Wolfenstein: Youngblood (2019)

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.

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.