Feature review: Wolfenstein

To fund your upgrading binge, you’ll need to find gold. In each mission, and in the central town zones, are a number of (sometimes bloody well-) hidden bags of gold, precious items, enemy intelligence, and Tomes of Power. You’ll need gold to afford the upgrades, intelligence to unlock new weapon addons, and Tomes of Power to discover new Veil abilities. There’s always a moment in FPSes where you think to yourself, “man, I wish I could get way up on that ledge, I’ll bet there’s something awesome there.” Then you’d fight and crawl your way up to the ledge, only to discover that there’s nothing up there but a bit of broken level geometry and a feeling of disappointment and wasted time. Not with Wolfenstein! You’re almost always rewarded for exploration, which instils that feeling of old-school arcade shooter goodness so convincingly that you’ll almost be tempted to slide along every wall  tapping the open key repeatedly in search of hidden doors.

There’s such a feeling of simple, honest fun in Wolfenstein that it almost feels like most other modern FPSes have somehow missed the plot. There are a few things wrong with Wolfenstein, to be sure: the sprinting is enough to induce simulation sickness, and the AI is pretty daft a lot of the time, but the game’s sheer charm more than makes up for it. The story is exciting; uncovering the Nazi plot is almost addictive, and will have you painfully tearing yourself away from your machine at the wee hours of the morning, if you’re not vigilant. The gameplay is well-paced, the visuals are decent (or, rather impressive considering the use of id’s Tech 4 engine), but the controls are a little finicky at times.

If there’s one major let-down here, it’s the multiplayer, which was developed externally by newcomers Endrant Studios. The lack of experience is evident. While many similarities exist between this and Enemy Territory, most are in concept alone. When the game isn’t experiencing lag or your system isn’t crashing (which is rare), you’ll get to experience three game modes: Team Deathmatch, Objective, and Stopwatch. Objective is decent if you can get a full-enough game together, and is similar to Unreal’s legendary Assault mode. Stopwatch is similar, but involves teams racing against eachother’s objective completion times instead of directly-opposed goals. There is a persistent statistics system for unlocking weapon upgrades and a trickle of Veil powers, but much of the single player game’s upgrade system is lost in the multiplayer.

While Wolfenstein doesn’t have the polish to stand up to Call of Duty, or the visuals to rival Crysis, it possesses an allure that is sure to appeal to anyone who’s played any of the series before it. It may have a few problems, and the multiplayer is best left unspoken of when you’re trying to pitch this title to your buddies, but there’s no denying the good old fun factor. Wolfenstein is dripping in it.