I've played through to the start of the second level and so far so Call Of Duty, give or take a couple of robots. I suspect they're slowly easing me into the more interesting stuff that I've heard about with some straightforward opening sections. And that'll have to do it for at least the next couple of weeks, see you for more FPS action soon!
There's a fair amount of map-checking, skill-upgrading, document-reading and the like. I very quickly assumed that it was all fluff grafted onto a regular shooter and got a bit of a "when do they get to the fireworks factory" feeling, but it seems I should try to embrace it. Wolfenstein is not a franchise I would have expected to go in that direction, but it does seem to be becoming a bit of a trend in shooters, along with the arcadey score-chasing.
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I've played a little more of this, and it all feels rather loose. The shooting's okay, but I've been given like fifteen weapons options with no real idea of the difference between them. There's the immersive sim stuff plus the action stuff, but both of them feel rather undercooked, and I'm constantly bombarded with messages about perks and achievements and what have you. I got through the CoD/RTCW section at the start, and through the insane asylum. It's interesting that they're going this hard with the story, but I feel like a lot of beats get fudged. I'm often thinking "ah, I see what you were trying to do there". I did really like the scene where BJ is told that it's 1960, the war's over and the US surrendered (even if they did give away the twist earlier, plus unceremoniously cut to it at the top of the scene) - it's a convincing portrayal of confusion and panic .
I've just got to a bit where I have to stealth around and clear out a section. While it feels weird to me to be doing this in a Wolfenstein game (having not played the 2D ones!), I'm still trying to embrace it, even if the clunky weapons system doesn't help matters.
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Well, I've just reached the internment camp, and I hope this game hits its stride soon because so far it's a real slog. It's either getting funnelled through scripted sequences, boring hub levels where you have to go pick up bits of paper and lumps of concrete, or war-of-attrition shooting sections . The latest one involved standing in a side-room and shooting all the guys as they ran towards me, then shooting three big robots with my laser gun that needs about five recharges at the power-point per robot, then shooting a slightly bigger robot. The game may gesture towards immersive sim mechanics but it doesn't offer any alternative playstyles - stealth goes out of the window very quickly and there aren't any interesting weapons to play with. I even completed an optional goal of finding four toys, and all I got was an unlocked model! Who gives a shit about unlocking models?!
What's more, while the visual fidelity is pretty good, the art design and story are both rendered rather dull by the plot point that the Nazis are using super-concrete to build everything. This not only makes for a boring story, it also makes for a very very grey game.
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I got to a point where the autosaves were really pissing me off, so I knocked this down to the lowest difficulty setting and barrelled through it. I'm glad I did, because the rest of the game was pretty much just more Nazis and robots in grey corridors. The moon base was quite cool with all the laser guns and HAL-style vents, but it was still mainly grey corridors. It's telling that the dev team is made of a load of ex-Starbreeze people, who made Riddick. It's the same mix of ambition, polish, clunkiness and frustration. Outside of mechanics, one thing that really stuck out to me was how often they broke the immersion with perks and collectibles and what have you. In one cutscene, a character says "oh by the way, I found my cousin's journal. Here, you take it in case you fancy reading it." It's just completely irrelevant to the plot and yet for the rest of the game these loud notifications came up telling me I'd unlocked another page or something and really putting me off. The side-objectives reward you with gold items, which are meaningless trinkets, whenever you get to a new location it tells you "new concept art for this location unlocked!" which may as well scream "this is a video game level!" at you, and the excellent alt-history music is mainly experienced via the menu system which is a terrible waste.
Rating: Orange.
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