Wolfenstein II: The New
Colossus (2017)
To start off, The
New Colossus's main menu is plain black text on a white
background. After a long loading time you're treated to an opening
that will instantly wipe any smile off your face with depictions of
domestic abuse, racist tirades, dog-shooting, and life-threatening
surgery. First-time players will get the impression that Wolfenstein
II is a game that takes itself very seriously (but that'll soon
change). Five months after TNO B.J. Blazkowicz awakens from a coma
crippled from his wounds sustained during the previous game's finale.
The resistance has headquartered itself on the U-boat commandeered in
the previous game and after expelling some pesky Nazi boarders they
decide to sail to the USA to foment rebellion against the German
occupation there. The main villain this time around is Frau Engel who
somehow went from failed camp commandant in Croatia to minister of
pretty much everything in the US. And yet apart from killing her, you
accomplish surprisingly little during this game's story – although
it does set up what will probably be a really awesome third game.
A lot of the plot also
concerns Blazkowicz learning to deal with his troubled childhood and
his own mortality. This is manifested by your limited health in the
game's first half: only 50 points maximum. While this does make
narrative sense it frustratingly makes the first several levels
noticeably more difficult than expected, even going so far as forcing
the player to adopt more cautious cover-based tactics. Combine this
with B.J.'s poor decisions, rattled state of mind, fabulous
eyelashes, and his emotional dependence on women and you
get a protagonist who's rather frail by FPS standards. Thankfully
this changes in the game's second half: BJ receives a new upgradeable
body after surviving decapitation – don't ask – giving the player
access to new abilities and further exploration.
The stealth sections of
previous games return in overabundance; kill-the-commanders-first
areas appear one after the other which is really unfortunate because
I found this game's stealth to be more finicky than before. Enemies
seem to spot you quicker and from a greater distance; half the time
I'm found out I don't even know who spotted me. Multiple stealth
areas have two commanders and these parts always place the second
commander as obnoxiously far away from your starting position as
possible. But once the shooting starts you've got plenty of options
at your disposal. Not only is every weapon upgradeable but you can
now dual wield almost any combination of weapons through the use of two
clunky selection wheels that I tried to avoid using whenever
possible. At least dual wielding doesn't slow you down any more and
with the right weapons (shotguns, upgraded assault rifles) it turns
you into an unstoppable juggernaut. Ammo is now picked up simply by
walking over it – a welcome improvement – but armour still
sometimes needs to be picked up manually (sometimes, at least). Melee
is mostly unchanged, the only difference being that instead of a
knife B.J. has started using a hatchet guaranteed to separate limbs
from badguy bodies. Regardless of your methods, no enemy in The
New Colossus simply falls down dead in one piece. Each kill
results in plentiful gibs and buckets of blood splashing everywhere
with all the subtlety of Machine Games' political views (more on that
later).
While the gunplay
remains alright the same can't be said of the level design. While the
locations look great thanks to the new id Tech 6 engine, they have no
variety at all. Save for the one level where you're walking through a
small town's main street, every mission in this game can be described
either as a sci-fi/industrial complex or a ruined city. That's it.
The only thing keeping the levels from all blending together is the
memory of how awful they were to play! This is due to two reasons:
the aforementioned difficulty and their excessive length. Area 51
made me despair, Ausmerzer part 2 had me grinding my teeth,
and the level on Venus was about the closest thing to digital misery
that I've experienced. The only saving grace is that you're able to
simply run through some of these overly-long levels without even
fighting the enemies, something I found myself doing frequently. In
short, TNC's missions make me want to puke and there's not a single
one that I look forward to replaying.
This game's hub level,
the submarine, isn't as frustrating but equally as perplexing. Like
the resistance headquarters in TNO, the submarine is where you'll go
to explore, read stuff, eavesdrop on other characters, etc. It
scarcely resembles the sub seen in the previous game, with wide open
areas, individual suites, and cavernous rooms that more closely
parallel an aircraft carrier. And once you learn of the shenanigans
and drama that go on here, this place will start to remind you of a
trailer park.
You can chalk that up
to the game's writing, which could have seriously used another edit
or two. Idiot logic abounds. The resistance – the hope of all free
men – routinely sends out pregnant and intoxicated soldiers to
carry out dangerous missions, barely knows how to sail a submarine,
gets really drunk the night before an important mission, and
apparently never cared to check and see if there were any remaining
Germans hiding on board the boat when they first captured it five
months earlier.
