The following is a review of Wolfenstein, the 2009 Xbox 360, PS3, and PC game released by Activision, Raven, and id. I have strived to make this review, like all of the reviews here at MSXbox-World and all of the reviews I personally write, thorough, comprehensive, and honest. To that end, this review firstly covers the way that I have assumed the game is intended to be played. My closing remarks, however, are the most important, and if you read nothing else I have written in this review, I will caution you now that these remarks are the most important.
My closing remarks are the most important because they specifically detail why Wolfenstein is a broken game that has been discarded by its developers and is not only a game you, personally, should avoid, but one you should warn others about and keep them from wasting their money on. However...I will detail the positives...
Gameplay:
If you missed any of the other Wolfenstein games, let me tell you a little about the series' protagonist. B.J. Blazkowicz is sort of like Captain America in a leather jacket instead of tights. He works for the Office of Secret Actions, a special operations branch of the Allied forces during World War II. B.J. does what most heroes do - everything that no one else can, and always in the nick of time. After B.J. defeated the special S.S. Paranormal division of the Nazi forces in Return to Castle Wolfenstein, the O.S.A. turns to Agent Blazkowicz once again to deal with that special category of "freaky-deaky-Nazi-crap."
Wolfenstein is more complex than your standard shooter. After learning the ropes in a quick "welcome to the resistance" run through the Isenstadt train station (while you dodge Nazi gunfire, of course), you have free range to explore the city streets as you see fit. Everything happens from this central city hub. Throughout the city you'll find resistance safehouses, black market salesmen, and agency contacts that will sometimes be under fire from Nazi street patrols. As you explore, you'll have to make a decision: do you want to risk a firefight with Nazi soldiers if you are seen on the streets, or do you want to sneak over the rooftops or through the sewers to avoid unnecessary fighting? This particular element of the between-missions gameplay is tremendously fun and really adds a gritty sense of oppression from your Nazi enemies.
Different contacts give different missions, and often you'll find multiple missions or quests to choose from instead of being forced into one. While the game may strongly urge you to go one way more than the other, you're never really forced to go anywhere you don't want to go. You could spend hours just wandering through the city looking for hidden gold, intelligence, and magic tomes, which brings us to two fun features in Wolfenstein...item collection and "the Veil."
Throughout the city and every level, there are three different types of items to collect. Intelligence unlocks weapon upgrades, gold allows you to buy those upgrades from the black market, and tomes unlock new powers for the Veil, a magical mirror image of the real world. B.J. can enter the Veil seamlessly after acquiring a certain mysterious Thule artifact very early in the game's story, and once inside this dark mirror, B.J. can use Thule magic like barriers to deflect bullets and time slowing/stopping to turn the tables on his Nazi foes. Just entering the Veil grants a sort of night vision that highlights enemies in a bright green, and later allows you to see them through solid walls. All of these abilities can be enhanced and improved as you earn gold for completing missions and discovering secrets.
The weapon customization is incredibly fun and addictive. While I've always prided myself as something of a completionist (Jared note: it isn't a word, but it should be), I absolutely had to find every gold coin and every scrap of intel in every mission. Just a basic MP40 can be improved and tweaked into a beast that fires stronger, silenced bullets from a drum instead of a clip, and with no recoil. Every gun and power can be modified and allows you to fully customize your weapon and your abilities to your own playing style. It didn't take me long to transform the Kar from a basic carbine into a devastatingly accurate sniper rifle. Best of all, if you miss anything in a mission (or just loved playing one of the missions) you can play them again and again from your journal and keep looking for what you missed until you find it. Your journal keeps a running tally of all of your stats, your collectibles, and everything you'd want to know about your campaign.
The controls are completely ripped from Call of Duty 4, which is good if you're familiar with the game, bad if you aren't. Perhaps what is inexcusably stupid is the lack of controller mapping. I absolutely hate clicking the right stick for melee and the left stick for sprinting, but I'm not allowed to change either because none of the preset control schemes deviate from those two uses. There is absolutely no good reason to not include controller mapping with any game, much less a first person shooter, so this really needs to be corrected with a patch if it is at all possible.
Graphics:
Wolfenstein isn't the prettiest game on the market, but it's far from the ugliest. The graphics are very detail oriented and all of the unique missions look completely fresh and different from one another. You'll be able to take in the sights of a war-torn German city, an archaeological dig, and an ancient temple (just to name a few locales) and each area looks distinct. The Veil is loaded with some splendid special effects, and each entrance and exit from the magical other side is a nifty visual treat in itself. It's worth noting, though, that Wolfenstein will probably run into some interesting censorship in Europe and Australia...the game is loaded with authentic Nazi décor. There's nothing like the words "Das Reich" and a swastika to remind you of who you're fighting against.
