Wolfenstein: Youngblood (2019)

What should i write about this game... well this is the worst Wolfenstein game i've ever played. This is really embarrassing. I have to notice that i played this alone...maybe it's better or funnier in co-op. I think this game isn't work without a co-op partner, the AI is dumb as hell as your sister and as your enemies as well. The gun play isn't that bad...but i think it is way worse than the previous episodes. The story is a bit meh...and there wasn't too much cut scenes...and the whole game (mainly the main mission is pretty short) I made a few side missions but those wasn't too fun. The graphics was fine, but Paris was a bit too sterile, but i loved the Dishonored like mechanic...that was cool.

I'm sad, i really try to love this game...but it's just boring and below the average. (I hate the sisters...sooo much)

Maybe it is unfair to review a co-op game that I played alone. Then again, the game does provide you with an AI companion in that situation, so why not? Aesthetically and conceptually, I think, this is quite the cool game. Does it succeed similarly as an action shooter? Not so much.

Let me start with the good bits. 80’s Nazi-occupied Paris is a very compelling setting. Not only is it super detailed and beautifully rendered, but the devs really leaned into the whole 80’s thing. There are floppy disks and personal computers with CRT screens everywhere. There is also a lot of 80’s media culture but instead with Germany as the global cultural hegemon. My favourite bit is the Nazi-pendant to the first Wolfenstein game in which you play as a Nazi soldier killing US-American military personal. The protagonist looks eerily similar to the real world protagonist that finishes the game by killing mecha Hitler. Blond, blue eye, muscular. It’s a somewhat tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement that despite Blazcowitcz’s appearance ironically perfectly resembling Aryan physical traits, it is also a game that aesthetically Nazis would have probably liked. This is not really helped by the game continuing to play into the myth of Nazi tech supremacy, but the third game into a rebooted series is probably the wrong place to discuss this at length. And credit to the creators for making a game that despite that does a lot to repel fascists. The Nazis of this game are portrayed as being weakened by infighting, which is just historically true, and also a sure way to repel Nazi sympathisers, who are drawn to fascism by its false promises of strength and national unity. But much more important to this are the game’s sister protagonists. They are immature teenagers, one with long black and the other with radically short military style hair—counter to the aesthetic conservative ideals of their father. And hilariously to piss off US conservatives, they both have a noticeable Southern accent.

So this is all cool. It’s unfortunate then that the shooter part of this first-person shooter does not fare nearly as well in comparison. To start, this is a co-op game. I’m sure that with a good friend there is much fun to be had here, but isn’t that generally true about multiplayer games? But beyond that, this game carries some elements from singleplayer Wolfenstein games that just don’t work in a multiplayer setting. For example, this game features the obligatory Bioshock-style lore files. Completely appropriate for a story-laden game like the New Order or The New Colossus, but for this co-op game it feels entirely out of place.

Regarding the gameplay itself, I don’t want to frontload all the bad stuff, because there are some good ideas in this one. However, for every good idea in Youngblood there is always a bad counterpart that massively undercuts it. Starting with enemy drops, getting an immediate resource refresh on killing enemies encourages aggressive play which is a tonne of fun—until you encounter bullet sponge enemies, which are quite numerous and become an ever greater presence as the game goes on. These tough enemies all pack a punch so that’s that with fun aggressive play and the reluctant sniping, running, and peeking around corners makes for a poor substitute.
Right so that’s a perfect application for stealth, right? Just take out the annoying tough guys by sneaking behind them and taking them out in one hit. That would be a somewhat fine solution, except the open levels of Youngblood are sectioned into action bubbles with enemies all over the place since you could be coming from everywhere. This completely ruins the potential utility of stealth. When arriving on the scene, you can maybe take out the first Nazi that you see stealthily and with that it’s over already, some other soldier having spotted you in the act. There is a similar story with weapon upgrades, which are a fine idea for rewarding extra player efforts like doing quests with a limited weapons arsenal. You don’t have to do it like Borderlands, in fact, please do not with an action shooter. But there has to be something more interesting here than getting to choose for every part of the weapon between bonus headshot damage, higher fire rate and greater damage output. The upgrades are boring and forgettable, but you better not actually forget about them, because otherwise the bullet sponge enemies will be even more agonising to fight. The fact that these upgrades have to be bought from a boring and sterile menu otherwise divorced from the game makes the cynic in me think that this was merely put in to implement a separate premium currency system to provide an additional revenue stream for the game.

