WOLFENSTEIN REVIEW Posted by nutcrackr on Aug 29, 2009 23:33 (Aug 29, 2009 23:33) |
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 Wolfenstein isn’t really a pretty game, in a way it actually gives the Doom 3 engine a slightly bad name in the first few levels. Quake 4 was developed by the same team that made Wolfenstein and Q4 is a better, crisper looking game in my opinion. This is due to a few reasons, the first being that the Doom 3 engine just feels much more at home in a sci-fi, metallic environment and secondly because although graphics have come a ways since Quake 4, Wolfenstein hasn’t made that transition. It’s a shame that the non-veil, standard visuals are average, the lighting is mixed, and some of the levels are pretty lacklustre. Even the player models, friend and foe are looking pretty ugly at time. The only improvement to the engine would be the fact that it saves without any noticeable pause and the ragdoll / death animations seem improved, otherwise it’s fairly forgettable. In the veil the game looks better, more effects and more sci-fi like graphics for the Doom 3 engine to churn out. The levels actually continue to look better as the game progresses too, whether this is because they suit the engine more or because more time was spent on them is unknown. More impressive levels include the castle and the airbase which look a lot crisper than the earlier ones. Thankfully the game also runs fairly well, on the PC you will be able to increase the resolution which can help offset the rather bland graphics seen early on. One of the insulting things the game does to you early on is treating you like an idiot. Telling you exactly what to do, leading you to a clearly marked door a few steps away and occasionally speaking game language rather than world language just so you don’t get lost. On the normal difficulty, even without the aim assistance the game is very easy. Raising the difficulty felt much more balanced, then I couldn’t just run into a group of a dozen Nazi soldiers and come away without a scratch, but groups of 3 or 4 were still quite easy. Truthfully this is how the game should be played, it’s not about getting behind cover and choosing your shots and slowly progressing. It’s about getting up close and causing havoc on several Nazis at once – feeling powerful. One of the weapons is evidence of this, the Tesla gun will automatically send out coils toward enemies and all you need to do is hold the trigger when you are close to enemies. You are free to move out from cover and rarely suffer near death, with the exception of a few stray grenades. In one section enemies continued to respawn from hidden locations unless I moved forward to complete an objective but I didn’t actually see any Nazis spawn in front of me. One of the later enemies could freely go invisible and would taunt me as I moved about, on the harder difficulty he was quite deadly which also made it a much better experience. The guns are quite responsive, meaning if I shoot accurately the Nazis will go down quickly. Upgrades further improving the weapon feel and make some weapons very dangerous.The multiplayer didn’t turn out very well though mostly because it just doesn’t feel finished. There are a few game modes including deathmatch and objective (plant the bomb) and there are three classes and players can take use money they earn to buy upgrades for weapons. The netcode isn’t the best, you clash physically with your own team which causes lots of problems in small openings. Sometimes the server will have problems causing all kinds of warping issues for you and others. As a medic your job is to heal, drop health packs and revive downed teammates. Soldiers get in and amongst the action with flamethrowers, panzer rockets and veil artillery that seems useless. You will have access to the veil vision too allowing you to engage a healing mode as medic. The gameplay just feels off, from the very start it’s not smooth at all and the presentation such as player animation is pretty bad, in many cases laughably so. Grenades and the flamethrower handle very differently in multiplayer so you’ll likely blow yourself up quickly and there is very little other explanation of the mechanics. The multiplayer also suffers from its share of problems technically; it crashed for me when changing levels and logged me out a few times on server connection. The multiplayer was created by a separate team who was let go the day of release so the future prospects of Wolfenstein online are grim. If you are only concerned about the multiplayer then look elsewhere.
Wolfenstein single player has this Indiana Jones feeling, and it’s hard to shake it when the good music and setting happen to coincide in some places. At times the game can be quite fun, when you have a few Nazis spread through corridors and you just cruise through them all with powers and killer weapons in particular. The first few missions of the game aren’t that appealing with some backtracking through the city which doesn’t feel part of the Wolfenstein series, later linear levels seemed far more
 focused. The menu interface isn’t the best either, requiring you to spin a rotating menu before clicking on a desired item. Wolfenstein won’t be remembered as a great shooter of 2009, but it picks up considerably during the second half as the powers and pace increases so it’s not all bad news. There are a few boss battles that are fairly well done, requiring some dodging and use of powers. The final boss battle is far too laborious to be enjoyable leaving a slightly bitter final taste. Although it has many components taken from other successful games, many of them aren’t as well done as they could have been and nothing seems to be pushing the genre forward in any appreciable way.
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