Audio:
Back on track with the review... Wolfenstein has some pretty solid voice acting to carry it. The story-heavy parts have functional "secret agency" style dialogue between B.J. and his contacts and superiors, and the combat dialogue from the Nazis is very frantic and, in some cases, downright creepy (I'm talking to you, freaky magic Nazi Thule Priest). My biggest complaint about the voice acting is that it lacks actual German, which I would've preferred with subtitles to add to the authenticity of the whole World War II experience. The music is just your standard action game fare (drums, excitement, climaxes), but it isn't (God forbid) a craptastic rock and roll soundtrack. The only time the music got on my nerves was when I was searching an empty area for collectibles I missed. Seriously, Wolfenstein, there are no enemies anywhere near me and I'm trying to find Nazi gold. Shut the hell up with the dynamic orchestral music until I'm in a firefight again. Please.
Longevity:
On one straight playthrough without searching for any collectibles or exploring every nook and cranny of the town, Wolfenstein will get you about 10-12 hours of game time on a Normal difficulty run. If you really want to get your money's worth, though, you definitely can, and you'll be able to get hours of fun out of this title as you try to really complete your game. The achievements are all very well thought out, and many of them will come naturally through the course of the game. The other achievements are just the right mix of challenging without being impossible or frustrating. There are, of course, multiple difficulties and achievements for winning on the hardest difficulty (Uber) so you're sure to get a handful of playthroughs out of Wolfenstein.
The science-fiction-meets-the-occult-meets-WWII storyline is downright awesome, and altogether, Wolfenstein presents one of the strongest singleplayer experiences you'll find this year. If you bought the game specifically for that purpose, you absolutely will not be disappointed.
Unless, of course, the game freezes on you, which is guaranteed to happen.
Collecting gold, intel, and tomes will make the game freeze. There is no way to avoid it, there is no way to work around it. It happens to the Xbox 360 version, the PS3 version, and the PC version. It happens to PAL versions, NTSC versions, and on different consoles. Clearing the cache does not work, reloading old saves can work with limited success. By collecting items in the game, as the developers intended for the player to do, you will render the game unusable.
Once you reach 88% collection completion or higher, the game will not finish. The Midtown and Downtown sections will become inoperable and freeze between transitions. The Castle and Airfield missions will freeze mid-mission or in loading transitions. Replaying missions will freeze the game, aborting missions will freeze the game, and walking around will freeze the game.
As of this writing, September 28th, 2009, Wolfenstein has been on store shelves for well over a month both in the United States and abroad. Rather than spend every waking moment fixing the problems that are painfully obvious, rendering this game a useless paperweight, Activision spent the first two weeks blaming everyone else. In what can only be described as a disgustingly pathetic move, they blamed Microsoft, they blamed users, they blamed hardware errors, they blamed Hard Drive errors, and pointed a finger everywhere but into a mirror while they fired the people who worked on and developed a game. Now, with dozens of workers and dev teams gone, the game has massive, critical failures and no one to fix it.
I have been monitoring the Wolfenstein forums for over a month, every day, watching and waiting for an official release, an official confirmation, an acknowledgement of repair plans being set in motion, and have seen nothing. Empty promises have come and have yielded nothing.
The multiplayer is a slap in the face of Wolfenstein fans. Those who loved Wolfenstein in 2002 and played Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory will find this game unplayable. The bastardized and unpolished Call of Duty elements that were blatantly ripped off, and poorly at that, will disgust Call of Duty players. They will feel downright blasphemous to true Wolfenstein players, though, which is pathetic and inexcusable.
Overall:
Prior to the game's release, fans pleaded with the parties involved to simply give Wolfenstein a visual update. Fans simply asked that Wolfenstein's unique, original teamwork-based gameplay be left intact and pure, giving a new generation of gamers a chance to enjoy what others spent countless hours engrossed in in 2002. Raven, id, and Activision, however, ignored this. I place no blame on endrant Studios. They had a job to do and because of circumstances beyond their control, they had no time in which to do it. Someone, however, should have fixed the disappearing ranks, the vanishing upgrades, and the upgrade money you will earn and never receive.
Raven and id did not miss an understandable programming glitch. Raven and id missed a huge gaping hole and ignored it. My mind cannot logically accept that this error was not found in testing. If this error was not blatantly ignored, then Raven and id did not test this game, and Activision saw fit to publish this game untested. The fans who make these games possible, the customers who buy these games, asked together for one thing, and Raven, id, and Activision ignored that request for reasons unexplained. Those reasons, however, hold no weight against the unified request of the hundreds of thousands of Wolfenstein players across the world.
All of the parties responsible for this deserve to be called into question, and all gamers should question whether or not this subpar and frankly embarrassing title justifies further purchases from any of the three companies involved.
