Review | Wolfenstein
This city is the game’s hub, which you can explore at will between missions. You can search for hidden items or search for sub-missions, which are actually quite entertaining and well worth tracking down. This hub system works because it carries the game between the main missions flawlessly.
Often, to begin a mission, you have to reach a truck somewhere in the city, which will take you to where you need to go. This involves fighting your way through patrols and sometimes special encounters with powerful enemies, and because the shooting is so much fun, you never tire of this aspect of the game – although you can use the sewers and rooftops to traverse the city should you need to conserve ammo.
Not so impressive are the Veil powers, which don’t seem to serve a huge purpose. There are four powers that you gain access to: Mire (Bullet Time, basically), Veil Sight (which shows the alternate reality beyond our own, useful for finding hidden doors and other stuff), Shield (which protects you from attacks) and Empower (which makes all your bullets and attacks more powerful, and able to penetrate shields and walls). It’s not that they’re badly implemented as such; they’re just never really needed – on the default difficulty level, at least. These powers can also be upgraded at the black market shops, though God knows how petty criminals are able to upgrade an ancient powerful artifact.
//Familiar territory
Multiplayer is included and is good fun, but is a little on the sparse side as far as options are concerned. There are three modes: Team Deathmatch, Objective and Stopwatch. Objective is the most entertaining, and most like the popular Enemy Territory mod for Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The lineup for the classes is a bit brief, with just three to choose from, and unfortunately it just doesn’t really compare to all the options of rival multiplayer shooters. It is, however, still good for a blast with your friends.
You know, I really thought this kind of shooter had seen its day, like those action films of the 80s starring such thesps as Steven Seagal, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Arnold Schwarzenegger and company. But then, you still like to bring out their DVDs every now and then, sit back with a beer and your mates, and engage in some ball-busting action with people getting stabbed in the jugular and lots of stuff blowing up. This is what Wolfenstein delivers in spades.
The action barely stops. There are no annoying, mandatory stealth sections to get through – although you can sneak up behind an enemy and bayonet him in the back of the head if you so desire. Instead, you’re thrown from one situation to another with hardly any time to stop and catch your breath. If you’re not pinned down behind a wall with bullets wizzing over your head or jumping out of the way of a huge explosion, you’re smashing a door down, submachine gun in hand, spraying the room with lead. Raven obviously understands how action and pacing work. That really shines through here, and that’s why Wolfenstein is one of the year’s best action games.
8/10
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Nice to see this game finally getting a bit of love in the press. It seemed to be approached quite seriously which is a shame, it was very refreshing to play an old school, gung-ho mindless shooter again. I have to disagree about the Veil powers though, when combined with different weapons they added different levels to each encounter. The fact you can stack them (Empower + Mire ftw) is great too, especially once they’re upgraded (Mire with the instant-kill proximity attack is a godsend against those invisible enemies). I also loved how a fully upgraded Empower basically made the KAR into the Far Sight (I think) from Perfect Dark. :D
[...] One saw us scaling a building, sneaking up on a few guards and planting a bomb in a fuel depot, before hopping into a car and hot-footing it to the country’s border. Sean Devlin’s background is in motor racing, so the inclusion of driving sequences works well, and the handling seems perfectly reasonable, if nothing to get particularly giddy about. Indeed, the whole sequence is a promising one, the open-plan driving impressively showcasing the scale of the game world. And of course, there’s just something intrinsically, inexorably cool about ploughing through crowds of Nazis. J.D. would approve. [...]
[...] One saw us scaling a building, sneaking up on a few guards and planting a bomb in a fuel depot, before hopping into a car and hot-footing it to the country’s border. Sean Devlin’s background is in motor racing, so the inclusion of driving sequences works well, and the handling seems perfectly reasonable, if nothing to get particularly giddy about. Indeed, the whole sequence is a promising one, the open-plan driving impressively showcasing the scale of the game world. And of course, there’s just something intrinsically, inexorably cool about ploughing through crowds of Nazis. J.D. would approve. [...]