Wolfenstein The Old Blood - Maxi-Geek Review

Last year Bethesda released an all new Wolfenstein game, which would honour the past, but also bring it into the modern era and they succeeded, in amazing fashion. They have now released a prequel to that story and it does tell a cool story, but it's not without its flaws.

BJ Blazkowicz is back, this time tasked with retrieving a folder that contains the location of Deathshead, who you have to deal with in The New Order, the game starts off easy enough, driving towards a checkpoint. It is here that your partner, Wesley, will give you the details and just as he finishes you see it for the first time, Castle Wolfenstein and boy is it big. It seems that the big shot in charge, Helga von Schabb, has the folder hidden away in her office, located somewhere within the castle, but guarding it is her right hand man, Rudi Jager.

As you start to walk around, you get the sense for how big the castle really is and you are not even there. But as this is a Wolfenstein game, you won’t be taking a casual stroll for long and when things go belly up, they really do. If you have played the main game, then you will feel right at home here as the controls and gameplay carries over, some new mechanics like climb rough rock walls help keep things fresh, but for the most part the gameplay is the same, which is a good thing. It is solid, shooting any of the guns on offer feels great, being able to flank the bad guys and take them out is just fun.

There was one section where I was lucky enough to find two shotguns with a magazine that held a large number of rounds and being able to run into a room and really go to town on the Nazi’s was fun, of course double the guns, meant double the ammo consumption, so it was not something I did a lot after that. But being able to dual wield any of the guns, gave me that feeling of old school fun, where you were the biggest badass around. The old school nature of the game is something that they explore to its fullest, even more so with the nightmare sections, just like the main game, there are places you can sleep in each stage that will take you to a nightmare, which is the original game, only broken up into more manageable sections, the result is bite sized portions of fun.

Throughout the 8 chapters of this tale you will be taken to a few locations, nothing as crazy as a moon base, but they are interesting none the less, in fact being able to spend time in Castle Wolfenstein is fun, the small glimpses we got last year of other castles was nice, but being able to explore the full one is just great. The town of Wulfburg, which you will explore in the latter half of the game is full of charm, with small details abound throughout it, I just wish we were able to see more of it without the Nazi’s, even for a few moments.

The main problem that the game has appears pretty early though and it is due to the way the game was marketed, all the trailers will have you believe you are about to enter into a world of zombies and horror, akin to old school horror movies, even with the same title style, but it's not, in fact apart from a few little jokes from BJ himself, which stretch the meaning of the word, there is little humour to be found in the game, that is not to say the game is bad, it just lacks the promise we were given. The other problem the game has is that none of the characters are fleshed out enough, in fact a cameo from a fan favourite at the end is perhaps the most interesting character in the game. Neither Rudi nor Helga feel imposing as villains, which is a problem, you can find documents around the world that help explain why they are doing things, but that is a reward for those that explore.

One area the game does well in, is its visual performance. The game just looks great, shadows can help you track some of the early enemies, facial expressions of the characters feel lifelike and believable, which helps sell the pain some of the resistance members have in their lives. BJ still sounds bland, he does not emote a whole lot, but when he does it just does not work for the character he is, but that’s ok. The music is pretty on track for the era, nothing feels to out of place there, the one area I did find myself noting was the supporting cast, the NPC’s, there was one section where I watched from the shadows as two soldiers were arguing about just what the Nazi Supernatural research department was going to do, one thought ghost and such was not possible and they should be focusing on things like the holy grail, before being shot down by his colleague, a small touch, but one that made me smile.

Overall, The Old Blood is a solid game, it gives more story for BJ and ties in nicely with the main game, it's just a shame it was not the campy horror experience that was advertised.

Thanks to Bethesda for supplying the game for review