Wolfenstein

After the last review (Bionic Commando) I thought I would again review something whose roots lay in my childhood. This time, however, I have actually played the first game. Indeed, I played the heck out of it. Or rather, I played the heck out of the first ten levels, because my mother would not let me buy the full version.
I did hear rumors that the game was really weird at points though, and have seen pictures online of Adolph Hitler in some kind of giant battlemech/diabolic weapons platform.

So I was really prepared for anything starting this game.

And let me just say, it is weird.

The game begins innocently enough. The opening cut scene is quite pretty, although the characters do appear somewhat stiff in their movements. BJ Blazkowicz - yes, that is you, and yes, your name is BJ- is on board a Nazi cruiser that is about to launch missiles somewhere. BJ decides the best way to stop this is to beat up all of the Nazis on board, and proceeds to spectacularly kill several soldiers (who for some reason are the only people on the ship- there are no sailors) Several crazy one man attacks against swarms of enemies occur, but the insanity can be summed up by this: A German soldier turns an anti-aircraft gun on BJ, who opens a door, which deflects the bullets. He then pulls out a .45 and shoots some lifeboats that are located conveniently above the soldier, and the gun. They fall and crush the soldier.

Then things get weird. BJ is surrounded by many angry Nazis with guns. It looks as if it is all over for our hero. But then, in stroke of pure genius, BJ whips out this little glowing disk that he found on the ship and melts all the Nazi’s, Indiana Jones style. No joke. He melts the Nazi’s. Then BJ jumps in a plane just as the ship explodes in a violent display of light and sound. Now, why didn’t he do that from the beginning? Well it must have been cooler to use the .45 and the lifeboats.

And if you thought that was weird, just wait.

Now the actual game play begins. For some reason even though the opening cut scene was on a boat in the Atlantic, the game starts you on a train somewhere in France, and your first task is to “Escape the Nazi’s.” This is a little confusing, as I thought this game was a run and gun, Quake style, John Carmack’s Ferrari going 110 MPH type of FPS, not a stealth, hide in the sewers type of game. This leads me to one of the problems I have with the game; it doesn’t know how to what type of game it is. More on this later, but keep it in the back of your mind. So instead of shooing the Nazi’s, or rather using that cool disk thing, BJ decides to run from them.

Dropping into a conveniently located sewer, BJ is then given a tutorial in how to use the disk in his pocket. It is called the veil, and it can let him walk through walls. I do so, and find myself crouching looking through a door and into a room that contains two Nazi guards. Neither of them notices me. I shoot one, and the other still doesn’t notice me, apparently failing to hear the pistol shot going off right next to his head. I go ahead and shoot him too, making sure that I am the last thing on earth he does not notice. As I walk out into the room to get the bad guys guns, confident that I am playing a stealth game, the world explodes. Nazis begin shooting at me, grenades go off, and I am forced to duck behind some cover. I get it now; I am playing a cover based shooter game! Great, I love these.

A tutorial “help” screen pops up, and explains bullet time. It is not really called bullet time, but that is what it is- time slows down, and you can kill people! Great, no problem. Max Payne was a cool game! I kill the enemies, and running to get their guns, I notice that the curser used to pick objects up looks suspiciously like the one used in Oblivion. Matter of fact, it is the same button I used in Oblivion too. The movements of the characters also resemble those in Oblivion. Great, I loved Oblivion.

Next, I come to another big fight. I figure in my Max Pain/Oblivion hybrid, the best thing to do would be to engage bullet time, charge out in the open, and kick some ass!! Except….I have no more bullet time left, I used it all. No problem- I can still play this FPS style right? Wrong. I die charging a German position.

This must really be a cover based shooter. However, there are some problems with this theory. There is no “pop in, pop out” button, like in Rainbow 6 Vegas. Nor does the game seem to want me to use cover all the time, because sometimes when I hide behind cover, I either get killed or can’t shoot back effectively. So I charge in like a gun toting….BJ Blazkowicz. And sometimes it works. Sometimes it gets me killed or causes me massive amounts of damage.
At this point I am really unsure of what to do, but I am having a good time killing Nazi’s, even if the game has schizophrenia and is unsure of it wants to be when it grows up and goes gold. I even accept the “shopping” portion of the game that lets me buy weapon upgrades in the middle of a firefight, even though it gives me horrible nightmares of Army of Two.

And then, it gets weird again.

I have just finished off a group of Nazis located in another part of the railroad depot in which I started the game. Grabbing their MG42, I note that even the machine gun has a marginal zoom feature (something missing in many FPS). I have a great time mowing down the hordes of Nazis that kindly charge right into my zoomed gun sights. I love zooming in on a machine gun.
Just then, a boss appears. No kidding. I get a message telling me to “defeat the Heavy Trooper.” I look around for a fat guy in a German uniform, maybe someone resembling Sgt. Schultz, and find a huge enemy in a giant suit, with a giant cannon, running right at me. I guess he is heavy because of his gun, not his weight. I run away, backing up and firing. I quickly dispatch the trooper with minimal loss because he has continently put glowing blue balls of energy on his suit for me to shoot.

I am not begrudging boss battles at all, and I actually had a lot of fun on this one. It got my heart moving a bit, and running away firing was cool, but this guy was finished too quickly, and left me feeling unsatisfied. While I am sure that there are women saying that there is something poetic about me being left unsatisfied after too quick an encounter, I think that the fight should have been a bit more epic, like what it started out as being- me running from a huge scary enemy that I could not see very well. That said, I am more than willing to give the boss thing a pass because I have no idea if the game spawns these Heavy Troopers every 10 minutes, and this was not a real boss battle- but it sure felt like part of one, and that felt pretty good.

I pick up the Heavy Trooper’s cannon, and then it gets really weird.

Apparently, killing the heavy trooper released some weird anti gravity thing, and things are now floating. Everything. Cover, guns, and Nazi’s. And me. Every so often I find myself floating in the air, and then come back to earth. The Nazi guards are easily killed with the cannon, and it is a very satisfying feeling to shoot a giant cannon at a helpless Nazi floating upside down and screaming, “Help me!” in a German accent.

The demo ends shortly thereafter. The best way to describe this game is weird, but good. The game does not seem to be able to decide what it is. Is it a first person shooter in the traditional style of Wolfenstein? Is it a cover based shooter? Or is it an RPG? Well, the answer to that may never be known, but the game is fun, in a weird sort of way. Also, I have not mentioned it before, but the game is beautiful. The visuals are pretty stunning. The water is sparkling, the Nazi’s move and die realistically, and allowing the physics engine to flex its muscle with the floating Nazi’s at the end of the level was the crème de la crème.

My overall recommendation of this game is to BUY IT WHEN IT IS $29.99. This should be soon, as the game is not selling all that well. Coupling this with the fact that there are some pretty heavy hitting releases hitting shelves in the next couple months (Assassins Creed 2, Modern Warfare 2 etc) this game’s prices should be slashed soon.