As if that wasn't bad
enough, the game's humour is downright embarrassing. The jokes are
lowbrow and crude, reminiscent of a stoner comedy. There's “jokes”
of people getting high, people throwing up, and people having sex in
unexpected places. On the sub alone we get not one, not two, but
three instances of somebody stinking up a bathroom. There's also
numerous WTF moments where the game jumps the shark. One example is
this cutscene late in the game in which you see a screaming topless
pregnant woman drenched in blood while firing two submachine guns, a
scene that's so over-the-top ridiculous that I'm sure it was
reverse-engineered just to create this insane visual.
The game's interminable
cinematics – which take up several hours of the game's length –
suffer as a result. As mentioned earlier the story of The New
Colossus deals with some heavy stuff but the serious moments keep
getting interrupted and subverted by the stupid humour and cutscenes
that try jamming too many different story elements together. The tone
and pacing of any given moment is a total crapshoot.
And lastly I have to
mention the political overtones. The game tries very hard to make
some connection between Nazism and US culture, as if to say that
there's something about Americans or white people in general that
might make them receptive to national socialism (even though half the
US citizen NPCs you encounter clearly detest the new regime). When
you notice the year this game was released it's not hard to see what
they're really trying to get at – let's just say it rhymes with
zonald gump. Female characters keep telling male characters how much
they suck, communists are portrayed as freedom-loving heroes, and the
badguys are always referred to as “Nazis” and nothing else. Never
do you hear the words kraut, jerry, boche, or hun (more common names
for Hitler's foot soldiers), and the only time you'll hear the
word German is in reference to the language, not the nationality. When
you consider all this in combination with the excessive gore you wind
up with a game that takes self-righteous gratification in its
simplistic portrayal of society, race relations, and occupation
politics. Was this game written by a collective of Twitter addicts?
Unlike some gamers I'm OK with having political themes in video games
but don't make them so ham-fisted and one-sided that it becomes a
nuisance.
There are plenty of
other things I could complain about – the lacklustre collectibles,
the obnoxious music, unlikeable characters – but I think I've made
my case clear. Wolfenstein II was a huge disappointment. When
it rigidly sticks to just letting you shoot badguys it's a fine game, but the problem is that you've got to wade through an unfair challenge,
awful level design, a nonsensical story, sanctimonious politics, and
dumbass humour in order to reach the fun parts. Just like TNO, TNC
has alternate timelines but no way am I playing this thing again!
I'll just watch the alternate cutscenes on YouTube.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood
(2019)
The warning signs were
there; gamers did not take kindly to Youngblood. I read the
negative reviews and I saw the disenchanted YouTubers. I saw the 2.6
(out of 10) user score on Metacritic. And yet I played the game
anyways and I must confess I actually kind of liked it. Maybe I was
intrigued by the game's unique design or maybe it's because it
compared favourably to the offensively joyless slog that came
immediately before it. Either way my time spent with Youngblood
was overall positive. Here's why.
Youngblood takes place in
1980. The USA has been liberated, Blazkowicz has killed Hitler -- unceremoniously, and offscreen as well -- and
the Third Reich's domain now only covers Europe (again, this is
probably being saved for Wolfenstein III). B.J. has
disappeared from his Mesquite, Texas, home leaving behind Anya and
their twin daughters Soph and Jess. The girls, along with Grace's
daughter Abby, get word that he may have travelled to Neu-Paris to
help the resistance there and so the three of them follow BJ's trail
and lend their aid to liberate the city of lights.
The most immediate
difference this game has to previous titles is that for the first
time you're not playing as B.J. Blazkowicz, you play as either Jess
(the stealthier sharpshooter type) or Soph (the in-your-face-brawler
type). Since neither are seasoned killers like their dad, they need
to learn effective soldiering as evidenced by the skills tree you'll
progress through. Some of these skills you unlock are quite helpful
such as the ones which allow collectibles to appear on your mini map
or allow you to deal damage to foes by simply charging into them.
However it can feel a bit clumsy at the start to not have basic
skills such as the ability to dual wield. But on the plus-side, your
character wears the power suit throughout the whole game, allowing
you to double-jump, ground pound, and even go invisible for a few
seconds.
