you’ll know what I mean when you see it) and you can actually see them spawn and despawn. That’s sloppy game design. I also had a number of weird encounters when I ran around a corner in the mission hub city and saw opponents spawn there. I don’t think I have seen this so obviously in any game I played in the last 5 or 6 years - very bad impression. In other situations, opponents fail to notice you although you are directly in front of them. This is especially true for the Super Soldiers (or however they are called) who seem to be deaf, dumb and blind in their heavy armor. Oh, and check out the pic to compare Super Soldiers in 2001 to them in 2009. OK, you could argue that soldiers in other WW2 shooters all look alike, too. But that is because they are modelled after real people. The dudes in Wolfenstein aren’t.
If you change areas inside the City (there’s west, east, center parts of the city), all opponents respawn. At least usually they do. I have a reproducible test case where a full 8-people patrol (including one of those veil-powered idiots) would be directly in front of you when you change to the city center, then pwn you hard and after reloading from the last save game would not be present. Grinding through the (mostly easy) mobs when you just want to turn in a mission is something I’d expect from WoW, but not from an FPS. However, it’s a flaw that several shooters seem to suffer. I can remember that some Far Cry 2 reviews complain about that and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has similar issues.

For me as a German, there was no option than buying a localized version. Due to the swastika symbols and other Nazi elements, US (or even other EU) versions are illegal here. So I had to put up with average voice acting, terrible editing of the storyline (the SS are the “Wolves”, but they still call their superiors “Sir” etc.) and very, very ridiculous in-game German. It beats me how game publishers who know that Germany is probably the largest game market in Europe still fail to hire one single German to localize in-game textures. I saw a poster that looked like Babelfish. “Occasional Words, boycott the middle men”, huh? I like how it says “End of this poster”, though. Seriously, I guess some fans would even proofread the in-game German for free.

With regards to the weapons: Scoped rifles are totally overpowered, they have no swaying or similar that makes aiming harder. The ammo display is very confusing with a bullet display that shows how much you have left in your magazine, and an ammo total that doesn’t change until you actually reload. The standard approach would have been better.

None of the bosses have any originality in them. Change to Veil view, find the level elements marked in red, shoot them, evade the boss until he has enough lead in them, watch cut scene. The final boss is not even a new character. The fight is kinda cool effect-wise but the mechanics are just dumb.
Come to think of it, there was not a single enemy in the game that didn’t remind me of something else...

• Soldiers: Soldiers in Wolf3D. They’re too dumb to be anything better.
  


• Veil-powered Scribes or however they’re called in english: Kinda like the Arch-Vile in Doom2 in behavior, but not as overpowered.


• Super Soldiers: Ubersoldiers in RTCW


• Sniffers: As annoying as the skulls in Doom 1-3, but faster


• The weird flying things in the Veil: Half-Life 2


• The Castle boss (big snake or so): Doom3 or even Quake4
  

Now, for the good stuff.

The game actually gets a lot harder towards the middle and turns into a real challenge near the end. Tougher, veil-powered opponents turn up and beat you to shreds if you don’t use your own Veil powers wisely. This mitigates my earlier concerns that it would be too easy - I had to load savegames quite some times in the last couple of levels. The bosses require a couple of tries mostly, but are far too obvious to be a real challenge.

The weapon upgrades really do make a difference. There’s sniper scopes for the Kar98K and the Gewehr43 (which is actually the StG 44 model, so it’s probably a mistranslation) and a lot of nice upgrades for the other weapons. You can’t buy them all but you can get yourself a very balanced array of weaponry.

The secret plans are not only for story reasons but give you new weapons upgrades. It’s even stated in the tutorial - an oversight on my part.

The Veil disk is nice and gives you a couple interesting powers to use, but is ultimately not as much fun as mowing through scores of Nazis with your MP40.

And this is also a good bottom line: The game is good if you want to kill hundreds of Nazi soldiers with weaponry you are used to in a setting you’re used to. Please don’t expect anything more than a linear FPS with all the usual ingredients, Wolfenstein just isn’t that. If your expectations aren’t that high, the game will deliver some hours of fun.

More info:

• Screenshots of Wolfenstein (2009) in my Wolfenstein (2009) gallery


• First part of my Review: Wolfenstein (2009) review, Part 1