Lastly, the level design is not too bad. The environments are beautifully detailed and not having these levels serve a linear narrative structure has clearly unshackled the level designers in many ways. But like the rest of the game, it isn’t that easy. The free structure of the game makes you revisit the same places in the game over and over. The level design could be completely fantastic, but the fifth time through in quick succession would even ruin that significantly. The best levels are the so-called Brothers, the towering boss layers. They are aesthetically unique, feature some great verticality, but most importantly, you will probably only visit them once. In stark contrast to that is the underground. Here it’s dark where any visual distinction disappears, you revisit it many times and you can only use a handgun in combination with a flashlight—just horrible.

So to close this off, conceptually, there are some great ideas here, but they are undone in practice by other conflicting decisions. The overall composition here is simply lacking. What remains are some cool and memorable aesthetics, but no fun game to go with it. Being a virtual Nazi hunter has never been this boring.

What I liked:

Payed 20 bucks to play a game with a friend. He did not need to pay anything.

The world. 1980s Paris occupied by Nazis is a nice setting.

Collectibles. I mean, I 100%d it for a reason. The collectibles are awesome and passionate: Multiple fictitious movie posters for cineastic mile stones but made from a German perspective ("Der Frosch" as a Cronebergian take on The Thing and so on and so on), performed songs fitting for the setting, and most importantly concept arts which I'm now using as inspiration for Warhammer 40k terrain. Furthermore, you get a map on how to find everything and as soon as this happens, I feel acknowledged with my desire to 100% a game. (Someone needs to make a game where the collectible map is in itself a collectible)!

German soldiers shouting orders at each others. "Sie sind nur zu zweit!" was exactly what I hoped for this game. Two Jewish hitwomen killing Nazis. Why didn't they make the last soldier of every encounter fleeing or begging for his live? Showing how small and craven German soldiers are? "Oh nein nein, bitte lasst mich am leben!" would have been even better.

The resistance: That they come to your place of operation once you free them from labor camps just feels right. When I was telling a Dutch resistance fighter that heir French friend died in a German detention, she started crying while a Beneluxian chason was playing on the radio. That really gave me goosebumps.

The level design: Some people say, you can not feel the influence of Arkane on this game and they're wrong. The level design is good! Political detention area 4 needs to be mentioned as especially beautiful and well thought through.

The implication that Doom and Wolfenstein share the same universe!

What I did not like:

Side quests, bosses and respawn mechanics – and you know what, this is all Destiny. That's why I gave Destiny 1 only one star because, even tough, I've spend hundreds of hours into it and met my best gaming buddies in the Tower (by chance, like it was the player group meeting in a D'n'D marketplace), it had such a negative impact on game design and game monetization in general. Anthem, Marvel: Avengers and Wolfenstein: Youngblood also need to be examples of games that have been ruined by Destiny's lazy but addictive game design. It saddens me so much that Activion's bad practice has become a desirable approach on game development by other studios.

Playing through this with a good mate and having a blast to be quite honest. But as time constraints and everyday life with a pandemic make a 100% playthrough seem unlikely in the near future I wanted to use the update feature to write down some thoughts about the game:

So, we've only encountered the first boss so far, therefore, all the backtracking and clankyness of the game design did not yet appear that tiring. (Additionally, we have played through Destiny and are used to a thing or two). I really dig this aimless shooter, barely given a task, no endgame grinding, no raid gear, no PvP stats, just a nebulous direction: yeah, go to these three endbosses whichever way you like. We actually forget about the objectives and it doesn't matter. It's the end of a hard working day and you're playing with a buddy, killing some Nazis.

Some people here complained about the art design and I couldn‘t disagree more. We had a good laugh finding the rehearsal room of a Nazi punk band, pondered about the difference between Tetris and "Ziegelturm" and the Parisian ghetto gave us eerie shivers.

I'm dragged by the story premise, though. I always imagined the sisters to be a futuristic-Jewish-revenge-spirit engineered by reprisal scientists (think a Zionist Wakanda) which the German occupation forces only whisper about in fear and, even though they become exactly that while playing, they actually story suggest that the two girls found their equipment by accident in an US-American police station. Ok, that's not quite as cool as it was in my head.