But the one aspect of
the Blazkowicz twins that stole everyone's attention was their
personalities. On one hand they've got a down-to-earth folksiness to
them reminiscent of their homeland, and on the other hand they're a
couple of naive and sometimes crass teenagers. The banter between
them seems really genuine for teenage siblings, full of awkward
nerdiness and spunk yet occasionally ruminating on the current state
of their world. Flashing a friendly hand gesture to the other sister
will grant a “pep” bonus – such as increased health or armour –
which triggers lines like “hell yeah, dude” or “you're slayin'
it!” I can see how Jess and Soph might be grating for some players
but the low-hanging fruit of Beavis and Butthead comparisons are
unfair. To me the “terror twins” are endearingly dorky, truly one
of Youngblood's highlights.
The gunplay has also
been refined. To my recollection, there's only two weapons that can
be dual-wielded which makes weapon switching faster and less
complicated. The weapons are even more modular than before; you can
customize the stock, receiver, muzzle, sights, and magazine using
upgrades from different brands which can grant different bonuses. You
can even apply different skins to your weapons – though it's a
shame that the best skins are hidden behind paywalls. These upgrades
are purchased using money which can be found throughout the game's
world and attained using the series' most convenient pickup system
yet. Money must be picked up manually but the pickup button's range
is generous enough, and as for health, ammo, and armour all you have
to do is walk over it. Amazing, isn't it? It took four tries but
Machine Games finally got it right.
As mentioned earlier
the game is set in the early 1980's because what isn't these days? I
think retro 80's culture is more popular today than it was in the
80's! At least Youngblood doesn't beat you over the head with
neon pink bikinis and Lamborghinis. Still, the game throws in some
great understated synth-driven music and the collectibles are
delightfully retro: 3.5 inch disks, 3D glasses, cassette tapes, and
UVK (i.e. VHS) tapes. The vibe is more restrained and European in
character which makes sense given the setting – there might be as
much French and German spoken in this game as there is English, not
to mention there isn't as much current-day political pandering this
time around. (Although the readables do contain a Donald Trump joke
because of course they do, haha haha, those never get old.)
But enough about the
positives, let's get to the gripes. Aside from the new player
characters Youngblood's other uniqueness is its structure and
flow: it's an open world game. The ultimate objective is to get
inside Lab X where B.J. is supposedly holed up but in order to enter
it the Blazkowicz sisters need to infiltrate and deactivate all three
of the “Brother” Towers' defence systems. Theoretically one could
try tackling these levels right away but without any weapons upgrades
and additional skills your chances aren't that great. So you've got
to level yourself up by completing quests and incidental side
missions. This gives rise to two problems; firstly, for most of the
game there isn't much story going on. In fact, there isn't really a
villain until the last level. What's worse, this makes the game
repetitive and this isn't helped by the fact that the world you have
to play in is pretty small. Giving players multiple paths to approach
combat situations doesn't change the fact that they're going to be
fighting enemies in the same exact locations again and again. You
also don't have a map so getting lost can happen from time to time.
Additionally, every level takes place on foot so there's not much
variety to be found. After the first hour or two you'll have already
experienced pretty much all this game has to offer aside from the
more advanced skills and weapons upgrades.
The reason for this
monotony comes from the fact that Wolfenstein: Youngblood was
going after the “live services” trend that was popular late last
decade in which non-linear games were made with repetitive gameplay
loops in order to get players playing online day after day after day.
Games of this genre – like Anthem and Fallout 76 –
tend to be lifeless and boring and while Youngblood isn't
nearly as bad as those games it's easy to spot their influence. Like
other live service shooters, this one has bullet-sponge enemies with
health bars above their heads, bugs and glitches, microtransactions,
and gameplay boosters. But on the plus side it does have coop and can
be purchased at a discount by the second player (the “buddy pass”).
One could argue that since it's a spinoff and not a main game in the
series Youngblood's unique game design is acceptable. But does
it make the game fun? That's the real concern.
Personally I think this
game is alright. This latest Wolfenstein game has its share of
strengths as well as some weaknesses; it avoided the problems that
plagued The New Colossus but its design was neither inspired
nor captivating. As stated earlier I enjoyed my time with it but once
the end credits rolled I felt no desire to replay it and I probably
won't for some time. If nothing else, at least they didn't make any
of those uninspired French surrender jokes.
So that's the Machine
Games Wolfenstein saga. We've seen some ups and some downs.
I'm eager to see what Wolfenstein III will be like but I also
appreciate the developers' willingness to take a chance with the two
spinoff games. Hopefully this series is one that can get back in the
saddle and blow us all away like it's done before.