You know who also did not believe in the game concept? Bethesda. You can see it in the start screen. It's the most uninspired start screen I've ever encountered. But me, I believe in this game concept. One day, there will 100% showing on this ugly start screen. My appreciative notch to the game and level designers.

By far the worst entry in what is already a mixed bag franchise under the hands of a questionable developer Machinehead. After playing through New Order/Old Blood and New Colossus i honestly dont think any of them was decent aside from The Old Blood which felt more in quality to the roots/old era of fps games but even that one i wouldnt rate above a 3/5 or 7/10 it still had tedious bits here and there and like the rest of this developers games felt pretty uninspired and the gunplay and weapons are just not as satisfying as the top tier fps games on pc.

I had to stop playing Youngblood because it just went even further with the tedious bits and gunplay by adding rpg/loot fps mechanics where its more focused on grinding levels and do side-chore missions. I decided to focus on only the main mission but noticed i was to under leveled when i made it to a mission called "panzerhund assembly line" where i had to destroy 4 control panels. The combat is just plain dull in this game and area where all the enemies are so armored that it feels even worse to combat here because you just have to batter all your weapons and ammo into these guys. The combat is already already felt like you have to constantly pump your entire arsenal into the enemies but its gotten even worse at this point and that was it for me.

On top of this the levels are designed in a way that it has separate sections where enemies respawn after a short while, so if you cant find that underground section that you need to get to trigger your next mission by wandering around for it through these areas you get to fight the enemies from the other sections a couple of times before finally figuring out the area that leads to them , it really amplifies the already tedious combat in this game to the point where its just frustrating and boring to play.

Im personally done with this franchise and hope Bethesda decides to shift reign of it to another developers hand because this developer havent gotten much out of it.

Abandoned.

The first two Wolfenstein games were fairly basic FPS games with some mostly trash stealth sections. But the story good was enough to pull them through.

In this game, the story -- the thing that made the previous games good -- feels entirely nonexistent. You're supposedly trying to rescue your dad, the protagonist of the previous two games. But to do this, you're expected to do completely uninteresting fetch quests, over & over, in the same handful of recycled maps. You often don't even realize you completed an "objective" until you look at the top of the screen and it's telling you to go back to the catacombs to collect your XP reward. And when you collect that reward, there's no interesting cutscene. The person just starts giving an extended "thank you" speech. Probably the only good part of the game is that you can walk away while they continue to talk.

The last straw for me was the completely abysmal, sewer-trash, syphilitic checkpointing system. There's no manual save game ability, nor do you really even know when the game is being saved. You're entirely at the mercy of the garbage checkpointing system. On my previous session, I was playing one of the major "Brother" missions. I'd been playing for over an hour, and had seen two loading screens when I entered various areas. I thought for sure the game would save at one of those loading screens. Nope. The next time I started the game, it put me back at the beginning of "Brother 3".

This game is nowhere close enough to actual fun for me to replay that again. I'm out.

This game is crap. Avoid at all costs. Utter crap.

A few hours in on this game, and I'm contemplating whether I really want to finish it...

Previous Wolfenstein games have had okay gameplay, and I mostly stuck around for the story. Youngblood seemed like those previous games for the first hour or so -- you got some really neat cutscenes with relatively basic FPS'ing in between.

Then, once you hit the Underground Catacombs hub, the fun level just completely craters. You just have people in the central hub with "!" over their heads doling out useless seemingly-procedurally-generated fetch quests. "Free this prisoner", "Find this document", "kill this not-at-all-noteworthy enemy", yadda yadda yadda. And they seem to have adopted the worst parts of the newer Assassin's Creed games. The environment is littered with 2-3 coins here & there that you use to buy 200-coin-or-more upgrades. Enemies have a level number over their head. Any number higher than yours, and the enemy is a ridiculous bullet sponge. And if their level is more than a couple levels above yours, that number is just a skull & they wipe the floor with you.

I guess the only thing that will keep me on the hook is that the game is reportedly short -- around 8-9hrs.

Wasn't a fan of this one. I don't like the level scaling and you pretty much need to grind some side quests to make it to the right level to take on the Brother 1, 2, and 3 towers. The side quests are highly repetitive: go to 1 of a handful of places, shoot everyone, get a thing or destroy a thing. That's it.

The whole thing felt a bit uninspire and getting all the collectibles requires a lot of backtracking. They also don't always feel meaningful. Like 70 3D glasses scattered around... um okay?